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Natural rubber, often simply called rubber, is a material derived from latex, a liquid produced by some plants. The majority of natural rubber grown commercially is grown on rubber plantations in tropical regions. Rubber plantations worldwide mainly obtain latex from the Hevea brasilensis tree, originally native to the Amazon basin of South America.[1][2] Today, the majority of natural rubber is produced in Southeast Asia, especially in Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam, though it is produced in several other countries as well.[3][4]
About 60 to 70% of natural rubber produced is used for the production of vehicle tires.[5] Since World War II, synthetic rubbers derived from petroleum products have come into widespread use in addition to natural rubber.[2] However, natural rubber remains preferable for certain applications. For example, natural rubber, rather than synthetic rubber, is especially important for use in aircraft tires.[6]
Historically, access to natural rubber has been and continues to be strategically important due to its many applications, including its military uses.[7] A paper produced in 2024 for the United States Department of Homeland Security noted that any major interruption in rubber shipment would have major implications for the US economy and national security, and that "China is currently much better positioned to respond to any decline in supply than the United States", also noting that the US no longer has control over all resources necessary for synthetic rubber production, and recommended that the US begin stockpiling natural rubber, describing the US as at risk militarily and economically due to China's edge in natural rubber access.[8] The paper concludes, "Unless we take steps to adequately protect our market access, the U.S. risks a potential economic crisis, and we will not have the same tools that we had during World II to manage such a crisis" and that the result of inaction could be "catastrophic."[9]
The pursuit of rubber production by imperialists has resulted in numerous abuses and atrocities against the people in the regions where it is grown. The operation set up by King Leopold II of Belgium in Congo is known for its regime of terrorizing, torturing, mutilating, and killing people who refused or could not meet the rubber production quota demanded by the colonial regime.[10]
History
Various plants around the world produce latex, and therefore it has long been in use for various purposes in locations where it natively grows. In the Americas, indigenous peoples of the Amazon as well as in Mesoamerica harvested from their local latex-producing plants and processed it in a variety of ways, creating objects such as rubber balls, shoes, containers, syringes, waterproofed clothing, adhesives, hafting bands, as well as using it for medicinal purposes.[1][11] In Southeast Asia, a latex-derived material, the plants and material both known in English as gutta-percha, was used by indigenous peoples to create a variety of tools. Gutta-percha is chemically similar to rubber (as a stereoisomer of rubber) but exhibits some different characteristics, making it useful in somewhat different applications.[12]
In ancient Mesoamerica, people mixed latex from the Castilla elastica tree with juice from the Ipomoea alba vine to achieve desired coagulation rates and elasticity properties for different applications.[11] Materials associated with rubber balls excavated in Mexico have been radiocarbon dated as early as 1600 BC, marking the earliest known rubber usage in the world.[11]
Europeans gradually became aware of rubber and some of its uses as they observed indigenous harvesting and processing methods in the Americas, with the earliest European accounts of rubber dating from the period of Spanish colonization of the Americas.[1] European awareness of gutta-percha dates to 1656 when samples of it were brought to London from Southeast Asia. Author John Tully notes that gutta-percha "long remained a curiosity" for Europeans, who regarded it as similar to rubber but inert, hard, and inelastic. It was not until 1832 when a Malay laborer demonstrated to a Scottish physician how to process gutta-percha to make it malleable that it attracted more interest for use by Europeans. Gutta-percha became key in the expansion of the telegraph system, as gutta-percha coating of submarine cables did not degrade in seawater.[12] The rise of European demand for gutta-percha combined with a harvesting method that was not sustainable for that level of demand resulted in massive deforestation where it naturally grew.[12]
As the industrial revolution progressed, European manufacturers created some products out of rubber, although rubber processing techniques at the time somewhat limited its applications as rubber was sticky in temperate conditions, would melt in heat and become brittle in cold, and also retained an unpleasant scent. However, in 1839, the vulcanization process was developed which made rubber able to withstand greater extremes of heat and cold without melting or cracking, as well as removed the undesirable odor.[1] Following this, applications for rubber expanded and the rubber industry grew,[1] leading into a period sometimes called the rubber boom[13] which was further boosted by the development of the pneumatic tire, the popularization of bicycles, and the invention of the automobile.[2]
At the start of the rubber boom in the mid-to-late 1800s,[14] the majority of the world's commercial rubber and gutta-percha was gathered as "wild rubber" from mature plants already growing in the forest, rather than from plantations, although some small-scale rubber plantations did exist.[15] Rubber plantations were not typically pursued in this era as many rubber operation owners took a "get rich quick" approach, opting to enslave people and force them to harvest from mature wild trees rather than bother with the costs of starting a plantation, where immature trees that would not yield latex for years would need to be cared for.[15] Additionally, in the case of rubber operations within the native range of Hevea brasilensis, the tree could not be grown plantation-style as it would be susceptible to local leaf blight when closely planted as a single crop, though it was able to grow among other plants in the wild. However, when planted outside of its native range, Hevea brasilsensis trees could be grown plantation-style without falling to leaf blight, a major factor in the establishment of Hevea brasilensis plantations outside of the Americas.[16]
In the Amazon basin, rubber operations were rife with slavery, and the industry contributed to acts of genocide against indigenous peoples of the region. Latex tappers, the workers who harvest latex, were mainly engaged in a sub-contracting system in which they would typically be trapped into slavery via debt bondage, often starting their work already in debt to their bosses (or enslavers) for the transportation costs to arrive at the work area. Workers in this situation would also have to pay 300-400% higher prices for various goods, the cost of which would be deducted from their pay. These conditions amounted to a truck system or company store model designed to keep the worker in perpetual debt. Regardless of official labor laws at the time in the various countries with rubber operations, the owners of rubber operations would enforce their own arbitrary laws on their enslaved workforce who attempted to escape.[15] Indigenous peoples of the region were subjected to slave raids and forcibly conscripted into rubber harvesting, facing massacres and genocide. This was especially the case in operations engaged in harvesting Castilla elastica, as the typical harvesting method was to completely cut down the trees of an area and then move on to the next area found to have the trees. Therefore, instead of long term debt slaves harvesting repeatedly from the same trees in one area, Castilla elastica operations tended toward moving around to different areas and enslaving the local people where they went.[17]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 John Tully (2011). The Devil's Milk: A Social History of Rubber: 'Part One'. Monthly Review Press. ISBN 9781583672310
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Stephen T. Semegen (2003). Encyclopedia of Physical Science and Technology: 'Rubber, Natural.'. doi: 10.1016/B0-12-227410-5/00670-0 [HUB]
- ↑ Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. "Production quantities of Natural rubber in primary forms by country, Average 2020 - 2023" FAOSTAT. Retrieved 2025-11-16.
- ↑ “The ANRPC welcomes governments of natural rubber-producing countries as members. Presently, it consists of 13 countries including Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam, which collectively represented around 84% of global natural rubber production in 2022.”
"Association of Natural Rubber Producing Countries". Association of Natural Rubber Producing Countries. Retrieved 2025-11-16. - ↑ “Natural rubber (NR) is a critical raw material of great strategic importance in sectors as diverse as healthcare, defense, space, buildings and construction, transportation and vehicle tyres, the latter of which consumes between 60 and 70 percent of global production.”
H.G. Toh. "Message from Secretary - General" Association of Natural Rubber Producing Countries. Retrieved 2025-11-16. - ↑ “But synthetic rubber isn't a cure-all. Natural rubber's unique properties such as heat resistance and durability cannot be reproduced for certain applications, including some military uses. Aircraft tires, for example, require the material's temperature threshold and toughness to withstand wear and tear during takeoff and landing.”
"Why Natural Rubber is a Matter of National Security and Economic Stability" (2025-03-26). MITRE. - ↑ “The sources of various kinds of strategic raw materials necessary for war purposes— coal, oil, non-ferrous and rare metals, rubber, cotton, etc. —are the objects of ferocious conflict.”
Lev Gatovsky, I. I. Kuzminov, Ivan Laptev, Lev Leontyev, Konstantin Ostrovityanov, Anatoly Pashkov, V. I. Pereslegin, Dmitri Shepilov, Vladimir Starovsky, Pavel Yudin (1954). Political Economy. Moscow: Economics Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. - ↑ "Is Natural Rubber the Next Critical Material to Challenge the U.S. Economy?" Homeland Security Systems Engineering and Development Institute, 2024-06-24.
- ↑ "Is Natural Rubber the Next Critical Material to Challenge the U.S. Economy?" Homeland Security Systems Engineering and Development Institute, 2024-06-24. Quote: "The Chinese will continue to ensure their access to natural rubber, but they also realize that natural rubber is an Achilles Heel for the United States. Unless we take steps to adequately protect our market access, the U.S. risks a potential economic crisis, and we will not have the same tools that we had during World II to manage such a crisis. That result could potentially be catastrophic and so action may be warranted because the price for inaction may be severe."
- ↑ “[T]he Free State’s officials brutalized the people of the Congo, killing them mercilessly, and torturing those who could not or would not work. Leopold II’s Free State set up the Force Publique, a militia designed to strike terror in the heart of the workforce. If a worker did not work hard, the officer would cut off their hand; one district official received 1,308 hands in one day from his subordinates. Fievez, an official of the Free State, noted of those who refused to collect rubber or else who did not meet their rubber quota, “I made war against them. One example was enough: a hundred heads cut off, and there have been plenty of supplies ever since. My goal is ultimately humanitarian. I killed a hundred people, but that allowed five hundred others to live.” Rape was routine, but so was the mutilation of the male and female genitalia in the presence of family members. To supply the emergent tire industry, Leopold II’s Free State, therefore, sucked the life out of the rubber vines and murdered half the Congo’s population in the process (between 1885 and 1908, the population declined from twenty million to ten million).”
Vijay Prashad (2007). The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World. Libgen. - ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Michael J. Tarkanian and Dorothy Hosler (2011). America's First Polymer Scientists: Rubber Processing, Use, and Transport in Mesoamerica, vol. 22, No. 4. Latin American Antiquity.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 John Tully (2009). "A Victorian Ecological Disaster: Imperialism, the Telegraph, and Gutta-Percha." Journal of World History, 20(4), 559–579. doi:10.1353/jwh.0.0088
- ↑ Bradford L. Barham and Oliver T. Coomes (1994). Reinterpreting the Amazon Rubber Boom: Investment, the State, and Dutch Disease. Latin American Research Review. doi: 10.1017/S0023879100024134 [HUB]
- ↑ “American historian Lewis Tambs dates the start of the Amazonian rubber boom from 1820. More prudently, Barbara Weinstein dates the start of the boom to 1850, with the demand for raw rubber accelerating following the discovery of vulcanization in 1839. Another writer believes that until 1889 “the rubber trade was characterized by a steady and reasonable growth.” After that, with the mass production of pneumatic tires for bicycles and cars, the demand for rubber became insatiable in “a succession of waves which took prices to new levels.” Finally, in 1910 came the dizzying final surge, which took the price of raw rubber to around three dollars a pound, followed by a sudden and catastrophic crash. By 1919, the price had fallen to about fifty cents a pound and the boom was over for good.”
John Tully (2011). The Devil's Milk: A Social History of Rubber (pp. 68-9). Monthly Review Press. - ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 John Tully (2011). The Devil's Milk: A Social History of Rubber: 'Part Two'. Monthly Review Press. ISBN 9781583672310
- ↑ “While Hevea brasiliensis grows happily interspersed with other trees in the Amazon forests, attempts to cultivate it on plantations fell victim to leaf blight, a fate that all the wealth of the U.S. tycoon Henry Ford could not change.”
John Tully (2011). The Devil's Milk: A Social History of Rubber (p. 72). Monthly Review Press. - ↑ “The extractive nature of the system also influenced their need for labour. Instead of a docile peon who could be manipulated over years of drudgery, they relied on experienced woodsmen who could identify the Castilla groves and enslaved peons to fell trees and collect the latex. They would migrate with the former and conscript the latter from local Indigenous communities, typically by force, as they needed them. Historians have termed this terrorist slavery, because the caucheros were extraordinarily cruel and treated their peons as an expendable commodity that could be replaced as they expanded into new territories.”
Timothy J. Killeen (2024-11-08). "The rubber boom and its legacy in Brazil, Peru, Bolivia and Colombia" Mongabay.