Amazon Rubber Boom and Rubber Theft
Amazon Basin covers almost 40% of the South American continent and it is shared by eight countries viz. Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela. Out of these, Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela and Peru were the ONLY exporters of natural rubber before the Hevea plants were cultivated anywhere else in the world. For at least thirty years (1879–1912) Natural Rubber is known to have underpinned one of the most important development booms in these countries particularly Brazil.
This so called Amazon Rubber boom happened at a time when industrial revolution was expanding. Rubber was used in many products but when Goodyear developed vulcanization process, there was a huge jump in the demand of rubber from automobile sector because now the vulcanized rubber could be used to make tyres of the cars. This is how the rubber boom really got started. The huge demand was met by the rubber trees of Amazonia. The region which was hitherto poor and sparsely populated suddenly saw heaps of wealth. Many banks and companies opened in Brazilian towns of Belem and Manaus; and the poor jungle towns soon become rich, sophisticated, progressive urban centres, with a cosmopolitan population that patronized the theatre, literary societies, and luxury stores, and supported good schools. In Brazilian history, this period is called “Belle Époque” period and its splendour has been widely portrayed in art and literature of that country.
With a 42,000 tonnes of rubber output, Brazil became the ruler of the world rubber market by the end of 19th century. However, in the meantime, Rubber Tree seeds were smuggled by British from Amazonia to the Botanical gardens of London. There, more resistant varieties were developed through grafting and then they were sent to British Colonies in Asia, particularly Malaysia, Singapore and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). {Brazilians still lament on this episode and call it Rubber Theft.}
The British skilled agronomy was the significant factor that led to fast development of Rubber in Asian countries. They planted the Rubber trees only 4 meters away from each other, so that it was easy to collect latex. On the other hand, in Brazil, the plants were located away from each other; sometimes even miles away. Thus, the well organized plantations of Asia with their high productivity started giving stiff competition to Brazil and the boom stated to bust. Some mistakes were done by the Brazilian government in those days. They never bothered to take measures to increase productivity. Despite much rhetoric and failed attempts, rubber plantations never succeeded in Brazil / Amazonia. Brazilian government’s lack of will to switch to more efficient means of production, made the production costly and less efficient. The exports shrank and so did the economic boom. Brazilian efforts to resurrect the industry in collaboration with Ford through the production line fell flat again. Slowly, the companies that had set shops in Brazil moved away in more productive areas.
