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Rum was the liquid embodiment of both the triumph and the oppression of the first era of globalization.
Coffee, the sober drink, the mighty nourishment of the brain, which unlike other spirits, heightens purity and lucidity; coffee, which clears the clouds of the imagination and their gloomy weight; which illuminates the reality of things suddenly with the flash of truth. —Jules Michelet, French historian (1798–1874)
During this Age of Reason, Western thinkers moved beyond the wisdom of the ancients and opened themselves to new ideas, pushing out the frontiers of knowledge beyond Old-World limits in an intellectual counterpoint to the geographic expansion of the Age of Exploration. Out went dogmatic reverence for authority, whether philosophical, political, or religious; in came criticism, tolerance, and freedom of thought.
Johann Sebastian Bach wrote a “Coffee Cantata”
progress of science, or “natural philosophy” as it was known at the time.
Tea was also consumed in a medicinal gruel in southwest China, the chopped leaves being mixed with shallot, ginger, and other ingredients; tribal peoples in what is now northern Thailand steamed or boiled the leaves and formed them into balls, then ate them with salt, oil, garlic, fat, and dried fish.
One lawmaker even suggested that tea should be made illegal for anyone with an annual income less than fifty pounds. But the truth, as one eighteenth-century writer pointed out, was that “were they now to be deprived of this, they would immediately be reduced to bread and water. Tea-drinking is not the cause, but the consequences of the distresses of the poor.”
Twining put up a specially designed sign over the door of his shop in 1787 and labeled his tea with the same design, which is now thought to be the oldest commercial logo in continuous use in the world.
Indeed, soda water, produced on an industrial scale and consumed by rich and poor alike, seemed to capture something of the spirit of America itself.
the author and social commentator Mary Gay Humphreys observed that “the crowning merit of soda-water, and that which fits it to be the national drink, is its democracy. The millionaire may drink champagne while the poor man drinks beer, but they both drink soda water.”
As Harrison Jones, a company executive, put it in a rousing speech that marked the finale of the company’s fiftieth anniversary celebrations in 1936, “the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse may charge over the earth and back again—and Coca-Cola will remain!”
A billion hours ago, human life appeared on earth. A billion minutes ago, Christianity emerged. A billion seconds ago, the Beatles changed music. A billion Coca-Colas ago was yesterday morning. —Robert Goizueta, chief executive of the Coca-Cola Company, April 1997
As a placard at the Coca-Cola Company’s 1948 convention put it, “When we think of Communists, we think of the Iron Curtain. But when they think of democracy, they think of Coca-Cola.”
When American troops occupied Saddam Hussein’s palace in Baghdad in April 2003, they held a barbecue at which they consumed hamburgers, hot dogs, and, inevitably, Coca-Cola.
Its drink is one of the world’s most widely known products, and “Coca-Cola” is said to be the second most commonly understood phrase in the world, after “OK.”
Yet even one of the world’s most powerful brands could not brainwash people into buying something they did not want. New Coke, a sweeter, more Pepsi-like drink that was introduced by the Coca-Cola Company in 1985, was a disaster.
forcing the company to reintroduce the original drink as Coca-Cola Classic within weeks and sealing the fate of its attempt to meddle with an American icon.
