Did Coffee, More Than Politics, Actually Power the Industrial Revolution?

Cut back on coffee? That’s the kind of thing only someone with zero appreciation for caffeine geopolitics would suggest.

You’ve probably noticed in history classes that the East held an edge over the West for a long stretch. Why? Here’s a theory worth entertaining: the West was busy drinking alcohol and dulling itself. The East largely stayed away from alcohol, and arguably stayed sharper for it.

Then what happened? The West encountered coffee, and got hooked. Coffee woke the West up. Suddenly able to actually focus, they started using machinery that had been sitting idle, and the Industrial Revolution followed. Is it really just a coincidence that coffee sacks being left behind in Vienna lines up historically with the beginning of the Ottoman Empire’s decline? The timing of the West’s rise tracks suspiciously closely with its adoption of coffee.

So which countries drink the most coffee per capita today? Finland, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden — surprised?

Here’s a semi-serious modest proposal: if Turkey simply incentivized coffee consumption enough to out-drink Finland per capita, that alone might be enough to nudge the country toward “developed nation” territory — no other policy required. If Turkey is doing somewhat better than some of its regional peers today, maybe part of that comes down to being the world’s number one per-capita tea consumer — and tea does carry a smaller dose of caffeine too. (Sources, for what it’s worth: tea consumption by country, coffee consumption in Europe, and a broader piece on coffee culture’s east-to-west journey.)

Drinking coffee is a line I’m simply not willing to cross cutting back on.

There’s a genuinely funny footnote to all this: a company literally named Midas apparently sends coffee — actual coffee, not company shares — to clients who’ve invested a certain amount with them. Which, if you think about it, is a strange signal for an investment company to send. It’s a good reminder that companies sometimes unknowingly send mixed signals through what an ad agency decides is a nice client gift — worth staying alert to.

For our own sake, and our country’s, cutting back on coffee shouldn’t even be on the table.

One more thought, only half-joking: economists who lean heavily on “institutions” as the master explanation for why some countries got rich and others didn’t tend to get a lot of well-deserved credit and recognition for that framework — and it’s a genuinely useful lens. But it’s worth remembering that correlation between strong institutions and prosperity doesn’t automatically prove which one caused the other, and institution-based theories don’t cleanly explain every individual country’s trajectory either. A theory that neatly explains a country’s fortunes down to the individual case is a high bar — worth holding every framework to, including the popular ones.

The best investment a person can make is in themselves.

Drinking coffee is, in its own small way, an investment in yourself.