In the shadow of a pepper-centric historiography: Understanding the global diffusion of capsicums in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

Abstract

Historians of the Eurasian spice trade focus on the fortunes of black pepper (Piper Nigrum L.), largely because the trading companies of the Dutch and English which they study also did. Capsicum peppers are, however, the world׳s most consumed spice, and their story needs to be told in parallel. The five species of capsicum peppers spread across the world in less than two hundred years following their discovery by Europeans in South and Central America and proved both hardier than Piper nigrum and able to reproduce spontaneously. While the taste was similar but more pungent than black pepper, capsicums provided an important vitamin C and bioflavanoid supplement to poorer people in southern and eastern Europe far from the precepts of good taste as dictated from Paris, and rapidly became a mainstay of tropical cuisine across the world. This contribution seeks both to trace and to understand that diffusion and its principal vectors from historical research amongst a plethora of primary source materials in European and Asian languages. Medical and dietetic reaction is presented from a wide range of contemporary texts. The work proceeds according to deductive reasoning and in comparison to the diffusion of black pepper consumption. It reveals the very different strategies of import substitution and commercial embargo undertaken by Portuguese and Spanish authorities, a somewhat later date of arrival in China than previously thought, and three different, competing lines of entry into an important area of later cultivation, namely Central Europe.

Keywords: Early modern European botanical research into spices; History of black pepper; History of capsicum pepper; Post-Columbian global plant diffusion.