Available online 18 November 2014
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.
Graphical abstract
Keywords
- Post-Columbian global plant diffusion;
- History of capsicum pepper;
- History of black pepper;
- Early modern European botanical research into spices
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