Destination Singapore:
    Ridley's Rubber Farms
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    Our next stop is in Singapore, and the year is 1877. This year a shipment of tree saplings has arrived for the director of the Singapore Botanical Garden, a botanist named Henry Nicholas Ridley. These saplings are of course, Hevea brasiliensis, rubber trees. These are no ordinary saplings. These were grown at the Royal Botanical Garden for a specific purpose.

    Short Supplies

    We'll talk more about that in a minute, but first some background. The rubber business has been booming lately, thanks to the work of a few clever inventors. Two British inventors named Charles Macintosh and Thomas Hancock had figured out how to make good raincoats from rubberized fabric in the 1820s. Later, an American named Charles Goodyear licked the problem of rubber's biggest problems, namely that it got gooey in hot weather and stiff in the cold. His vulcanized rubber changed all that.

    U.S. Rubber consumtion, 1870 Now the biggest problem with rubber is that there just isn't enough of it. Most of the world's rubber is harvested from a number of plants that grow wild in South America and in Africa. Wild plants can only produce so much rubber, and even then it isn't of consistent quality. An early attempt to cultivate rubber trees in plantations in Brazil has recently been halted by a leaf blight.

    Stealing a Monopoly

    But Hancock has become a big wheel in the rubber business, and is thinking of starting a plantation in a different part of the world. 1n 1853 he had suggested to the Royal Botanical Garden in London the idea of trying to grow some rubber plants themselves. The Royal Botanical Garden sent agents to Brazil to smuggle out rubber tree seeds. The Brazilian government frowned on people taking these out of the country, wanting to hold on to it's big share of the world's rubber market. Needless to say, someone goofed when one British agent, Sir Henry Wickham, slipped out of Brazil with around 70,000 seeds.

    Sir Henry Wickham Hancock and his associates had their eyes on the British colonies of southeast Asia. The kingpins of the British rubber industry figured that if they could start rubber plantations in the British colonies, not only would they have a better supply of rubber, but the supply would also be under British control.

    So the seeds were smuggled back to Britain and were successfully grown into little saplings. The saplings were then shipped to the colonies. Eleven were addressed to Henry Nicholas Ridley, here in Singapore.

    Ridley sets to work with his saplings, comparing them with other rubber-producing plants, and figuring out the best way to harvest the rubber. He comes up with a method that is still used to this day. In 1896, the first plantations will begin growing rubber trees in the British colony of Malaya and in the Dutch East Indies (later to become independent as Malaysia and Indonesia, respectively), and Thailand. By 1910 their rubber will be ready for market.

    rubber tapping
      Cartoon of rubber harvesting
    And what a market! The rubber market will have grown considerably in the fifty-seven years since Hancock first made his suggestion to the Royal Botanical Gardens. Now there was a much bigger use for rubber than raincoats, thanks to an inventor named J.B. Dunlop.

    Consumers Hate Monopolies

    Southeast Asia will become essentially the world's only rubber source. By the 1930s the plantations will producing 90% of the world's rubber. Of course rubber consumers won't be too thrilled about this monopoly. First of all they will be subject to price fixing by the cartel formed by the rubber growers. Secondly, the big industrial nations of the world, the United States, Japan, and the nations of Europe, will all be separated from their rubber supply by thousands of miles of ocean. This will mean a hostile country with a big navy could easily cut off the rubber supply. So nearly everyone will be interested in making some sort of synthetic rubber.

    And with good reason. More than once a nation will have its rubber supply cut off by an enemy. The first time will be during World War I. Britain's Royal Navy will keep Germany from getting any rubber from southeast Asia. By the time of this war, combat will have become highly mechanized, and all the new-fangled death machines will need rubber hoses, gaskets, and tires to work. The Germans will be stuck using a crude synthetic called methyl rubber, not a very good material at all.

    Meanwhile, everyone's worst fears would soon be realized, and events in eastern Asia would bring on a rubber crisis.

      Next stop: Northern Ireland - Little Dunlop's Tricycle

    Meanwhile...

    While the British are trying to grow rubber in southeast Asia, this is going on in the rest of the world...

      1872: In Illinois, an early equal rights law is passed which states that no one can be denied a job on the basis on sex. An exception is made for elective offices, however.

      1879: In New Jersey, Thomas Edison invents the light bulb.

    For more information, at other websites...

      Plantation Rubber - a detailed look inside the southeast Asian rubber plantations by Anthea Beckett.

      The Great Rubber Adventure - Rubber production continued in South America, even after Sir Henry Wickham smuggled all those rubber seeds out of Brazil. Read all about it on this site from Marine Expeditions, Inc.

      Methods of Tapping Rubber Latex - natural rubber is still harvested in a way very similar to the methods used in Ridley's time. Read about how to get rubber from a hevea tree from this site from Immune.com.

      The Story of Malaysian Natural Rubber - history of the industry in Malaysia, from the Malaysian Rubber Board.

    Bibliography

      1. Ebsen, Gary L. A Visitor's Guide to Phoket. Plain Paper Book Guide Co., Ltd., 1997.

      2. Britannica.com

      3. Burke, James. Connections. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1978.

    Image credits

      In 1870, total consumption...: From Wonder Book of Rubber, 1947, copyrighted material of The BFGoodrich Company reproduced with the permission of The BFGoodrich Company.

      Sir Henry Wickham: From Wonder Book of Rubber, 1947, copyrighted material of The BFGoodrich Company reproduced with the permission of The BFGoodrich Company.

      Cartoon of rubber harvesting: From Wonder Book of Rubber, 1947, copyrighted material of The BFGoodrich Company reproduced with the permission of The BFGoodrich Company.

    Copyright ©2000
    Polymer Science Learning Center and the Chemical Heritage Foundation