ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the operations of Coffee House Slip painted by Francis Guy with the exploitative labor practices and environmental damage in plantation regions of the Global South that arose from the European and American demands for luxury commodities. The eighteenth century witnessed the meteoric rise of North American coffee house culture, and a demand for imports served in these establishments. Guy’s Tontine Coffee House, N.Y.C. is named for the establishment depicted at the composition’s left, partially obscured by the canvas edge. Guy’s painting foregrounds the Lower Manhattan intersection of Wall Street and Water Street, on the northwest corner of which the Tontine Coffee House, established by merchants, was constructed in 1793. Although Guy’s painting title alludes to the popular establishment, the central focus of the composition is the intersection outside the Tontine’s doors, populated with merchants, dockworkers and slaves who examine unloaded cargo.
