Arriving to a Set Table: The Integration of Hot Drinks in the Urban
Consumer Culture of the Eighteenth-Century Southern Low Countries
Bruno Blondé & Wouter Ryckbosch
Introduction
This chapter aims to explore some of the ways in which the rapidly expanding consumption of sugar
and hot drinks during the Eighteenth Century impacted upon the material culture of urban
households in the Southern Low Countries. The swift and widespread adoption of the domestic
consumption of hot drinks, along with a variety of accompanying utensils and consuming practices
during this period, has by now become a well-established historical finding. Relative prices and trade
patterns have been substantively documented,1 and so are the manners in which tea and sugar
altered European ways of life, for instance by influencing patterns of domesticity and sociability
during the early modern period.2 In many towns of the Southern Netherlands, the introduction of
colonial goods transformed the structure and timing of meals, and profoundly influenced existing
patterns of sociability.3 Yet, while a lot is known about the social and cultural practices of coffee and
tea use, and even more is often suggested, important questions still need to be answered
concerning the impact of this impressive shift in consumer tastes upon material cultural and
consumer behaviour at large.
Hot drinks and other ‘exotic’ groceries such as sugar and tobacco are usually—either
implicitly or explicitly—attributed a key role in the emergence of a new consumer mentality in
eighteenth-century Europe. This, at least, seems to be the opinion of Sidney Mintz when (concerning
sugar) he claimed that ‘the very nature of material things must have seemed to change, as
commodities, in the new capitalist sense, became commonplace’.4 A central argument in Mintz’
1
narrative is the large social reach of global groceries: sugar and hot drinks quickly gained status as
‘popular’ luxuries. Jan de Vries, among others, has elaborated upon this idea. In a recent synthesis of
his demand-side approach to explaining early modern economic growth, colonial groceries were
given a prominent place in changing eighteenth-century consumer patterns, and especially in
triggering the growth of the retail revolution and the allocation of household time to marketoriented activities.5 In this sense, the growth of hot drinks consumption contributed significantly to
the expansion of the retail sector and the need to purchase things on the market, and in so doing
perhaps triggered an ‘industrious revolution’. Indeed, as Anne McCants observes, ‘there is a
widespread agreement among European historians about the magnitude of the cultural
ramifications of hot (sweetened) caffeinated beverage consumption.’6
This chapter nevertheless intends to add a modest contribution to this larger debate by
questioning whether colonial groceries played a significant role in the emergence of a more modern
‘consumer mentality’ through changes in material culture. This will be attempted not so much by
focusing upon the actual consumption of hot drinks, but rather by approaching the larger material
culture surrounding the advent of these colonial beverages.
Some authors, including Carole Shammas, have seen in the formation of a genuine ‘hot
drinks culture’ both a symbol of, and a causal factor in a profound shift in the eighteenth-century
domestic environment. The growing popularity of ceramic tableware, drinking vessels and smoking
pipes as well as glass, involved a general transition from sturdy durables to a more decorative but
also more disposable domestic material culture.7 In other words, durable consumer goods became
less important for the economic capital they embodied, and more important in terms of their
symbolic value as markers of status and identity.8 This process, which was been summarised in Jan
De Vries’ distinction between ‘old’ and ‘new luxuries’ had important consequences in bringing about
a more commercialised and mass-consuming society.9 It would obviously lead us too far to elaborate
upon the causes and consequences of this larger transformation, but in the following pages we will
2
at least try to find out to what extent this shift was facilitated or even caused by changing drinking
habits.
The argument is based on the analysis of probate inventories in two rather distinct urban
communities in the eighteenth-century Southern Netherlands: the commercial port city of Antwerp
(in Brabant), and a secondary, provincial town of only regional importance: Aalst (in Flanders). The
case of Antwerp might not be exemplary for north-western Europe at large. Although after 1585 the
city was deprived of an autonomous maritime network, it still managed to become the seat of the
headquarters of the ‘Ostend Company’ in the early Eighteenth Century—the only important (albeit
short-lived) company for east-Asian trade the Austrian Netherlands ever possessed of.10 Thanks to
this privileged relationship with the Ostend Company, Antwerp can be viewed as an excellent—
though perhaps slightly atypical—test case for the impact colonial groceries exerted upon consumer
culture in the Southern Netherlands. As a counterexample the much smaller provincial town of Aalst
(app. 8000 inhabitants), situated in the heavily proto-industrialized countryside of inland Flanders,
shall be studied as well.
Probate inventory evidence will be used in describing patterns of consumer innovation and
changes in material culture. The probate inventories examined for Antwerp stem from notary
records of the municipal archives, while those from Aalst were drawn by order of municipal
aldermen. In both places not all households complied with the customary rules concerning probate;
and since inventories were costly, they were rare among the poor.11 In order to account for the
differential social composition of the inventory samples, we examine two distinct social groups: the
poor and labouring classes, and the middling groups and above. These have been formed by first
ranking the inventories according to socioeconomic position—based on the number of rooms in the
case of Antwerp, and based on the fiscal value of the house inhabited in the case of Aalst—and
subsequently making a cut point from the point where master craftsmen and retailers become a
3
sizeable share in the distribution. This was the case for inventories comprising four rooms or more in
the case of Antwerp, and inventories from the 40th percentile upwards in the case of Aalst.
The adoption of hot drinks in the Southern Netherlands
After the death of Johannes Ebbers in 1779, the Antwerp notary drawing up his probate inventory
had little work to do. Indeed, Johannes was a relatively poor grave-digger. As a bachelor he occupied
but one room, which he rented on the Veemarkt (cattle market) in Antwerp. Johannes possessed
only few objects made in pewter, let alone precious metals. Yet, he owned a small collection of
earthenware and porcelain goods. Moreover, in his lifetime he was—if he ever enjoyed the pleasure
of receiving guests at home—capable of serving them a cup of coffee.12 Financially speaking, Tobias
van Belle, an impoverished baker in Aalst whose wife died in 1791, was probably not much better off
than Johannes Ebbers. Living together with his two daughters in a rented house, his humble bearings
clearly did little to impress the town officials of Aalst, since his inventory was recorded free of
charge. In terms of net wealth, his household belonged to the poorest 10 per cent of the 1790s
inventory sample. However, despite this relatively precarious financial situation, the consumption of
hot drinks was not considered an unaffordable luxury. Among the items found in his kitchen were
eight teacups and saucers, a teakettle and two coffeepots—one made out of copper and the other
of stoneware.13
In many ways, Johannes Ebbers and Tobias van Belle are illustrative for the bigger picture of
coffee and tea use in eighteenth-century Antwerp and Aalst as it is revealed in Tables 16.1-16.4.
Whereas chocolate never acquired the status of a widely consumed commodity,14 tea and coffee
quickly conquered large consumer markets.15 This is confirmed by the rising number of new shop
establishments of retailers specializing in the retailing of sugar, coffee and tea in Antwerp (Figure
16.1). Moreover, the geographical dispersion of teashops across urban space—increasingly
spreading out from the wealthy central parts of town—mirrors the grocery’s growing popularity
4
among ever larger social strata.16 Hence, when the Brabantine Estates organized a new ‘hearth tax’
in 1747, they included a forfeit levy ‘pour la consumption du thé’, payable by all inhabitants aged
seven years or above.17 Clearly, by that time the consumption of tea was already considered
sufficiently widespread to be used as a common basis for taxation.18 During the second half of the
Eighteenth Century the total level of tea imports stagnated, or even declined slowly, while the
import and consumption of coffee rapidly gained in weight and importance.19
Figure 16.1. New mercers: chocolate-, tea- and coffeeshops in Antwerp
(N and per cent)
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Total
%
Table 16.1 Percentage of inventories with references to sugar or sugar-related household goods
(sugar boxes, sugar dishes, sugar spoons, and so on)
Period
Antwerp
Aalst
L
M+
L
M+
1675 (n=64)
0
3
1680 (n=86)
5
8
1710 (n=76)
0
4
1730 (n=93)
24
27
1740 (n=64)
8
3
1780 (n=75)
38
71
1790 (n=68)
20
53
Note:
L: probate inventories of ‘lower’ social groups
M+: probate inventories of ‘middling’ and ‘upper’ social
groups (see text)
5
Table 16. 2 Percentage of inventories with references to hot drinks or hot drinks utensils
Period
Tea
Coffee
Chocolate
Antwerp
Aalst
Antwerp
Aalst
Antwerp
Aalst
L M+
L M+
L M+
L M+
L M+ L M+
1675 (n=64)
0
0
0
0
0
0
1680 (n=86)
0
0
0
0
0
8
1710 (n=76)
0
4
0
2
0
4
1730 (n=93)
55
78
3
41
21
55
1740 (n=64)
67
67
8
28
0
17
1780 (n=75)
69
95
38
77
7
59
1790 (n=68)
80
93
60
90
0
10
Note:
L: probate inventories of ‘lower’ social groups
M+: probate inventories of ‘middling’ and ‘upper’ social groups (see text)
The rise of a new domestic culture?
With this rapid spread of tea consumption came the introduction of a specific, at times almost ritual,
culture of tea drinking. From the 1730s onwards specialised tea tables appeared in Antwerp
households, and were sometimes even to be found in several otherwise less luxuriously furnished
homes. Presumably, at this time, displaying tea ware was laden with symbolic meanings of social
and/or decorative value. Especially designed tea shelves could serve this purpose, but also the
mantelpiece of the chimney was a preferred site for ‘conspicuous tea display’—in 1729 Antwerp, for
instance, Joannes Steencuyl used the mantelpiece of his chimney for displaying six ‘fine’ tea cups
and saucers.20 Such display of tea-related commodities was rarer in the provincial homes of Aalst’s
inhabitants, in whose inventories only two references to tea tables were found (both in the 1740s).
The occasional reference to tea trays and tea spoons, as well as to sugar scissors and tongs (in seven
households), sugar trays (four households) and milk jugs (44 households), nevertheless indicates
similar tendencies toward the conspicuous display of a refined tea ritual in Aalst.
As was also the case in the Northern Netherlands, ‘tea drinking utensils’ largely
outnumbered coffee cups and dishes.21 In 1780, when coffee had already gained considerable
popularity, only a minority of households owned coffee cups and saucers, whereas tea cups were
still widely dispersed. Moreover, while tea drinking gave birth to a refined material culture and a
6
variety of household goods (such as the aforementioned tea-trays, tea-tables, tea-spoons, etc.)
coffee seems to have failed to enact a similar process during this same period.
Yet, despite the supposedly marked ‘ritual’ character of tea drinking and the elaborate
material and visual culture associated with it, the location of tea and coffee utensils in the houses of
the deceased in Antwerp and Aalst suggests that drinking coffee and tea quickly became a matter of
‘daily routine’. Obviously, quite a lot of cups and saucers were inventoried in the kitchen, but all
other rooms of the house could easily be considered appropriate venues for teapots or coffee cups
as well. It is perhaps surprising that tea and coffee utensils were not particularly concentrated in the
‘front stage’ and representative rooms of the urban dwellings. Anthoine Hellin, for example, an
Antwerp merchant occupying a rich urban dwelling on the ‘Meir’, one of the most prestigious streets
of the city, owned two tea tables and several other tea-related utensils. However, they were not
clustered in the front-stage rooms, but rather dispersed across the corridor, his office, and other
rooms big or small, upstairs and downstairs.22 Maria Theresia Willemsens, on her part, kept tea cups
and saucers in the backroom where she died on 5 May 1730, and even the tea table was inventoried
in a (other) backroom on the first floor.23 Likewise, Jan Kennis’ tea ware in 1730 was dispersed across
four front rooms and backrooms of the house.24 Compared to Antwerp, such patterns of dispersion
set in decidedly later in the small town of Aalst: only from the 1740s does hot drinks apparel start to
show up in upstairs chambers for instance. However, between the 1740s and the 1790s the share of
tea- and coffee cups found in ‘front stage’ rooms declined from 49 per cent to 32 per cent, while the
proportion of upstairs- or backrooms rooms containing cups rose from 11 per cent to 22 per cent.
To a certain extent this spatial pattern has to be attributed to the development of more
complex and nuanced patterns of domestic room use than simple front- and backstage dichotomies
suggest—such as in the case of the ‘grand bedroom’ which combined both intimate and public
functions.25 Nevertheless, the general pattern suggests that already by 1730 in Antwerp, and from
mid-century in provincial Aalst, hot drinks culture was not only popularized, but clearly came to
7
belong to the realm of daily routine.26 Hence hot drinks seem to have lost their (intrinsic) novelty
and potential for social and cultural distinction relatively quickly.27
Seen from this perspective, the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century advertisements and
trade cards that explicitly linked tea and coffee to the exotic and faraway corners of the world from
which they stemmed, appear more convincingly aimed at reminding consumers of the novelty,
authenticity and exoticism which these goods had formerly commanded, rather than reflecting the
meaning they still carried in their quotidian consumption.28 The intrinsic novelty and exoticism of tea
and coffee thus seems to have been largely worn out by the middle of the Eighteenth Century, and
were replaced by wider and varied repertoires of meaning related to physical comfort, pleasure and
sociability.
8
Hot drinks and ‘material modernity’
Several scholars have argued that the expansion of hot drinks consumption stimulated the use and
production of a wide variety of crockery throughout eighteenth-century Europe.29 Since glazed types
of earthenware such as majolica, tin-glazed ceramics, or porcelain were better suited for coffee and
tea than their metallic counterparts, it is not difficult to imagine how hot drinks could have
contributed to a (more general) tendency towards a less durable material culture. In its turn, this
transformation has been associated with deeper-seated changes in the mentalities of early modern
consumers, who increasingly seemed to value aesthetics instead of durability and the intrinsic value
of raw materials.30
Unfortunately, this phenomenon cannot be easily documented on the basis of the probate
inventory database at our disposal. The inventories only rarely—and never consistently—label the
precise material of which ceramic items were made. Therefore it remains hard to tell whether the
relatively abundant porcelain mentioned in the Antwerp inventories (Table 16.3) was of a genuine
Asian-made variety, or rather one of the cheaper European substitutes. After 1708 the distinction
became even more muddied, when in Meissen and other places genuine European porcelain began
to be produced. Compared to Antwerp, however, porcelain appears much less prevalent in the Aalst
inventories; whereas (tin-)glazed earthenware was already very common there from the end of the
Seventeenth Century. Regardless of their precise materiality or place of production, it is nevertheless
clear that the hot drinks culture gave a strong impetus to the use of crockery in the eighteenthcentury household.
9
Table 16.3 Percentage of inventories with references to porcelain or glazed earthenware
Period
Antwerp
Aalst
Glazed earthenware &
Glazed
Porcelain
Porcelain
delftware
earthenware
L
M+
L
M+
L
M+
L
M+
1675 (n=64)
0
0
42
35
1680 (n=86)
11
35
53
65
1710 (n=76)
0
10
71
51
1730 (n=93)
17
61
76
84
1740 (n=64)
0
33
42
42
1780 (n=75)
55
81
55
82
1790 (n=68)
0
20
70
85
Note:
L: probate inventories of ‘lower’ social groups
M+: probate inventories of ‘middling’ and ‘upper’ social groups (see text)
At first sight this seems to confirm Shammas’ hypothesis about the impact hot drinks exerted upon
the eighteenth-century material culture of the home at large. And indeed, hot drinks and the rituals
surrounding the consumption of colonial groceries almost certainly contributed to the rapid spread
in the number and variety of ceramics of different kinds, colours and decorative schemes.
Nevertheless, a closer scrutiny of the inventory material suggests that the fundamental shift in the
mental attitude towards breakable consumer goods had occurred centuries prior to the advent of
hot drinks. In Aalst the first evidence of domestic tea and coffee consumption would only emerge
from the beginning of the Eighteenth Century, even though the growing prevalence of glazed
earthenware was already clearly apparent before that time. In Antwerp the first porcelain objects
show up in inventories from the late Sixteenth Century onwards, while majolica was already well
known by that time.31 By 1630 almost 50 per cent of all Antwerp’s inventoried households owned
porcelain objects of different kinds: pots, dishes, saucers, butter dishes, ale pints, etc. The success of
imported porcelain in the early Seventeenth Century occurred at the detriment of the home-made
‘majolica’ production. It is telling that while sixteenth-century majolica bakers often borrowed
design motives from a ‘renaissance’ repertoire, by the early Seventeenth Century majolica bakers
introduced exotic, Eastern motives in an effort to counter the competition of Asian porcelain
10
imports. Unsurprisingly, in the 1630 Antwerp sample, the newer porcelain was more often used for
display in the representative rooms of the house, where it seems to have driven out the earlier
home-made majolica luxuries. In comparison to the sixteenth-century tin-glazed earthenware,
porcelain was indeed a far superior product category.32 By 1730 porcelain and delftware were
rapidly gaining in importance on the Antwerp table.
It nevertheless seems clear that not Asian imports but Italian majolica production had played
the pivotal role in creating the necessary mental categories for ‘material modernity’ in the area of
crockery. Majolica as well, after all, derived its value mainly from aesthetic qualities and design
rather than from the intrinsic value of the raw materials used in its production. This is clearly
indicated by the fact that majolica producers in Antwerp registered themselves as members of the
guild of St.-Luke, and hence identified themselves as artists rather than as artisans.
Without denying its importance altogether, these findings qualify the ‘transformative power’
of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Asian exchange in bringing about a new ‘consumer
mentality’. On the contrary, late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Asian porcelain imports did
build upon mental categories of ceramics ownership and consumption that were already present in
sixteenth-century Europe, even though at that time tableware items were still predominantly made
from pewter and silver. The culture of hot drinks consumption will undoubtedly have contributed to
the rising popularity of crockery in early modern households—but the mental way towards a
breakable and more ‘modern’ consumer pattern had already been paved from at least the Sixteenth
Century onwards.
Domestic sociability and colonial groceries
A similar reassessment can be made for the social, ritual and cultural analysis of the success of ‘hot
drinks’ in the history of domestic sociability. Undoubtedly, chocolate, coffee and tea profoundly
affected patterns of sociability and respectability.33 Their advent changed daily time-schedules and
11
influenced drinking and eating rituals throughout the Southern Netherlands.34 Yet it would be a
mistake not to take the already existing and highly elaborated patterns of domestic sociability and
refined table manners into consideration when accounting for the rapid spread of a hot drinks
culture among all strata of society.35 The very presence—for example—of specialised dining rooms
in some sixteenth- and (again) in late seventeenth-century probate inventories points in the
direction of an already pre-existing, elaborate elite sociability.36 Yet, the general adoption towards a
more elaborate dining culture was by no means confined to the upper strata of society. To take but
one example: the rapid spread of the fork among lower layers of our Antwerp probate inventory
group testifies to the development of a more generalized refined and ‘polite’ dining culture among
all layers of society.
Period
1675 (n=64)
1680 (n=86)
1710 (n=76)
1730 (n=93)
1740 (n=64)
1780 (n=75)
1790 (n=68)
Note:
Table 16.4 Percentage of inventories containing at least one fork
Antwerp
Aalst
L
M+
L
M+
0
5
11
40
0
28
41
89
8
19
45
66
30
63
L: probate inventories of ‘lower’ social groups
M+: probate inventories of ‘middling’ and ‘upper’ social groups (see text)
This gradual social diffusion of the fork in Antwerp and soon also in Aalst, parallel with those
of for instance tablecloths and individual plates, is indicative of a long-term trend towards more
refined, respectable or polite practices of domestic sociability. The increasing prevalence of the fork
went hand in hand with—and was made possible by—their changing material form: fewer forks
were now made of silver, and more frequently were they now in pewter or iron steel, which
eventually made them subject to under-registration in the inventories by the end of the period
under review.
12
The same tendency towards increasing politeness and refinement and a cheaper material
culture which brought this within reach of growing social layers of society as has been described for
the consumption of hot drinks, can thus be discerned in wider practices of domestic sociability
already well before the introduction of these colonial groceries. Again, even though the hot drinks
culture had an enormous appeal and impact upon Europeans in the Eighteenth Century, the mental
categories for the success of the hot drinks culture were already established long before chocolate,
tea and coffee were actually introduced.
With regards to the material culture of tea drinking itself, John Styles has convincingly shown
how silver teapots helped to make the tea culture ‘recognizable’ among well-to-do Londoners in the
late Seventeenth Century.37 Our argument here suggests that this observation holds on a much
wider level as well. European urban culture did not need coffee and tea to develop a ‘culture of
respectability’.38 Rather, these new hot drinks were easily ‘fitted’ into the existing (and developing)
cultural and behavioural codes of urban society, and owed much of their success precisely to their
capacity for flexible appropriation within this existing social and cultural context. This brings us back
to the consumer motivations underlying the rapid spread of the practices and ‘consumption bundles’
related to the drinking of caffeinated beverages.39 Far from fundamentally transforming European
urban culture by introducing new attitudes to consumer behaviour such as a desire for the novel and
exotic, a tendency towards elaborate domestic practices of food- and drink-related sociability, an
appreciation of physical comfort and pleasure, and a cultivation of health and sobriety, it could be
argued that tea and coffee primarily became sought after precisely because they readily lent
themselves to appropriation within these already pre-existing cultural frameworks.
The Ostend trade in tea and consumer behaviour
If the qualitative aspects of the rapid adoption of hot drinks in the Southern Netherlands show more
continuity than change, how then can we account for the fact that these—together with tobacco—
13
were rapidly to become truly mass-consumed commodities during the first half of the Eighteenth
Century? Perhaps the brief but tumultuous adventures of the Southern Netherlands in the area of
overseas trade can offer some clues. Coinciding with the period of the massive adoption of tea
consumption during the first half of the Eighteenth Century, the Ostend Company briefly provided
the region with its own direct source of Asian imports. From 1715 onwards, a number of rich
merchant investors (mainly from Antwerp and Ghent) began sending trade expeditions to Chinese
Canton. In 1722 mutual cooperation was ensured by the official establishment of the ‘General Indian
Company’ (GIC) by Emperor Charles VI. It was better known as the ‘Ostend Company’ since its
maritime activities were all centred on the port of Ostend, which was the region’s only direct North
Sea port, and the only haven where trade free from duties remained possible after the closing of the
Scheldt in 1585.40
Although it quickly met with resistance from the dominant players in the East-Asian trade,
the GIC was nevertheless a remarkable commercial success for the time it lasted.41 Trade expeditions
were directed to both India (Bengal and the Coromandel Coast) and China (Canton), but the vast
majority of profits were realized in the latter trade. Moreover, the majority of imported value
consisted of tea (56 per cent in total, between 1724 and 1732), trailed only at a wide distance by silk
(35 per cent) and porcelain (8 per cent).42 Compared to the English and Dutch East India Companies,
the GIC soon found its niche market in the import of cheap black Bohea tea. Of its total tea imports
no less than 74 per cent consisted of the Bohea variety—compared to perhaps no more than
approximately 45 per cent for both the English and the Dutch East India Companies.43 It is not clear
whether this was a conscious strategy from those in charge at the GIC to abandon the traditional
luxury markets and focus upon cheaper mass consumption, or a consequence of its rogue-like and
somewhat marginal position as a newcomer to overseas trade. According to the company’s
correspondence, the choice for black tea was mainly motivated by its easier preservation. Moreover,
Chris Nierstrasz has suggested that the supply of black tea was more flexible than that of the green
14
teas—thus offering better opportunities for a newcomer. The choice for a cheap tea variety, such as
the Bohea, meanwhile, seems at least partially informed by the inexperience of the (often British)
supercargoes employed on these expeditions. Fraud in tea quality was common, and a concern for
recognizing the correct tea types loomed large in the company’s correspondence. Louis Bernaert,
the commissioner of the GIC in Ostend, remarked in 1728 that he was ‘somewhat apprehensive
towards the fine teas, … since […] we do not have the appropriate knowledge of these goods.’44
This reliance on the market for cheap teas, which distinguished the Ostend Company from
their more venerable competitors, did not inhibit its commercial success. Quickly, but briefly, the GIC
conquered a significant share of the European market for tea. During its active years (1719-1728)
roughly 42 per cent of total tea imports were brought to Europe by the Ostend Company.45 As soon
as international political pressures against the activities of the GIC culminated in its suppression, the
Dutch East India Company moved into this newly discovered consumer market for the cheap, black
Bohea tea.46 In a way then, it seems that tea’s transition from a luxury to a mass-consumed staple
good throughout Europe had some early roots in the Southern Netherlands. It is thus no surprise to
learn that the price of tea was significantly lower in this region than in either the Dutch Republic or
England during this period.47 In this respect, the widespread success of tea—and later coffee—in
times of economic stress, along with the expansion of a material culture which favoured relatively
cheap earthenware materials at the expensive of pewter, copper and silver, seems much less of a
contradiction than it appears at first. Perhaps then, there is little reason to take resort to
explanations involving profound cultural and social transformations, or even material revolutions, in
order to explain the mass consumption of tea (and coffee) in the Eighteenth Century, when the
success of these commodities seems attributable precisely to their affordability in times of economic
hardship and status quo.
15
Conclusions
There exists generally little disagreement among social, economic and cultural historians about the
‘transformative power’ of (sweetened) hot drinks on European society.48 This case study did nothing
to qualify the long-term importance of these commodities. Indeed, very soon the inhabitants of
Antwerp and Aalst of very different social groups all participated in this new culture. Though hot
drinks were sometimes used for distinctive ‘display’ purposes and tea time and coffee houses
contributed to ritualized refinement, for the majority of consumers drinking coffee and tea seems to
have gained a routine status during the Eighteenth Century.
This perhaps helps to explain why so little reference was made in the probate inventories to
the Asian origin of these groceries in the material culture which accompanied their use. Indeed,
lacquered tea tables were sold, and some people owned porcelain sets with Chinese or Japanese
motives and drawings. Maria Van Alphen, an Antwerp spinster who died in 1778, for instance,
owned several ‘Japanese’ porcelain items.49 Among them figured nine tea cups and saucers. Yet all in
all, such references are very rare. Perhaps this corresponds to the early initiation of a process of
cultural mediation in which European merchants and designers were providing the required
decoration, design and product schemes to Asian producers according to European tastes. Indeed,
as was the case with sugar, coffee and tea, porcelain was quickly and easily appropriated within
European culture, without necessarily remaining attached to the exotic and global provenance of
these goods. Contrary to the argument of Troy Bickham, we would therefore suggest that it were
not these exotic groceries themselves that constituted the most dynamic factor in drawing European
consumers into the wider world of empire.50 The thrusting force seems more reasonably to be found
in the specific (urban) culture and society which emerged from the late medieval period onwards
and which shaped Europe’s specific repertoires of consumer valuation. Far from constituting an
external process which had to be rendered recognizable or familiar to European consumers and
producers, the very introduction of exotic groceries (and the merchant empires and plantation
16
systems which these helped bring about) was largely inherent to the already pre-existing social and
cultural structures and dynamics of the European alimentary fashion system.
The diffusion of tea and coffee among broad layers of urban society in the Southern
Netherlands occurred first in Antwerp, but spread with only little delay towards Ghent and
secondary towns such as Aalst, but also Lier, Lokeren and, later still to such small towns as Eeklo and
Roeselare.51 In terms of the domestic consumption of hot drinks, rural households clearly lagged
behind, and would only begin to catch up during the second half of the Eighteenth Century.52 When
comparing the spread of material culture related to the consumption of exotic groceries in the
Southern Netherlands to similar evidence for the Dutch Republic and England, it is striking how
closely the consumption of hot drinks in the Southern Netherlands trailed that of its more
economically dynamic and commercial neighbours.53 Hierarchies of consumption appear to have
been predominantly shaped by the dividing lines between rural and urban societies, rather than
between commercially expanding economies and those suffering from stagnation and deindustrialization.
It seems then, that the spectacular popularity of colonial groceries ties in better with certain
pre-existing features of early modern urban culture and society rather than with any processes of
imperialism or economic growth which might have uniquely characterized either England or the
Dutch Republic. Tendencies towards the further elaboration of domestic forms of polite and refined
sociability, for instance, were evident in wider areas of material culture unrelated to the
consumption of hot drinks. Likewise, even though the shift from a more expensive material culture
based on intrinsic value towards a growing preference for cheaper and less durable consumer goods
such as crockery was certainly accelerated by the widespread consumption of hot drinks, it was part
and parcel of a process which had both deeper and earlier roots in the repertoires of consumer
valuation of early modern Europe.54 Embedding the individual consumption of hot drinks in such
wider social and cultural patterns does not preclude the existence of many different, often
17
overlapping and individual forms of consumer motivation. Nevertheless, even the aspects of
individual consumer motivation most obviously related to the ‘intrinsic’ and ‘natural’ properties of
these exotic groceries, such as a desire for physical comfort, health and sobriety, can probably be
aligned with social and cultural processes which were already well under way before the first
inhabitants of Aalst or Antwerp could experience the taste of tea, coffee, chocolate or tobacco.55
Seen in this perspective, the impact of hot drinks consumption upon transforming European
material cultures was more of a quantitative rather than a qualitative nature. Without denying the
fundamental importance of the new cluster of consumer behaviour which formed around the
consumption of exotic hot drinks, a closer examination of the materiality, location and use of these
consumer goods as recorded in the probate inventories, nevertheless leads us to suggest that the
mental categories which accompanied them were already deeply rooted in the pre-existing social,
cultural and behavioural codes of European urban society.
1
See for a recent overview Jan De Vries, The industrious revolution: consumer behavior and the household
economy, 1650 to the present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 154-58; R. Van Uytven,
Geschiedenis van de dorst. Twintig eeuwen drinken in de Lage Landen (Leuven: Davidsfonds Uitgeverij, 2007), pp.
127-47; C. Vandenbroeke, Agriculture et alimentation (Gent: Belgisch centrum voor landelijke geschiedenis, 1975),
pp. 566-78, J.J. Voskuil, 'Die Verbreitung Von Kaffee Und Tee in Den Niederlanden', in N.-A. Bringéus (ed.), Wandel
Der Volkskultur in Europa (Münster: Coppenrath, 1988).
2
Woodruff D. Smith, 'From coffeehouse to parlour. The consumption of coffee, tea and sugar in North-Western
Europe in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries', in J. Goodman, P.E Lovejoy and A. Sherratt (eds), Consuming
habits. Global and historical perspectives on how cultures define drugs (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 187.
3
B. Blondé, 'Toe-eigening en de taal der dingen. Vraag- en uitroeptekens bij een stimulerend cultuurhistorisch
concept in het onderzoek naar de materiële cultuur', Volkskunde, 104 (2003); W. Ryckbosch, 'A consumer
revolution under strain? Consumption, wealth and status in eighteenth-century Aalst (Southern Netherlands)' (PhD
dissertation, University of Antwerp & Ghent University, 2012), pp. 252-57.
4
S. Mintz, Sweetness and power: the place of sugar in modern history (New York: Penguin Books, 1986), p. 267.
5
Jan De Vries, 'Between purchasing power and the world of goods: understanding the household economy in early
modern Europe', in J. Brewer and R. Porter (eds), Consumption and the world of goods (London: Routledge, 1993);
Jan De Vries, 'The industrious revolution and economic growth, 1650-1830', in P.A. Davis and M. Thomas (eds), The
economic future in historical perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); De Vries, The industrious
revolution. See also Anton Schuurman, 'Aards geluk. Consumptie en de moderne samenleving', in Anton
Schuurman (ed.), Aards geluk. De Nederlanders en hun spullen van 1550 tot 1850 (Amsterdam: Balans, 1997), pp.
22-25.
18
6
Anne McCants, 'Exotic goods, popular consumption, and the standard of living: thinking about globalization in the
Early Modern world', Journal of World History, 18 (2008), p. 173.
7
Carole Shammas, The preindustrial consumer in England and America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).
8
Jon Stobart, Sugar and spice. Grocers and groceries in Provincial England, 1650-1830 (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2012).
9
De Vries, The industrious revolution, pp. 44-45.
10
J. Parmentier, Oostende & Co: het verhaal van de Zuid-Nederlandse Oost-Indiëvaart, 1715-1735 (Gent: Ludion,
2002); J. Parmentier, Tea time in Flanders. The maritime trade between the Southern Netherlands and China in the
18th Century (Gent, 1996).
11
Anton Schuurman and Paul Servais (eds), Inventaires après décès et ventes de meubles. Apports à une histoire de
la vie économique et quotidienne (XIVe-XIXe siècle). Actes du séminaire tenu dans le cadre du 9ième Congrès
International d'Histoire économique de Berne (1986) (Louvain-la-Neuve: Academia, 1988), pp. 131-51.
12
MA Antwerp, Notarial Protocols (P.J. Van Dijck, 1779), nr. 4005.
13
MA Aalst, Oud Archief, Staten van Goed, n° 1910 (Josina Hoebacke, †1791).
14
M. Libert, 'De chocoladeconsumptie in de Oostenrijkse Nederlanden', in Bruno Bernard, Jean-Claude Bologne,
and William G. Clarence-Smith (eds), Chocolade: van drank voor edelman tot reep voor alleman, 16de - 20ste eeuw
(Brussel: ASLK, 1996), pp. 77-80.
15
Lorna Weatherill, Consumer behaviour and material culture in Britain 1660-1760 (London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1988), p. 177; Thera Wijsenbeek-Olthuis, Achter de gevels van Delft. Bezit en bestaan van rijk en arm in een
periode van achteruitgang (1700-1800) (Hilversum: Verloren, 1987), p. 229.
16
Laura Van Aert and Ilja Van Damme, 'Retail dynamics of a city in crisis: the mercer guild in pre-industrial Antwerp
(c.1648-c.1748)', in Bruno Blondé and Natacha Coquery (eds), Retailers and consumer changes in Early Modern
Europe. England, France, Italy and the Low Countries (Tours: Presses Universitaires François-Rabelais, 2005), p. 161.
17
Only the supported poor were officially exempted from the ‘tea tax’. See the August 28, 1747 ordnance in Louis
Prosper Gachard, ed., Recueil des ordonnances des Pays-Bas autrichiens. Troisième série (1700-1795). Vol. 6
(Brussels: Goemaere, 1860-1885).
18
Anne McCants, 'Poor Consumers as Global Consumers: the Diffusion of Tea and Coffee Drinking in the
Eighteenth Century', The Economic History Review, 61 (2008), pp. 196-98.
19
Vandenbroeke, Agriculture et alimentation, p. 570.
20
MAA, Not., Prot. 1717.
21
Compare Hester Dibbits, Vertrouwd bezit. Materiële cultuur in Doesburg en Maassluis, 1650-1800 (Nijmegen:
SUN, 2001), p. 159.
22
MAA, Not., Prot. 1556.
23
MAA, Not., Prot. 3265.
24
MAA, Not., Prot. 2306.
25
Amanda Vickery, 'An Englishman's home is his castle? Thresholds, boundaries and privacies in the eighteenthcentury London house', Past and Present, 199 (2008).
26
McCants, 'Poor consumers as global consumers', p. 191.
27
Voskuil, Die Verbreitung, p. 419.
28
Stobart, Sugar and spice.
29
Bruno Blondé, 'Cities in decline and the dawn of a consumer society. Antwerp in the 17th-18th centuries', in Bruno
Blondé, et al. (eds), Retailer and consumer changes in Early Modern Europe. England, France, Italy and the Low
Countries. Marchands et consommateurs: les mutations de l’Europe moderne. Angleterre, France, Italie, Pays-Bas.
Actes de la session “Retailers and consumer changes”. 7ième conference inetrantionale d’histoire urbaine
“European City in Comparative Perspective”. Athènes - le Pirée, 27-30 octobre 2004.(Tours, 2005); Bruno Blondé,
'Tableware and changing consumer patterns. Dynamics of material culture in Antwerp, 17th-18th centuries', in
Johan Veeckman (ed.), Majolica and Glass from Italy to Antwerp and beyond. The Transfer of Technology in the
16th-early 17th century (Antwerp, 2002); Harm Nijboer, De fatsoenering van het bestaan. Consumptie in
Leeuwarden tijdens de Gouden Eeuw. (Groningen, 2007); Harm Nijboer, 'Fashion and the early modern consumer
evolution. A theoretical exploration and some evidence from seventeenth-century Leeuwaarden.', in Bruno
Blondé, et al. (eds), Retailers and consumer changes in Early Modern Europe. England, France, Italy and the LowCountries (Tours: Presses universitaires François-Rabelais, 2005); Carole Shammas, The Pre-Industrial Consumer in
19
England and America. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990); Lorna Weatherill, The growth of the pottery industry in England
1660-1815 (New York: Garland, 1986), p. 102.
30
Bert De Munck, 'Products as gifts and skills as hybrids: opening a black box in the history of material culture',
Past and Present (forthcoming).
31
Carolien De Staelen, 'Spulletjes en hun betekenis in een commerciële metropool. Antwerpenaren en hun
materiële cultuur in de zestiende eeuw' (PhD Thesis, University of Antwerp, 2007).
32
C. Dumortier, Céramique de la Renaissance à Anvers. De Venise à Delft (Brussels: Racine, 2002); C. Dumortier,
'Italian influence on Antwerp majolica in the 16th and 17th century', in The Ceramics cultural heritage (Florence,
1995).
33
Brian Cowan, The social life of coffee. The emergence of the British coffeehouse (London: Yale University Press,
2005); Woodruff D. Smith, Consumption and the making of respectability (London: Routledge, 2002).
34
Blondé, Toe-eigening.
35
Dibbits, Vertrouwd bezit, p. 160; R. Jansen-Sieben, 'Europa aan tafel in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden (15de eeuwca.1650): een inleidend overzicht' and C. Terryn, 'Eenvoud en delicatesse: norm en realiteit van de tafelmanieren in
het 18de-eeuwse Gent', both in F. De Nave and C. Depauw (eds), Europa aan tafel. Een verkenning van onze eet- en
tafelcultuur (Deurne: MIM, 1993).
36
Compare with the eighteenth-century ‘age of the dining table’ in Stana Nenadic, 'Middle-rank consumers and
domestic culture in Edinburgh and Glasgow 1720-1840', Past and Present, 145 (1994), p. 146.
37
J. Styles, 'Product Innovation in Early Modern London', Past and Present, 168 (2000).
38
Compare with Smith, Consumption and the making of respectability.
39
De Vries, The industrious revolution, pp. 31-37.
40
Parmentier, Oostende & Co, p. 15.
41
Karel Degryse has estimated the net returns of the GIC at 149,3 percent furing the 1722-1735 period: Karel
Degryse, De Antwerpse fortuinen: kapitaalsaccumulatie, -inverstering en -rendement te Antwerpen in de 18de eeuw
(Antwerpen Universiteit Antwerpen, 2005), pp. 537-8.
42
K. Degryse, 'De Oostendse Chinahandel (1718-1735)', Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis, 52
(1974), p. 315.
43
See the contribution by Chris Nierstrasz to the current volume.
44
Letter from Bernaert to de Pret, 24 april 1728, cited in Degryse, De Oostendse Chinahandel (1718-1735), pp. 31619.
45
Degryse, De Oostendse Chinahandel (1718-1735), p. 329.
46
See Chris Nierstrasz in this volume.
47
Degryse, De Oostendse Chinahandel (1718-1735), pp. 330-31.
48
McCants, Poor consumers as global consumers, p. 173.
49
MAA, Not., Prot. 716.
50
T. Bickham, 'Eating the empire: intersections of food, cookery and imperialism in eighteenth-century Britain',
Past and Present, 198 (2008); Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Tastes of paradise: a social history of spices, stimulants, and
intoxicants (London: Vintage, 1993).
51
B. Depla, 'De consumptierevolutie in de nieuwe tijd. Casus: de stad Roeselare en de omringende
plattelandsdorpen in de 18de eeuw' (Ma Thesis, Ghent University, 2005); S. Kuypers, 'Materiële cultuur in Lokeren,
Eksaarde en Daknam in de 17de en 18de eeuw' (Ma Thesis, Ghent University, 2006); Johan Poukens and Nele
Provoost, 'Respectability, middle-class material culture, and economic crisis: the case of Lier in Brabant, 16901770', Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 42 (2011); Ryckbosch, A consumer revolution.
52
I. Crombé, 'Studie van 18de-eeuwse plattelandsinterieurs te Evergem' (Ma Thesis, Ghent University, 1988); I.
Jonckheere, 'Boer zkt comfort. Studie van het consumptiegedrag in relatie tot de levenscyclus in het Land van
Wijnendale in de 18de eeuw' (Ma Thesis, Ghent University, 2005); C. Schelstraete, H. Kintaert, and D. De Ruyck,
Het einde van de onveranderlijkheid. Arbeid, bezit en woonomstandigheden in het Land van Nevele tijdens de 17e
en de 18e eeuw (Nevele, 1986); L. Van Nevel, 'Materiële cultuur op het platteland tijdens de 18de eeuw' (Ma Thesis,
Ghent University, 2005).
53
Johan A. Kamermans, Materiële cultuur in de Krimpenerwaard in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw, A.A.G.
Bijdragen (Wageningen: Landbouwuniversiteit Wageningen, 1999); Ken Sneath, 'Consumption, wealth,
indebtedness and social structure in early modern England' (Ph.D. Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2009); Hans
Van Koolbergen, 'De materiële cultuur van Weesp en Weesperkarspel in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw', in
20
A.J. Schuurman, J. De Vries, and A. Van Der Woude (eds), Aards Geluk. De Nederlanders en hun Spullen van 1550
tot 1850 (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Balans, 1997).
54
Bert De Munck, 'The agency of branding and the location of value. Hallmarks and monograms in early modern
tableware industries', Business History, 54 (2012).
55
John E. Crowley, The Invention of Comfort (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001); Patrick Wallis,
'Exotic drugs and English medicine: England's drug trade, c. 1550-c. 1800', Social History of Medicine, 25 (2012).
21