‘Without Coffee, Our Algeria Would Be Uninhabitable’: Ambivalent Attitudes to Coffee Drinking in Medical Accounts on Nineteenth Century Algeria

Abstract

French colonial doctors writing about nineteenth century Algeria portrayed coffee as a hygienic drink, which protected and stimulated French soldiers and settlers in the hostile climate. Doctors therefore advocated the distribution of coffee to soldiers because it was seen as advantageous to France’s colonisation of the region. By contrast, when Algerian Muslims drank coffee, they were described in the same source material as lethargic and overly sociable. The history of coffee in colonial Algeria should be seen as a case study of a shared consumption between colonisers and colonised, yet one with vastly different outcomes.