Dietrich Tully; Red Rubber and the Great Powers (Bower: 2009)
While historical attention has been lavished on events such as the German Wars of Unification or the Congress of Vienna, it is upsetting that few papers have published that delve into the resource crisis that affected the world in the last 25 years before the Great War: The Gutta-Percha Crisis.
The use of tree sap in civilization has a long and storied history, dating back to the earliest civilizations of Mesopotamia and the Americas. Nevertheless, the use of the fluids from the
palaquium gutta tree were still extraordinary for their time. Unlike most congealed tree saps which require sulphur and various chemicals to retain their final form, the latex of the
palaquium species need only be treated in hot water in order to assume its moulded shape. This is due to the chemical composition of the sap: a specialised poly-isoprene molecule chain that gives the semi-solid substance malleability when applied with heat and pressure. Growing in the jungles of Southeast Asia, the local Malays, Dayaks, and other tribal groups prized the tree as its sap was utilized to augment native weaponry such as dagger handles and blowpipe openings. A strong grip was needed in battles and hunts, after all.
But the full potential of gutta-percha was not realized until the arrival of Europe into Southeast Asia in the mid-19th century. Upon its discovery in 1843 by British explorers on the colony of Singapore, the material was investigated heavily by the European Powers whom were interested in the adaptability of the substance. Shingles, drapes, picture cases and even gutta-percha lace was conceived as the malleability of the material allowed for greater and greater experimentation. In some cases, the invested objects became a part of popular history; a gutta-percha cane was used by Representative Preston Brooks in his famous attack of Senator Charles Sumner in the United States Senate in the run-up to the American Civil War. Insulted by the senator’s harsh words towards pro-slavery congressmen, Brooks used his cane to bash Sumner multiple times on the head in the Senate chamber until his weapon broke. He then used a broken half of the cane to bash Sumner even more.
Lithograph of the brutal attack in the United States Senate. Many southerners accused the northern senator afterwards of lying about his injuries, stating that the gutta-percha cane is not strong enough to inflict deep wounds (it is).
However, the greatest use of gutta-percha during the 19th century was its application as an insulator for underwater telegraph cables. The British Empire was particularly concerned on communicating to their far-flung colonies, especially after the Indian Rebellion of 1857. However, almost every undersea telegraph line applied became unusable after a period of several years due to corrosion and breakage from underwater elements, especially after the coated wire insulation crumbled from moisture and pressure. Gutta-percha, on the other hand, retains its shape in water and is impermeable to moisture and stress, making it the perfect material for such a task. The first undersea cable with gutta-percha insulation was stretched in 1851 from Dover, England to Calais, France, opening a door that would never be shut again.
With long-distance communication a reality, nation after nation began using the substance to insulate their own lines. Telegraph cables were especially prioritised by the British, who used them to great effect in maintaining links with their colonies of Canada and South Africa, and from there to India and Malaya. The United States also saw value in the sap as it embarked on reconstructing the Deep South after their tumultuous Civil War; local legend has it that U.S officials even tried to establish their own colonies in Malaya for its gutta-percha resource, though no such evidence has ever been found.
By 1875, over 2.8 million kilograms of the sap were exported from the East Indies per year to the dockyards of London. To ensure their supply, Great Britain established a monopoly on the substance though their commercial links on the Malay Peninsula, often through promulgating trade deals with the rulers of local states. In fact, British profits from the trade rose to such an extent that the French Third Republic moved to establish their own plantations of gutta-percha in their Indochinese colonies in the 1880’s.
Map of the planned ‘All Red Line’ British telegraph network, connecting the disparate parts of the Empire together. Work on the system would not be completed until 1904.
But while the trade enriched the western world, it also brought unimaginable consequences to the economies of Southeast Asia. Traditionally, gutta-percha was extracted through an exhaustive and wasteful process where groups of men would cut notches and scars into the trunk. As the sap dries quickly, more incisions would be made to keep the flow going. In most cases, the entire tree would be chopped down to obtain a comparatively miniscule amount from its wounds – around 300 to 400 grams at most, all before the liquid hardens inside the chopped wood. While a more efficient extraction process – mainly through pounding the raw wood and leaves to a pulp and soaking them in benzene and light petroleum – was investigated during the period, the method was highly experimental and required large amounts of liquid solvents which hindered extractive efficiency till the advent of the Great War.
As a result, demand for the substance steadily outpaced supply with market prices for gutta-percha rising more and more through the years. This made extracting the sap more lucrative to commissioners who charged higher and higher fees to local rubber tappers, making them more driven to cut down stretches of woodland to gather what latex they could find. Commissions were also given to Chinese settlers and foreign migrants, many of whom immigrated to the Malay Peninsula in massive numbers during the 19th century for work and a new life. To them, tapping latex from trees was a rewarding – if gruelling –source of alternative income to supplement their main work of tin mining or spice-planting.
With the horrors faced by other tropical colonies for wild rubber, perhaps the only positive of the trade was its decentralized nature and non-coercive extraction process. Back then, as it is today, locals and indigenous tribes engaged in tapping gutta-percha out of their own free will. Still, that did not mask the sheer damage the trade inflicted towards the environment. Whole swathes of lowland rainforest across the Peninsula were chopped down as local Malays, Chinese immigrants, and British prospectors hacked their way to find any
palaquium trees left standing. Often, whole groves of the species would be cut down to harvest both the sap and the valuable wood that came with it. Similarly, many peasants in southern Siam, Borneo, Sumatra and Java joined in on the trade, leading to massive incursions into the regions’ forests. In the Kingdom of Sarawak alone, it is estimated that up to 3
million trees were cut down over a 30-year period.
Another effect of the trade was the disruption it caused to various groups of people. Both Malays and Dayaks often use gutta-percha trees as source material for their homes and longhouses, as the wood is resistant to most forms of pests and fungi. But with an increasing number of trees being felled, the wood needed to make planks and joints became more unavailable, forcing villages and tribes to use second-rate materials to build their dwellings. This became a particular problem for the Melanau subgroup, whom depend on
palaquium timber for building their fortified tallhouses. During the late 1870’s to the 1890’s, an increasing number of local conflicts were caused by Melanau tribes coming to conflict with other subgroups for the valuable wood.
Sarawakian Dayaks extracting sap from a fallen palaquium gutta
specimen. Such actions would have brought a spike in local violence against various subgroups.
But perhaps the most damaging of all was the increased influence by the colonial Powers over the world’s tropics for the substance. Prior to the 1898 Bangkok Treaty, it was speculated that the abundance of gutta-percha in southern Siam influenced the royal court to increase its control over the northern Malay Peninsula. Similarly, the value of the latex as an insulator led the British to enforce greater and greater control over Malaya. In one case, the sultan of Kedah was forced to accept a British Advisor after several British Chinese traders were killed in an altercation involving the sale of gutta-percha. Conditions in the Dutch East Indies were no different as Batavia encroached onto native polities under the guise of protecting Dutch rubber firms and their supplies of sap.
But nothing would impact the market as the Conference of Brussels in 1885 did. The decision among the Western Powers to divide Africa among themselves was horrendous, but it also opened a new export market for the valuable material. Enforcing colonial rule means having secure communications to the respective colonial capital, and ultimately to the mother country. As such, telegraph cables became an important priority for many European nations for their new African colonies, making gutta-percha insulation one of the most important items of trade in the late 19th century. Demand soared like never before and by 1888, the price for a single
pikul of the latex (about 60 kilograms) fluctuated from 400 to 500 Singapore Dollars.
But by the time of Brussels, some of the main centres of gutta-percha production in in Malaya were rapidly going dry. In 1875, Johor recorded its first decrease in local supply. Sap extraction in Selangor declined by half in 1882, followed by Kedah in 1883 and the Sungai Ujong princely states by 1884. Over in Borneo, Dutch exports from the Kapuas basin were steadily declining as most lowland groves have all been cut down by rapacious Malays and Dayaks. Java and lowland Sumatra experienced similar declines in local production during the period. In Sarawak, botanists grew so afraid for the species that Rajah Charles Brooke ordered for
palaquium seedlings to be planted at his Astana in Kuching, saying that, “
Our madness for the sap may cost us its extinction.”
In time, the scarcity and high price for gutta-percha would lead the global push for wireless communication. But with most of Sundaland running low, worried commissioners looked for other places to satisfy short-term demand. The British casted an eye to the northeastern Malay states, which were yet untouched from the commercial insanity. Meanwhile, the Dutch began expanding their own horizons over the highlands of Sumatra and the Celebes, while Italy began viewing its colony of Brunei and Sabah with prospective eyes. The forests of Aceh quickly attracted many looks; until then, local extraction was halted as a side-effect of their war against the Dutch. And though the specialized poly-isoprene sap was not present in rubber trees and vines outside Southeast Asia (save for Brazil),
everyone looked to Papua and the Congo…
The regions of the world that shall be affected in the coming decades.
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Notes:
1. This aspect of the colonial era has been on my mind for a while, but it's only recently that I decided to research more about it. Despite looking up all information about this trade, it is still astounding to see just how much industrial Europe and the Americas
depended on gutta-percha IOTL, and
how much damage it brought to the local economies of Southeast Asia. In this timeline, the greater inter-connectedness of Sundaland would have brought regional scarcity somewhat earlier, thereby forcing Europe to search for alternative places to squeeze wild rubber.
EDIT:
2. Most of the information presented above is based IOTL, with the exception of Charles Brooke, the Sultan of Kedah and the aforementioned earlier scarcity of the latex.
), and I love the fact that the strength of the Ottomans has killed Cape-to-Cairo in its crib as well (and enabled a surviving Wituland with the potential to become huge) Also weren't the Dervishes in modern Somalia and eastern Ethiopia? Shouldn't it perhaps be the Madhists?
