Showing posts with label Rubber History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rubber History. Show all posts
Thursday, 11 September 2014
Saturday, 2 August 2008
Wednesday, 9 July 2008
Rubber History
The opulence of the rubber barons could only be exceeded by their brutality.
Wild Hevea trees, like all primary rainforest trees are widely dispersed, an adaptation that protects species from the South American leaf blight which easily spreads through and decimates plantations.
Thus to make a profit, barons had to acquire control over huge tracts of land. Most did so by by hiring their own private armies to defend their claims, acquire new land, and capture native laborers.
Labor was always a problem so barons got creative. One baron created a stud farm, enslaving 600 Indian women whom he bred like cattle.
Other barons like Julio Cesar Arana simply used terror to acquire and hold on to Indian slaves. Indians captured usually submitted because resistance only meant more suffering for the families.
Young girls were sold as whores, while young men were bound, blindfolded, and had their genitals blasted off. As the Indians died, production soared: in the 12 years that Arana operated on the Putumayo River in Colombia, the native population fell from over 30,000 to less than 8,000 while he exported over 4000 tons of rubber earning over $75 million.
The only thing that stopped the holocaust was the downfall of the Brazilian rubber market.
Extracted from http://www.mongabay.com/10rubber.htm
Wild Hevea trees, like all primary rainforest trees are widely dispersed, an adaptation that protects species from the South American leaf blight which easily spreads through and decimates plantations.
Thus to make a profit, barons had to acquire control over huge tracts of land. Most did so by by hiring their own private armies to defend their claims, acquire new land, and capture native laborers.
Labor was always a problem so barons got creative. One baron created a stud farm, enslaving 600 Indian women whom he bred like cattle.
Other barons like Julio Cesar Arana simply used terror to acquire and hold on to Indian slaves. Indians captured usually submitted because resistance only meant more suffering for the families.
Young girls were sold as whores, while young men were bound, blindfolded, and had their genitals blasted off. As the Indians died, production soared: in the 12 years that Arana operated on the Putumayo River in Colombia, the native population fell from over 30,000 to less than 8,000 while he exported over 4000 tons of rubber earning over $75 million.
The only thing that stopped the holocaust was the downfall of the Brazilian rubber market.
Extracted from http://www.mongabay.com/10rubber.htm
Thursday, 5 June 2008
Absolutly Highly Reccomended Reading
There is a lot to write about Victorian blokes, including the ones who lived in my hometown like Bates, Wallace, Spruce. But the one that I aways was more intrigued by was Sir Henry Wickham.
He moved to Santarem late in the 19th century and dragged along his wife, mother, brother and a handful of friends. His major plan was growing rubber trees and sugar cane. He used to supply hat shops in London with Macaw, Toucans and other colourful neotropical bird feather on the side. Violet his wife was making a little dosh teaching the American Confederates children, and her other activities would include caring home and keeping a sort of log book that ended up in my hands some two years ago.
As a pseudo naturalist, his studies on rubber tree were dropped in the hands on Joseph Hooker, director of Kew Gardens, who eventually hired him to collect 70,000 rubber tree seeds and sneak into the U.K.
Wickham's life is wisely told by Joe Jackson, a friend and a five times nominated Pulitzer Prize writer, in The Thief at the End of the World, published in February by Viking.
JoeJackson's and several other books are available at Prof. Flavio Serique School, a.k.a Cultura Inglesa
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