The End of Red Rubber: A Reassessment Author(s): Robert Harms Source: The Journal of African History, Vol. 16, No. 1 (1975), pp. 73-88 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/181099 Accessed: 10-01-2017 01:41 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.org/stable/181099?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of African History This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Tue, 10 Jan 2017 01:41:30 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Journal of African History, xvi, I(I975), pp. 73-88 73 Printed in Great Britain THE END OF RED RUBBER: A REASSESSMENT1 BY ROBERT HARMS THE wild rubber boom which hit the African continent in the last decade of the nineteenth century and continued through the first decade of the twentieth had an impact that was both economic and political. The rubber trade gave Africans an opportunity to expand their export economies, which in many cases had been sagging in the second half of the nineteenth century. While the earlier slave and ivory trades had been the domain of heavily capitalized specialists, rubber could be gathered by common people. Therefore, the rubber boom significantly broadened the base of the export trade and brought large numbers of Africans into the international economy for the first time.2 The political impact of the rubber boom stemmed from the fact that its timing coincided with the introduction of colonial rule in many parts of Africa. Taxing the rubber trade proved a convenient way to finance colonial conquest and administration. Rubber brought in revenue through export duties and gathering licences, and gave the state the further option of taxing the income that Africans received from rubber gathering, or collect- ing taxes in rubber itself. The role of rubber in the establishment of the Congo Independent State and the French Congo comes readily to mind, but rubber played an equally important role in other areas. French Guinea, Angola, and the Gold Coast ranked with the Congo Independent State among the five lead- ing rubber producers in the world in I900. Rubber represented over two-thirds of the value of French Guinea's exports between I898 and I9IO. In Angola, rubber was the leading export product as early as I887. The role of Gold Coast rubber production in bridging the lean years between the end of the slave trade and the rise of the cocoa and mining industries has been noted by Raymond Dumett. Less well known, however, is the importance of rubber in the Ivory Coast, which had surpassed the Gold Coast in rubber production by I9oI.3 Other parts of Africa also depended heavily on rubber. In the Western Sudan, an official circular noted in I 897 that rubber was the only product of 1 This article is based on my M.A. thesis at the University of Wisconsin. I would like to acknowledge the help and encouragement I received from Professor Jan Vansina. Any errors are my own. 2 A. G. Hopkins has made a similar point with regard to palm oil production in West Africa in An Economic History of West Africa (London, I973), I25-6. 3Jean Suret-Canale, La Republique de Guinee (Paris, I970), ioi; Gladwyn Childs, Umbundu Kinship and Character (London, I949), 208; Raymond Dumett, 'The Rubber Trade of the Gold Coast and Asante in the Nineteenth Century', . Afr. Hist., XII, I (97I), 79; Joseph Lauer, 'Economic Innovations among the Doo of Western Ivory Coast, I900- I960' (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, I973), 55. This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Tue, 10 Jan 2017 01:41:30 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 74 ROBERT HARMS the area worth exporting. In German East Africa, the value of rubber exports surpassed that of ivory in I899, and rubber production doubled in the next three years, while ivory exports declined. Even Nigeria, which is best known for its palm oil production, experienced a rubber boom during I895-7, when its production surpassed that of Angola, the Gold Coast, and the Congo Independent State.4 The economic basis of the African rubber boom can be understood only in the context of the world economy. The development of pneumatic bicycle tyres in the I89os, along with increases in the industrial use of rubber for such items as hose, tubing, springs, washers, and diaphragms, created a rising demand,5 which accelerated further in the twentieth cen- tury with the advent of the automobile. Although prices fluctuated some- what during this period, the general trend for African rubber was upward through I9I0. African wild rubber production increased steadily during this period in response to the rising prices. After I9I0, increasing quanti- ties of inexpensive, high-quality rubber from hevea plantations in South- east Asia began to arrive in Europe. The full force of this production hit the world market in I9I3, depressing the market for African rubber and bring- ing African production to a near halt wherever alternative products could be found.6 While the general framework of the world rubber market is useful in defining the broad outlines of the African rubber boom, it provides little help in understanding the important regional and local variations. In Gold Coast, Dahomey, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and the Congo Independent State, for example, rubber production dropped off around the turn of the century despite rising world prices.7 Within each of the rubber producing colonies, exports came from different areas in different years, indicating significant local variations in the rubber boom cycle. These variations were usually the result of exhaustion of the rubber supplies, which followed two main patterns, depending on whether the area practised free trade or was controlled by a concession company. Most rubber production in Africa operated under a system of free trade in which itinerant African traders bought rubber in the interior and trans- ported it to the coast. Free traders could follow the rubber supplies, and move to new areas when the old ones became depleted. Thus, while the 4 Yves Henry, Le caoutchouc dans l'Afrique occidentale franfaise (Paris, I906), 30; Rainer Tetzlaff, Koloniale Entwicklung und Ausbeutung (Berlin, I970), 7'; Cuthbert Christy, The African Rubber Industry and Funtumia Elastica (London, I9I I), Io. -'William Woodruff, The Rise of the British Rubber Industry during the Nineteenth Century (Liverpool, I958), 68-74. 6 Asian rubber also ruined the growing plantation rubber industry in German East Africa, where plantation production had surpassed wild production by I909. The ceara rubber trees in the East African plantations produced a latex which had a low dry rubber content and could not long compete with the hevea rubber from Asia. See J. F. R. Hill and J. P. Moffett, Tanganyika: A Review of its Resources and their Development (Govt. of Tanganyika, I955), 460-I; Tetzlaff, Koloniale Entwicklung, I23-30; John Iliffe, Tanganyika under German Rule I905-I9I2 (Cambridge, I969), I00-I, I40. 7Christy, Rubber Industry, 2, I0, i8; Henry, Caoutchouc, 77-8. This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Tue, 10 Jan 2017 01:41:30 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms THE END OF RED RUBBER: A REASSESSMENT 75 total rubber exports from the colony often rose and fell with world prices, the rubber would come from different parts of the colony in different years. The main source of supply generally moved inland as supplies nearer the coast became exhausted. Rubber production in the Gold Coast and the Ivory Coast illustrates this process.8 Before I885, Gold Coast exports came mainly from the southern region. Since the trees were tapped in a destructive way, these supplies had greatly diminished by I890, when Ashanti became the major producer. By I897, the best rubber-producing areas lay in the Brong states, six or seven days north of Kumasi. Gold Coast rubber exports peaked in I898-9, and Ashanti traders, seeking less exhausted forests, began to push into the eastern Ivory Coast. Between I900 and I9I2, production shifted steadily toward the west as the eastern regions of the Ivory Coast became exhausted. Yves Henry, an influential French agronomist, described a similar pro- cess in the Guinea-Sudan region, where traders moved slowly up the rivers as the supplies near the coast became exhausted. He believed that the advancement of the exhausted areas could be determined almost mathematically.9 In the French Congo and the Congo Independent State, where rubber production was largely controlled by the great concession companies, a somewhat different pattern evolved because the companies controlled fixed territories and could not move to new regions when their rubber supplies were exhausted. Companies that ran out of rubber simply went out of business. In these colonies, the depletion of the rubber supplies followed a spotty pattern instead of a steady progression. The rate of depletion of the rubber supply in any given locality was determined by a variety of factors, including the type of rubber plant, the method of tapping, and the intensity of the exploitation.