Rules are not enforced to keep us safe, but to keep them safely in their positions of power.
*(The government)…
When COFFEE Was Illegal…
In the 1500s, coffee was banned in Mecca (Saudi Arabia), when it was suggested that people were visiting coffee houses throughout the city to air their grievances about the government.
Fearing that the gathering of people in coffee houses could lead to an organised revolution/ a ‘political uprising’ (the prospect of people coming together to simply talk and share ideas was a problematic one for some rulers- it posed a threat to their ideals), the governor stepped in and banned coffee and coffee houses within the city.
Coffee was deemed to be ‘too dangerous’, not because of any health risks it posed, but because of the ‘revolution’ risks that it, apparently, posed (people coming together in coffee houses to discuss plans on how to ‘change the system’)…
Fiction Disguised As Fact…
To justify the ban, it was ruled that coffee was ‘against the Islamic religion’ and ‘sinful.’ The reality, though? That the people in power feared that it would open people’s eyes to the reality of society.
‘Coffee makes us severe, and grave, and philosophical’
Jonathan Swift, 1722
Evidently, then, the ban on coffee was really a ban against freedom (of the masses). It was all about control, and the governments need to stay in it, with this need for control not just being seen in the traditionally more controlled Middle-Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia, but also much closer to home in the Western World…
Coffee Was Banned In The UK?!
In 1652, Pasqua Rosée opened the first coffee house in London, prompting a revolution in London society.
‘British culture was intensely hierarchical and structured. The idea that you could go and sit next to someone as an equal was radical.’
Markman Ellis.
In 1672, however, the then ruler of England, King Charles II, off the back of his increasing paranoia about his subjects gathering to talk politics via ‘rebellious’ discussions, declared that ‘Men have assumed to themselves a liberty in Coffee-houses to censure and defame the proceedings of State by speaking evil of things they understand not...’
To combat this ‘evil’, Secretary of State Sir Joseph Williamson embedded a network of spies in London coffee houses. Not long after this, in December of 1675, Charles II ordered the closure of all coffee houses in London.
Despite the ban only lasting 11 days (coffee was already, by the time the ban was introduced, a massive part of British culture, and it was, quite clearly, here to stay), just the fact that it was imposed in the first place, and the reasons given for it, prove just how far people were willing to go for power…
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