It is difficult to imagine, when looking around at the more than 10 million people working on rubber plantations in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, that rubber was not seen in this region until little more than a century ago. Rubber comes from the Euphorbiaceae family of trees which originally came from Brazil. For centuries, people were aware of rubber but did not know how to put it to large scale use - in poor conditions, natural rubber swiftly disintegrates into an unusable mass.
It was not until the obsessive American inventor Charles Goodyear in the middle of the C19th who managed to develop the process of vulcanization that makes rubber production for tyres, machine belts and shoe soles into the industry that it is today. Goodyear struggled with the problem for years - and so too did his family for before he succeeded he was obliged to spend time in prison for indebtedness and to live on charity.
However, eventually the potential for rubber became realised and efforts were made to transplant it to areas which were more conducive to the great powers of the day - most notable among these was Britain, which saw imperial holdings in Malaya as being a suitable area for growth of rubber trees. After some technical problems were resolved, the first plantations took shape. Within a few years, more than 65% of all the cultivable land in Malaya had been converted to rubber plantation. Owing to the large amount of capital necessary for instituting a plantation, it was inevitable that colonial masters and a very few members of the local elite would dominate the industry, extracting nearly all the profit to be made from rubber production and leaving the workers (the rubber tappers) to live on very low wages.
Indeed, the majority of the twenty million or so people today who rely for their primary income on rubber suffer from poverty. Many also practice subsistence agriculture and so have food to eat but no money for medicine, education or other items.
In the post colonial period, the large plantation system survived, although the role of smallholders has been increasing since the 1920s. Legislation privileged large plantations ahead of smallholdings and the struggle of farmers to achieve a decent and fair income for their work has been a long and dispiriting one.
In more recent years, the governments of the main producers have been trying to work together to create a co-operative that will not only raise the income of smallholders but will also find ways to re-establish natural rubber in a world in which synthetic rubber has become increasingly important. Curiously, synthetic rubber, a byproduct of oil, has become a centre of the new colonialism.
It was not until the obsessive American inventor Charles Goodyear in the middle of the C19th who managed to develop the process of vulcanization that makes rubber production for tyres, machine belts and shoe soles into the industry that it is today. Goodyear struggled with the problem for years - and so too did his family for before he succeeded he was obliged to spend time in prison for indebtedness and to live on charity.
However, eventually the potential for rubber became realised and efforts were made to transplant it to areas which were more conducive to the great powers of the day - most notable among these was Britain, which saw imperial holdings in Malaya as being a suitable area for growth of rubber trees. After some technical problems were resolved, the first plantations took shape. Within a few years, more than 65% of all the cultivable land in Malaya had been converted to rubber plantation. Owing to the large amount of capital necessary for instituting a plantation, it was inevitable that colonial masters and a very few members of the local elite would dominate the industry, extracting nearly all the profit to be made from rubber production and leaving the workers (the rubber tappers) to live on very low wages.
Indeed, the majority of the twenty million or so people today who rely for their primary income on rubber suffer from poverty. Many also practice subsistence agriculture and so have food to eat but no money for medicine, education or other items.
In the post colonial period, the large plantation system survived, although the role of smallholders has been increasing since the 1920s. Legislation privileged large plantations ahead of smallholdings and the struggle of farmers to achieve a decent and fair income for their work has been a long and dispiriting one.
In more recent years, the governments of the main producers have been trying to work together to create a co-operative that will not only raise the income of smallholders but will also find ways to re-establish natural rubber in a world in which synthetic rubber has become increasingly important. Curiously, synthetic rubber, a byproduct of oil, has become a centre of the new colonialism.
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