Someone probably does. I believe that the cultural practice of preferring coffee to tea began in the British colonies at the time the United States started to cease to be part of the British Empire as a side effect of boycotting tea to avoid paying a tea tax. (This is a pretty well-known episode of American history within the United States.) I was boycotting the boycott. Refusing to drink tea is a signaling thing in the United States to let people know that you are not in agreement with the government of the United States as to which side constitutes the actual enemy in most wars the United States fights. It more less means “I was an anglophile on my route to becoming a Bob Dylan fan, and I make a point of singing, at least, the first verse of “Chimes of Freedom” loudly and publicly every May 1, July 4, and September 2.” By “more or less,” I mean, I’m a musician so that’s how I now express some of the same things that I used to express by refusing to drink coffee before I had enough confidence to just sing “flashing for the warrior, whose strength is not to fight; flashing for the refugee on the unarmed road of flight” whenever I see someone wearing a uniform that I deem offensive. Relatedly, refusing to drink coffee while still drinking caffeine is a fairly radical refusal to participate in mainstream culture that an enormous number of second-and-third-tier trendsetters recognize as a common signal used by first-tier trend-setters. For instance, most hipsters are at least vaguely aware that many of the most influential people who call the shots and set the trends in their subculture are some subset of the people who are not actually hipsters but who interact with the fringes of hipster culture and who have also spent at least a few years saying, “I DO NOT DRINK COFFEE. i drink tea.” (“No thanks, I drink tea,” is completely different.) To become a first-tier trend-setter in hipster culture, you have to be a non-hipster who has learned how to do a super-hipster thing for the right reasons, and one of the most obvious and easy ways you can do that is to express a disdain for Starbucks that is more menacing/intimidating than it is merely contemptuous (but is also at least as contemptuous as the typical hipsters’ ability to express disdain). Hipsters are not formidable people, but they respect formidable people; and they disrespect people’s whose power is derived from social structures. There is at least one venue that I used to go primarily to consume tea, where hipsters still go primarily to consume Jazz. The comment that you responded mostly consisted of me cryptically calling a few shots. The comments I’ve posted today consist of cryptically taking victory laps for all the shots called in that comment ten years ago; while calling some shots for the next ten years. I occasionally interact with hipster culture to inform hipsters about what types of aesthetic preferences they are going to help spread in the next few years. All the minor celebrities I interact with respond to all the comments I direct towards them and ignore all the comments I make about them. For instance, Scott Siskind always replies to the comments I post on his blogs that I want him to respond to. And when I go to less wrong meetups I figure out whose worth talking to by saying, “I learned Scott’s last name from the blog that I sort of vaguely remember as being named after an octopus long before I confirmed it by asking ’how many Jazz pianists who performed in Carnegie Hall can possibly have a brother named Scott who has practiced psychiatry in Michigan.”
Coffee culture in America doesn’t have much to do with the Revolutionary War. The rise of coffee is much later than the American Revolution. The brief boycott didn’t last (after all, Americans—infamous smugglers in general—were smuggling plenty of tea because of the taxes, so sourcing tea was not a problem) and there was enormous consumption of tea consistently throughout: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_tea_culture#Colonial_and_Revolutionary_eras In fact, I was surprised to learn recently that American tea was overwhelmingly green tea in the 1800s, and one of the biggest export markets for green tea worldwide.
(This was really surprising to me, because if you look around the 1900s, even as late as the 1990s, black tea is the standard American tea; all iced tea is of course black tea, and your local grocery store would be full of mostly just black teas with a few token green teas, and exactly one oolong tea if you were lucky—as I found out the hard way when I became interested in non-black teas.)
I will follow up on your links to see if they contain any information I find persuasive.
The fact that your name is gwern means that I find your paragraphs far more persuasive than I would if I didn’t see the name on them.
Yes, there have always been plenty of sumgglers avoiding taxes by smuggling things into the EEUU. I know of this having been true of every era I know well and have no reason to doubt that it’s true about the rest.
But, in my experience… Most history books cite history books citing history books, building up their facts along the way. I’m going to say that the primary sources I’m most familiar with strongly indicate to me that coffee culture in the United States has more to do with the Revolutionary War than most history books say. Also, the anti-drug lobby is the anti-caffeine lobby which is the anti-alcohol lobby. They came for our pot. Then they came for our tobacco. We didn’t let them get the booze. And they’re not getting the caffeine. And we’re getting back our pot and our tobacco.
Lots of things tip together at inflection points in history. I would guess that the popularity of coffee and all of the derivatives of that graph rose steeply as part of the American Revolution. Because. The universe is causal. And the EEUU revolution really is the point in history that coffee seems to have become intertwined with the cause of the avant garde.
I drank a lot of green tea and a lot of raspberry tea growing up in the 90s. And in my experience, all home-made Iced Tea from the 90s was Lipton, but I’m not sure that there was no Lipton Green Tea that went into the Iced Tea I most remember.
Also, metrics are radically different depending on whether you sort by price or by weight or by volume, etc. It’s far easier to spend a lot of money on a few ounces of green tea than it is on most others, and when drinking matcha, I typically drink more weight of tea than I do with any other variety of tea. So… by dollars, I’d expect green tea to have been the most imported tea in the Americas at a time when it was responsible for about 1⁄200 cups of tea. Assuming my spending per cup matches reasonably with other people’s.
Someone probably does. I believe that the cultural practice of preferring coffee to tea began in the British colonies at the time the United States started to cease to be part of the British Empire as a side effect of boycotting tea to avoid paying a tea tax. (This is a pretty well-known episode of American history within the United States.) I was boycotting the boycott. Refusing to drink tea is a signaling thing in the United States to let people know that you are not in agreement with the government of the United States as to which side constitutes the actual enemy in most wars the United States fights. It more less means “I was an anglophile on my route to becoming a Bob Dylan fan, and I make a point of singing, at least, the first verse of “Chimes of Freedom” loudly and publicly every May 1, July 4, and September 2.” By “more or less,” I mean, I’m a musician so that’s how I now express some of the same things that I used to express by refusing to drink coffee before I had enough confidence to just sing “flashing for the warrior, whose strength is not to fight; flashing for the refugee on the unarmed road of flight” whenever I see someone wearing a uniform that I deem offensive. Relatedly, refusing to drink coffee while still drinking caffeine is a fairly radical refusal to participate in mainstream culture that an enormous number of second-and-third-tier trendsetters recognize as a common signal used by first-tier trend-setters. For instance, most hipsters are at least vaguely aware that many of the most influential people who call the shots and set the trends in their subculture are some subset of the people who are not actually hipsters but who interact with the fringes of hipster culture and who have also spent at least a few years saying, “I DO NOT DRINK COFFEE. i drink tea.” (“No thanks, I drink tea,” is completely different.) To become a first-tier trend-setter in hipster culture, you have to be a non-hipster who has learned how to do a super-hipster thing for the right reasons, and one of the most obvious and easy ways you can do that is to express a disdain for Starbucks that is more menacing/intimidating than it is merely contemptuous (but is also at least as contemptuous as the typical hipsters’ ability to express disdain). Hipsters are not formidable people, but they respect formidable people; and they disrespect people’s whose power is derived from social structures. There is at least one venue that I used to go primarily to consume tea, where hipsters still go primarily to consume Jazz. The comment that you responded mostly consisted of me cryptically calling a few shots. The comments I’ve posted today consist of cryptically taking victory laps for all the shots called in that comment ten years ago; while calling some shots for the next ten years. I occasionally interact with hipster culture to inform hipsters about what types of aesthetic preferences they are going to help spread in the next few years. All the minor celebrities I interact with respond to all the comments I direct towards them and ignore all the comments I make about them. For instance, Scott Siskind always replies to the comments I post on his blogs that I want him to respond to. And when I go to less wrong meetups I figure out whose worth talking to by saying, “I learned Scott’s last name from the blog that I sort of vaguely remember as being named after an octopus long before I confirmed it by asking ’how many Jazz pianists who performed in Carnegie Hall can possibly have a brother named Scott who has practiced psychiatry in Michigan.”
Coffee culture in America doesn’t have much to do with the Revolutionary War. The rise of coffee is much later than the American Revolution. The brief boycott didn’t last (after all, Americans—infamous smugglers in general—were smuggling plenty of tea because of the taxes, so sourcing tea was not a problem) and there was enormous consumption of tea consistently throughout: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_tea_culture#Colonial_and_Revolutionary_eras In fact, I was surprised to learn recently that American tea was overwhelmingly green tea in the 1800s, and one of the biggest export markets for green tea worldwide.
(This was really surprising to me, because if you look around the 1900s, even as late as the 1990s, black tea is the standard American tea; all iced tea is of course black tea, and your local grocery store would be full of mostly just black teas with a few token green teas, and exactly one oolong tea if you were lucky—as I found out the hard way when I became interested in non-black teas.)
I will follow up on your links to see if they contain any information I find persuasive.
The fact that your name is gwern means that I find your paragraphs far more persuasive than I would if I didn’t see the name on them.
Yes, there have always been plenty of sumgglers avoiding taxes by smuggling things into the EEUU. I know of this having been true of every era I know well and have no reason to doubt that it’s true about the rest.
But, in my experience… Most history books cite history books citing history books, building up their facts along the way. I’m going to say that the primary sources I’m most familiar with strongly indicate to me that coffee culture in the United States has more to do with the Revolutionary War than most history books say. Also, the anti-drug lobby is the anti-caffeine lobby which is the anti-alcohol lobby. They came for our pot. Then they came for our tobacco. We didn’t let them get the booze. And they’re not getting the caffeine. And we’re getting back our pot and our tobacco.
Lots of things tip together at inflection points in history. I would guess that the popularity of coffee and all of the derivatives of that graph rose steeply as part of the American Revolution. Because. The universe is causal. And the EEUU revolution really is the point in history that coffee seems to have become intertwined with the cause of the avant garde.
I drank a lot of green tea and a lot of raspberry tea growing up in the 90s. And in my experience, all home-made Iced Tea from the 90s was Lipton, but I’m not sure that there was no Lipton Green Tea that went into the Iced Tea I most remember.
Also, metrics are radically different depending on whether you sort by price or by weight or by volume, etc. It’s far easier to spend a lot of money on a few ounces of green tea than it is on most others, and when drinking matcha, I typically drink more weight of tea than I do with any other variety of tea. So… by dollars, I’d expect green tea to have been the most imported tea in the Americas at a time when it was responsible for about 1⁄200 cups of tea. Assuming my spending per cup matches reasonably with other people’s.