Brewing a Revolution: How Coffee Became the All-American Drink

Coffee is among the most common goods traded and consumed worldwide, and so omnipresent its popularity is often taken for granted. But even everyday habits have a history. When and why coffee became part of North American daily life is at the center of Coffee Nation: How One Commodity Transformed the Early United States. Using a wide range of archival, quantitative, and material evidence, Michelle Craig McDonald follows coffee from the slavery-based plantations of the Caribbean and South America, through the balance sheets of Atlantic world merchants, into the coffeehouses, stores, and homes of colonial North Americans, and ultimately to the growing import/export businesses of the early nineteenth-century United States that rebranded this exotic good as an American staple. The result is a sweeping history that explores how coffee shaped the lives of enslaved laborers and farmers, merchants and retailers, consumers and advertisers.

Dr. Michelle Craig McDonald is the Librarian/Director of the Library and Museum at the American Philosophical Society and the author of Coffee Nation: How One Commodity Transformed the Early United States.

Special Coffee Tasting:
Join us at the VMHC Café before or after the lecture from 11am-12pm and 1pm to 2pm.for a special pop-up with Legacy Roasters, a local Virginia coffee company founded in 2014. What began as small batch roasting in the founder’s parents’ garage has grown into a dedicated Hopewell roasting space, where every batch is roasted to order for cafés and coffee lovers across the region.
During the pop-up, guests will learn the journey of coffee from green beans to finished roast, explore the origins of different coffees, and hear the Legacy Roasters story firsthand. Complimentary pour-over samples will be available throughout.

The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.