Coffee vs. Tea: A Longitudinal Study

You can pick up a lot about social values by glancing at commodity consumption patterns.

With the Google Books Ngram Viewer http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/
you can see what garners the most discussion in books.

Tea and Coffee are indicators of social value, and by looking at their numbers as word artifacts embedded in books we can see how they are faring relative to each other through time. Above is how Tea vs. Coffee have trended in British English texts. This mostly confirms what we already figured about the British Empire: it is an empire that has privileged Tea, from before 1600 right up until the 21st century. Coffee has been Tea's rival like France (or any other Great Power) has been Britain's rival. 

Coffee and Tea converge and diverge earlier in US American English books.  In the period before and during the American Revolution, the discussion of Tea spikes. Even after American Independence, Tea rules the textwaves until around the Second World War (WW2) when Coffee replaces Tea as America's more dominant hot beverage -- just as the American Empire supplants the British Empire on the world stage.

To tie this back to Oh Lucky Man!, Malcolm McDowell's original script idea was called "The Coffee Salesman;" there is no doubt in my mind that selling Coffee represents a rebellion and a challenge against the dominance of Tea -- the status quo -- in English society. In American society, we see manifestations of power rivalries with the Tea Party movement and the Coffee Party response.  The rivalry continues.

"The morning cup of coffee has an exhilaration about it which the cheering influence of the afternoon or evening cup of tea cannot be expected to reproduce."  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Over the Teacups, 1891.



Today's Rune: Signals.  Agent Cooper on Twin Peaks: damn fine cups of coffee!