A World History of Rubber: Empire, Industry, and the Everyday

A World History of Rubber helps readers understand and form new insights into the social and cultural contexts of global production and consumption from the nineteenth century to the present.  Stephen Harp uses rubber as a lens through which readers can view many key themes and events of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including imperialism, industrialization, racism, and inequality.

The book illuminates the complex journey of rubber from plantations in far–flung European colonies, to factories in Midwest America, to products in American homes and abroad. It is divided into five thematic sections: race, migration, and labor; gender on plantations and in factories; demand and everyday consumption; World Wars and nationalism; and resistance and independence. The story highlights the interrelatedness of our world long before the current era of globalization, as well as the global social inequalities that persist today. With an engaging and accessible narrative that will resonate with students of all levels as well as general readers, this account of a single commodity skillfully ties together the history of many people, places, and ideas the whole world over.

Acknowledgments ix

Timeline xi

Global Rubber and Tire Companies xvii

Introduction: Why Rubber? 1

Global Connections 8

1 Race, Migration, and Labor 10

Wild Rubber and Early Industry 11

Wild Rubber and Empire 14

Plantations Progress: Rationality and Efficiency 17

Plantation Hierarchies 21

Race and Industry in the United States and Europe 29

2 Women and Gender on Plantations and in Factories 40

Gendering the Jungle and the Plantation 42

Asian Women on Plantations 44

European Women and Racism 48

The Colonizing Woman 50

Gendered Production in the United States and Europe 52

Rubber and Sex in Indochine 56

3 Demand and Everyday Consumption 61

Everyday Consumption on Southeast Asian Plantations 62

Class and Consumption in North America and Europe 64

Race and Consumption in Europe and North America 68

Gender and Consumption in Europe and North America 71

Gendering Reproduction 77

4 World Wars, Nationalism, and Imperialism 83

World War I 84

See America First on Good Roads 86

Flying for the Nation 88

Restricting Rubber in the Wake of War 90

American Assertions: Herbert Hoover and US Trade 91

Firestone and Friends 94

Firestone in Liberia 96

Germany: Colonies and Chemicals 99

World War II and the US Scramble for Rubber 102

Nazi Racism and Buna at Auschwitz 105

Imperialism and Nationalism in the Wake of World War II 107

5 Resistance and Independence 111

Plantations and Resistance 112

Global Economic Crisis and Plantation Labor 118

Success of the Smallholders 120

Plantations under the Japanese 124

Independence and Decolonization 126

United Rubber Workers 131

Conclusion: Forgetting and Remembering Rubber 137

Suggested Readings 142

Index 157

Stephen L. Harp is Professor of History, Professor of French, and Director of Humanities at the University of Akron, USA. He is a social and cultural historian focused on transnational European and world history.  He is the author of Au Naturel:  Naturism, Nudism, and European Tourism in Twentieth–Century France (2014), Marketing Michelin:  Advertising and Cultural Identity in Twentieth–Century France (2001), and Learning to Be Loyal:  Primary Schooling as Nation Building in Alsace and Lorraine, 1850–1940 (1998).  He resides in Akron, Ohio, the former global rubber capital.