history question
Damond
referenceforquestion3.docxSociety and Culture in an Age of Enlightenment
Religious revivals and the first stirrings of romanticism show that not all intellectual currents of the eighteenth century were flowing in the same channel. Some social and cultural developments manifested the influence of Enlightenment ideas, but others did not. The traditional leaders of European societies — the nobles — responded to Enlightenment ideas in contradictory fashion: many simply reasserted their privileges and resisted the influence of the Enlightenment, but an important minority embraced change and actively participated in reform efforts. The expanding middle classes saw in the Enlightenment a chance to make their claim for joining society’s governing elite. They bought Enlightenment books, joined Masonic lodges, and patronized new styles in art, music, and literature. The lower classes were more affected by economic growth than by ideas. Trade boomed and the population grew, but people did not benefit equally. The ranks of the poor swelled, too, and with greater mobility, births to unmarried mothers also increased.
Doc 17.1: Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789)
1. Captivity and Enslavement
Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano Written by Himself (1789)
The autobiography of Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745–1797) puts a human face on the eighteenth-century Atlantic slave trade and its consequences. As he describes, he was born in what is now Nigeria and was captured by local raiders and sold into slavery in his early teens. He gained his freedom in 1766 and soon thereafter became a vocal supporter of the English abolitionist movement. He published his autobiography in 1789, a best seller in its day, with numerous editions published in Britain and America. In the following excerpt, Equiano recounts his journey on the slave ship that took him away from his homeland, his freedom, and his very identity. Millions of others shared this same fate. Scholars have discovered new evidence that suggests Equiano was born an enslaved person in South Carolina, so it is likely that early parts of his autobiography melded the oral history of other enslaved people with Equiano’s personal experiences and emotional responses. Regardless of where Equiano was in fact born, his book is invaluable as a first-person account of slavery and one of few texts written in English during the eighteenth century by a person of African descent.
The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the coast was the sea, and a slave ship which was then riding at anchor, and waiting for its cargo. These filled me with astonishment, which was soon converted into terror … when I was carried on board. I was immediately handled, and tossed up to see if I were sound, by some of the crew; and I was now persuaded that I had got into a world of bad spirits, and that they were going to kill me. Their complexions too differing so much from ours, their long hair, and the language they spoke (which was very different from any I had ever heard)? united to confirm me in this belief. Indeed such were the horrors of my views and fears at the moment that, if ten thousand worlds had been my own, I would have freely parted with them all to have exchanged my condition with that of the meanest slave in my own country. When I looked round the ship too and saw a large furnace or copper, boiling, and a multitude of black people, of every description, chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer doubted of my fate; and, quite overpowered with horror and anguish, I fell motionless on the deck, and fainted. When I recovered a little, I found some black people about me, who I believed were some of those who had brought me on board, and had been receiving their pay; they talked to me in order to cheer me, but all in vain. I asked them if we were not to be eaten by those white men with horrible looks, red faces, and long hair. They told me I was not: and one of the crew brought me a small portion of spirituous liquor in a wine glass; but being afraid
From The interesting narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano, Written by Himself (Penryn, England: W. Cock, 1815), 50, 51, 52, 53, 55, 56, 58, 60. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/101686769.
Document 17.3: Richard Collins, “A Family at Tea” (c. 1726)
3. A Domestic Drink
Richard Collins, A Family at Tea (c. 1726)
Rowdy or not, coffeehouses became a permanent fixture in seventeenth-century masculine public life. By contrast, tea, originally an exclusive import from China and later a product of British East India Company trade and of the plantation economy, was integrated into women’s private domestic domains. Not only was tea a luxury item during this time, but the way of serving and drinking it also came to be seen as a hallmark of female refinement. The conversation piece, a type of portrait painting that became fashionable in the 1720s and early 1730s in England, illuminates the link between women, femininity, and tea forged during this time. Rather than portraying its subjects in formal or idealized settings, conversation pieces shifted attention to men, women, and children engaged in simple pleasures inside the home, including the drinking of tea. The subject matter of A Family at Tea by Richard Collins is typical of the genre. It depicts a well-off family seated around a tea table and prominently displays their expensive silver and porcelain tea equipage: a sugar dish, a tea canister, sugar tongs, a hot-water jug, a spoon boat with teaspoons, a slop bowl, and a teapot. The composition of the painting highlights the manner in which the family consumes their tea, with the woman placed prominently alongside the tea table to showcase her role as beacon of civility, high social standing, and domestic calm.
Sources in Conversation: A “Sober and Wholesome Drink”
2. A “Sober and Wholesome Drink”
SOURCES IN CONVERSATION | A Brief Description of the Excellent Vertues of That Sober and Wholesome Drink, Called Coffee (1674) and The Coffee House Mob (1710)
The expansion of the slave trade in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was directly linked to Europeans’ appetite for the commodities the labor of enslaved people produced, including coffee. With the drink came the rise of a new type of gathering place, the coffeehouse. In 1652, a Greek merchant who had learned to make coffee while working in a Turkish trading port opened the first coffeehouse in western Europe in London. Long a tradition in the Islamic world, the number of coffeehouses in London — and eventually all over Europe — exploded when western European trading nations moved into the business of coffee production. Coffeehouses became places for men to meet for company and conversation, often with a political bent. The broadsheet transcribed here illuminates the origins of European coffeehouse culture as merchants sought to entice customers to partake in the sociability of the coffeehouse. Composed of two poems, the broadsheet was printed in 1674, most likely as an advertisement for coffee, coffeehouses, and the retail coffee business of Paul Greenwood situated in the heart of London’s textile district. The first poem contrasts the detrimental effects of alcohol with the “sober and merry” effects of coffee. The second describes the rules of behavior coffeehouse patrons were expected to follow. Scholars have suggested that, despite its slightly satirical tone, the poem is an accurate portrayal of the regulations governing coffeehouses. However, the engraving “The Coffee House Mob” indicates that these regulations may not always have been followed. It shows men in a coffeehouse drinking coffee, reading newspapers, and violently arguing — one patron even splashes his coffee into the face of another! For opponents of coffeehouse culture, including Edward Ward, the author of the book in which the engraving appeared, the coffeehouse fostered uncivil and even seditious behavior, not reasoned discussion.
A Brief Description of the Excellent Vertues of that Sober and Wholesome Drink, called Coffee, and its incomparable effects in preventing or curing most diseases incident to humane bodies (London, printed for Paul Greenwood … who selleth the best Arabian Coffee-Powder and Chocolate, made in Cake or in Roll, after the Spanish Fashion, &c., 1674).1
When the sweet Poison of the Treacherous Grape,
Had Acted on the world a General Rape;
Drowning our very Reason and our Souls
In such deep Seas of large o’reflowing Bowls,
That New Philosophers Swore they could feel
The Earth to Stagger, as her Sons did Reel:
When Foggy Ale, leavying up mighty Trains
Of muddy Vapors, had besieg’d our Brains;
And Drink, Rebellion, and Religion too,
Made Men so Mad, they knew not what to do;
Then Heaven in Pity, to Effect our Cure,
And stop the Ragings of that Calenture,
First sent amongst us this All-healing-Berry,
At once to make us both Sober and Merry.
Arabian coffee, a Rich Cordial
To Purse
Transcription of original, as reproduced in Markman Ellis, ed., Eighteenth-Century Coffee-House Culture, vol. 1, Restoration Satire (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2006), 129.
This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeQ3: SOURCE USE: A minimum of two primary and two secondary sources utilized specifically and efficiently for support. Quotations are analyzed and effectively incorporated as part of the analysis. All source use appropriately and accurately cited.
