Comment by rustynails | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rustynails | Hacker News Reader

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If you're looking for a more insightful history to the "penny university", the Wikipedia page contains much more detail about coffee houses and some analysis of the pamphlet.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_coffeehouses_in_the_...

It's a fascinating read. Trying to capture how people lived and thought a few hundred years ago is very difficult today because much history is now overlaid with politics and filters. The Wikipedia page paints a picture that seems feasible based on my wide reading of history.

The resobscura speculates (without evidence) that the pamphlet was most probably written by a man. This view is not shared by the Wikipedia article for multiple reasons that anybody can speculate over.

Re: whether the pamphlet was written by a man or a woman, if you reread you'll see that I simply note that others have speculated, but there's no evidence either way. Suffice to say, 17th century pamphlets aren't always what they purport to be, so I think it's best to be agnostic about claims of authorship without additional documentation.

Either way, authorship doesn't really matter that much. At the time, printing these pamphlets still cost some money, it wasn't something done entirely on a whim; therefore, if a pamphlet exists, there was someone with a purpose behind it, either religious, or political, or economic motivation but it wasn't just someone expressing an opinion, it was someone hoping to somewhat influence the public narrative.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemileia_vastatrix#History

From the recent discussion about banana monoculture, I read an article suggesting that Coffee Leaf Rust destroyed coffee production in British held Sri Lanka, initiating the switch to tea. Its a silly conjecture, but maybe the lower amounts of caffeine contributed to the decline of coffeehouses.

non-mobile:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_coffeehouses_in_the_17...

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