Chili Pepper essay - Grade: A PDF

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Essay on the spice trade in India, focused on the chili pepper...

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HIST1161 12/8/18 Chili Peppers and the Evolution of Indian Cuisine Indian food has continuously evolved and changed over the centuries in order to become what it is today. Many cultures and empires have exerted their influence over Indian cuisine, adding their own unique flavors, tastes, and styles. These influences have become so ingrained in Indian cuisine over time, that we no longer recognize the non-native origins of many characteristically Indian foods and dishes. Such is the case with the chili pepper, one of the most important and widely used spice in Indian cuisine. Used in curries, stews, meat dishes, and everything in between, chili peppers are central to what defines Indian food. In fact, today “by a long margin, India is the world’s largest producer of chili peppers.”1 It therefore comes as a shock to many that chili peppers do not originate from India. The chili pepper plants are rather native to Mesoamerica.2 Estimated to have been domesticated in 5000 BC in modern-day Mexico, chili peppers only began to spread to other parts of the world during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.3 The chili pepper was brought to India along extensive spice routes that extended all the way from the Americas, through Europe and India, to China. A mere five hundred years ago, this quintessential Indian spice did not exist at all in Indian cuisine. Over the course of the centuries, however it became an essential spice used in Indian food across the subcontinent. The evolution of Indian food alongside the chili pepper is a fascinating history that 1 Avari, Peri. "Cooking with Chili Peppers: Cornerstone of Indian Food." Peri's Spice Ladle. October 3, 2014. Accessed December 08, 2018. http://www.perisspiceladle.com/2014/10/03/cooking-chili-peppers-cornerstone-indian-food/. 2 Ettenberg, Jodi. "A Brief History of Chili Peppers." Legal Nomads. July 19, 2018. Accessed December 08, 2018. https://www.legalnomads.com/history-chili-peppers/. 3 Ibid.

involves a close connection of colonialism, trade, and culture. Chili peppers were an essential part of the Indian spice trade and arrived in India through the vast spice trade routes of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. While many different countries were engaged in this trans-national trade between Europe, India, and the Americas, it is the Portuguese who were the primary source of chili peppers and the dissemination of other newworld items into India. Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese trader who first opened a direct sea trade route between Europe and India, made his first voyage to India in 1498, the very same year as Columbus’s famous arrival in the Americas.4 Da Gama made a second trip to India in 1502, at which point the height of trade between India and Europe truly began.5 Da Gama and other Portuguese merchants like him first introduced the chili pepper to India during this time through their trade on India’s Malabar Coast. The Malabar region’s position on the southwestern coast of India made it the ideal geographic location to be the center of trade between India and Europe. The spice trade, and the trade of chili peppers, was centered at various Portuguese-controlled port cities on the west coast of India. In 1510, for instance, Goa was captured by the Portuguese and turned into a prime trade port through which to exchange goods.6 Per Andrews, a Portuguese official in Goa at the time, reported on the success of the chili pepper trade there. He reports that “the new spice of chili peppers was welcomed by Indian cooks who, accustomed to pungent black pepper and biting ginger, already produced spicy foods.”7 Historians believe that this is one reason why chili peppers were so widely adopted by Indian cuisine without having the same effect on European cuisine; Indian food was already relatively spicy, and chili peppers

4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid.

complemented preexisting flavors and spices, enhancing what Indians already ate.8 The failure of Europeans to adopt chili peppers into their own cuisine played an interesting role in the colonialism of food in later centuries. British colonists considered food to be one of the main distinguishing features between Indian culture and British culture, and they used this difference to place themselves above the locals.9 To the British, Indian food “remained essentially the ‘food of the natives’ who, according to the foreign rulers, ate pungent, chillispiked curries… like some uncivilised pagans.”10 Interestingly, spices in particular, such as chili peppers, are one of the main features of Indian cuisine that the British viewed as barbaric and uncivilized. Why the British used spiciness to distinguish their food from Indian food above all other culinary differences between the two is an interesting question. Whatever the reason, it is nevertheless true that “most British officers and civil administrators who came to India, looked upon the native cuisines of India as unhygienic and unpalatable because of the high content of spices and herbs.”11 However, today a new page in the history of Indian food is turning. In the modern day, Indian food is one of the most popular cuisines in Britain and has had a large influence on British cuisine. Before chili peppers arrived and spread in India, typical Indian cuisine already incorporated various spices and flavors. Indian food that was commonly eaten before the influence of chili peppers continues to be common in India today. Roti (flatbread), dhal (lentils), 8 Lam, Francis. "How Chili Peppers Conquered the World (Or at Least Most of It)." The Splendid Table. July 11, 2018. Accessed December 08, 2018. https://www.splendidtable.org/story/how-chili-peppers-conquered-the-world-or-at-least-most-ofit. 9 Pande, Rekha. "Looking at Indian Food and Cuisine in the Past- a Historical Analysis." Academia.edu. Accessed December 08, 2018. https://www.academia.edu/3760984/Looking_at_Indian_food_and_cusine_in_the_past_a_historicl_analysis. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid.

and cereals such as rice were all staples of the Indian diet, since these crops grew well on the subcontinent.12 Since the time of the Maurya Empire and the advent of Buddhism, many Indians had adopted a vegetarian diet.13 Due to the influence of the Mughals, even those who were not vegetarian gradually began to shun the eating of pork, as it goes against the Quran.14 Indian cuisine already incorporated various spices to flavor food that had been used for millennia. Turmeric, cardamom, and black pepper, among other spices, are all native plants that had been cultivated consistently since 3000 BCE.15 Chili peppers were not the first or last new food or dietary change to influence Indian cuisine. However, chili peppers were one of the non-native foods that spread the widest and fastest of any in the country’s history. Once chili peppers arrived in India, they quickly exerted an undisputable influence on Indian cuisine. The speed and extent to which chili peppers changed food was unprecedented, not just in India, but in the world: “Within a half-century of chilies arriving in Spain, they were being used across much of Asia, along the coast of West Africa, through the Maghreb countries of North Africa, in the Middle East, in Italy, in the Balkans and through Eastern Europe as far as present-day Georgia.”16 In India, as mentioned above, this quick adoption was in part due to the fact that Indians already enjoyed spicy flavors in their cuisine and enthusiastically added chili peppers into their palate. Another extremely important factor, however, that allowed the quick dissemination of the chili pepper was its economic convenience. Chili peppers thrive in a wide variety of geographic and weather conditions and were therefore extremely easy to grow and 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 16 Robinson, Simon. "Chili Peppers: Global Warming." Time. June 14, 2007. Accessed December 08, 2018. http://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1628191_1626317_1632291,00.html.

cultivate in India.17 As a result, chili peppers quickly became an extremely cheap and readily available spice in Indian markets.18 Even poor people without money or wealth could afford chili peppers to add flavor and spice to their food. This greatly enhanced the range of chili peppers’ influence in India and is a main factor of their widespread proliferation. Other new world foods brought by the Portuguese to India, such as potatoes and tomatoes, were eventually incorporated into Indian cuisine over time. However, their adoption was extremely slow and gradual because they were not cheap and easy to grow.19 Chili peppers, contrarily, flourished with such range and speed because they were an extremely economical crop. The influence of the chili pepper on India is a unique phenomenon in history. Chili peppers first arrived in India a mere 500 years ago, brought by Portuguese merchants all the way from the New World. As Portuguese control of the Western Malabar Coast expanded, so too did the spread of the chili pepper into India. In modern India, a remarkably short time later, chili peppers are ubiquitous in Indian cuisine. At no other time in history has a spice spread so far, so fast, and left such a deep mark on local cuisine. Indeed, chili peppers are now intrinsic to Indian food culture, so much so that today many people in India “will swear that chilies are native to their homeland, so integral is the spice to their cooking, so deeply embedded is it in their culture.”20 While chili peppers, indigenous to Mesoamerica, are not in fact native to India, they reflect a fascinating and unique episode in the history of Indian food.

Word count: 1494

17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid.

References Avari, Peri. "Cooking with Chili Peppers: Cornerstone of Indian Food." Peri's Spice Ladle. October 3, 2014. Accessed December 08, 2018. http://www.perisspiceladle.com/2014/10/03/cooking-chili-peppers-cornerstone-indianfood/. Ettenberg, Jodi. "A Brief History of Chili Peppers." Legal Nomads. July 19, 2018. Accessed December 08, 2018. https://www.legalnomads.com/history-chili-peppers/. Lam, Francis. "How Chili Peppers Conquered the World (Or at Least Most of It)." The Splendid Table. July 11, 2018. Accessed December 08, 2018.

https://www.splendidtable.org/story/how-chili-peppers-conquered-the-world-or-at-leastmost-of-it. Pande, Rekha. "Looking at Indian Food and Cuisine in the Past- a Historical Analysis." Academia.edu. Accessed December 08, 2018. https://www.academia.edu/3760984/Looking_at_Indian_food_and_cusine_in_the_past_a_historicl_analysis. Robinson, Simon. "Chili Peppers: Global Warming." Time. June 14, 2007. Accessed December 08, 2018. http://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1628191_1626317_1632291,0 0.html....