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"This book argues that coffeehouses and the coffee trade were central to the making of the Atlantic world in the century leading up to the American Revolution. Fostering international finance and commerce, spreading transatlantic news, building military might, determining political fortunes and promoting status and consumption, coffeehouses created a web of social networks stretching from Britain to its colonies in North America. As polite alternatives to taverns, coffeehouses have been hailed as 'penny universities'; a place for political discussion by the educated and elite. Reynolds shows that they were much more than this. Coffeehouse Culture in the Atlantic World 1650-1789, reveals that they simultaneously created a network for marine insurance and naval protection, led to calls for a free press, built tension between trade lobbyists and the East India Company, and raised questions about gender, respectability and the polite middling class. It reveals how coffeehouses served to create transatlantic connections between metropole Britain and her North American colonies and played an important role in the revolution and protest movements that followed."

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Introduction -- Part I Coffee's transatlantic society -- 1 'Trifling', an urban experience -- 2 'Trifling' in the colonies -- 3 Murders, officers and naval headquarters -- Part II Polishing communities and negotiating empire -- 4 Coffee-women, licensure and a polite public sphere -- 5 Coffee-men, lobbyists and conmen of empire -- 6 Transatlantic news feeds and imagined coffeehouse publics -- Part III Empire and revolution -- 7 Empire, free association and slavery -- 8 Bringing down the empire -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Introduction -- 1 'Trifling', an urban experience -- 2 'Trifling' in the colonies -- 3 Murders, officers and naval headquarters -- 4 Coffee-women, licensure and a polite public sphere -- 5 Coffee-men, lobbyists and conmen of empire -- 6 Transatlantic news feeds and imagined coffeehouse publics -- 7 Empire, free association and slavery -- 8 Bringing down the empire -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index.

This book is an absorbing account of secret operations and political intrigue in wartime Thailand. During World War II Free Thai organisations co-operated with Allied intelligence agencies in an effort to rescue their nation from the consequences of its 1941 alliance with Japan. They largely succeeded despite internal differences and the conflicting interests and policies of their would-be-allies, China, Great Britain and the United States. London's determination to punish Thailand placed the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) at a serious disadvantage in its rivalry with the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The US State Department, in contrast, strongly supported OSS operations in Thailand, viewing them as a vehicle for promoting American political and economic influence in mainland Southeast Asia. Declassification of the records of the OSS and the SOE permits full revelation of this complex story of heroic action and political intrigue