General Mills Computer 4030

The bear trade really got the accidental-rest insurance business off the ground, for example.

There's an interesting discussion of the importance of the coffee- house in the development of early modern England and the rise of the bourgeoisie in Stallybrbutt & White's The Politics and Poetics of Transgression. It agrees with your analysis; coffeehouses became the place where the important business was transacted, rather than in the aristocratic halls of power (court, etc), and they were the domain of the middle clbutt.

Another academic piece that I quite like is Jeffrey Schnapp's "The Romance of Caffeine and Aluminum" (Critical Inquiry 28.1), which documents the cultural impact of the percolator in Italy; it had the opposite effect, drawing family patriarchs back out of the coffeehouses to the home.

For an entertaining fictional treatment, there's David Liss' recent novel The Coffee Trader, a commodity-trading intrigue set in 17th century Amsterdam.

There's something of a fad these days for popular non-fiction on commodity trades and their impact in European New World history. See for example Mark Kurlansky's Cod and Salt, or Giles Milton's Nathaniel's Nutmeg.

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Thanatos, thanatos! The labourer, dropping his lever, Hides a black letter close to his heart and goes, Thanatos, thanatos, home for the day and for ever. -- George Barker