Christopher Columbus brought Capsicum peppers from the Americas to Spain, initiating their movement into European—and soon Portuguese—trade networks that would carry them onward to Africa and Asia.
Portugal created a permanent administrative structure in the Indian Ocean with a viceroy in Portuguese India, enabling regular shipborne movement of plants and provisions—including new American crops—throughout Portuguese-controlled ports.
Afonso de Albuquerque captured Goa, which soon functioned as the capital and logistical hub of Portuguese power in the Indian Ocean—an important relay point for moving crops like chili peppers into South Asia.
Portugal’s conquest of Malacca gave it control of a critical entrepôt linking Indian Ocean and South China Sea routes, accelerating the circulation of goods and food plants (including chilies) through Southeast Asia.
From the early 1500s, Portuguese (and later Spanish) maritime trade helped move chili peppers through island Southeast Asia via nodes such as Goa and Malacca, supporting their rapid culinary adoption across the region.
The Portuguese established a permanent settlement at Macau, creating a durable hub for maritime commerce with southern China that also facilitated the movement of New World crops (including chilies) into Chinese markets.
Garcia de Orta published Colóquios dos simples e drogas e coisas medicinais da Índia in Goa, reflecting how Portuguese India had become a center for cataloging and exchanging plants, drugs, and spices circulating through imperial trade.
Nagasaki became a major Portuguese trading base in Japan; this regular contact helped introduce new goods and crops to Japan in the late 1500s and early 1600s, including chili peppers (tōgarashi).
A Chinese work associated with Gao Lian (Zunsheng Bajian, 1591) is widely cited for describing chili as fanjiao (“foreign pepper”), an early textual signal of its New World origin and recent arrival via maritime trade.
Scholarship on Japanese food ingredients places chili pepper’s acceptance in Japan around A.D. 1600 (early Edo period), after its introduction during the preceding Azuchi–Momoyama era when Portuguese trade was active.
By the late 1500s and early 1600s, chili peppers were widely integrated into Southeast Asian cuisines, underpinning the development of enduring condiments and pastes (for example, the sambal family in parts of Indonesia and Malaysia).
Japan’s expulsion of the Portuguese ended direct Portuguese trade at Nagasaki, but by this point chili peppers had already entered East Asian food systems and continued spreading through local cultivation and intra-Asian exchange.
In Portuguese-speaking parts of Africa, Capsicum frutescens cultivars became widely used and locally named (e.g., jindungo, piri-piri), reflecting incorporation into regional foodways shaped by Atlantic and Indian Ocean exchange.
By 1700, chili peppers—moved through Portuguese (and other European and Asian) commercial routes—were well established from coastal Africa through South and Southeast Asia and into East Asia, reshaping everyday cooking and spice economies.
Portuguese introduction and diffusion of chili peppers across Asia and Africa (c. 1500–1700)
