Author's Note

Author’s Note on Nando’s

The inspiration for this short story came from the article Coffee House Society, which described the tradition of the coffee-house in 17th and 18th century Europe as a place for political discussion and social interaction across class strata. The article also detailed that the coffee-houses were particularly successful in England, and that London served as a hub for the coffee tradition.

For my short story, I wanted to focus on one of these such coffee-houses over a particularly tumultuous century in England. My first two characters, Ralf and Gilbert, are meant to show the burgeoning Merchant class, and how the growing system of capitalism allows the two to gain wealth but not political power.  The story starts with the pair reviewing the damage caused to London by the Great Fire, an event they missed because of their travels in the New World, then goes on to show the growing tensions between Protestants and Catholics in England.

The story continues by following Ralf’s youngest son, Peter, who grows up in the era of British Imperialism and so therefore feels limited by what he sees as the immense strength of the British Mercantilist class. Peter owns his father’s small spice trade, but realizes that, continuing on the path that he is on, he will never be able to rise to the point of nobility, where he secretly strives to be. Therefore, he seeks some other way to more wealth and power, and he bets on the commodity of coffee as his path to success. So he ventures back to his childhood coffee-house of Nando’s in a bid to take over management.

On his way home, Peter reads an article from a popular periodical about recent civil unrest in the American colonies over unfair taxation. This causes Peter to reflect on his political power in England, and read the Second Treatise on Civil Government by John Locke -- perhaps changing Peter’s view of civil liberty and from where governments are allowed to draw their authority. This may lead to an interesting political perspective for a coffee-house proprietor in London as the American Revolution looms on the horizon.