Once the demand for rubber outstrips the level that can be produced by wild Hevea brasiliensis trees, it will be essential to establish Hevea plantations elsewhere, to produce rubber from other botanical sources, or to manufacture rubber synthetically.
The Transplantation of Hevea to Asia Wickham collected about 70,000 seeds in Brazil in 1876. These were planted at Kew Gardens, but only 2,600 germinated. The seedlings were forwarded to Ceylon and thence distributed elsewhere in Asia.
Some of the sites chosen, such as Calcutta, were poorly suited for Hevea. Fortunately, we have the benefit of hindsight; we know roughly where Hevea plantations were successful. For example, that map in CE also shows the major producing areas for plantation rubber in India, Ceylon, Burma, Thailand, and the Malaysian-Indonesian region.
It is also extremely important that all attempts to transplant Hevea be made strictly with seeds, not with cuttings that might carry abroad the deadly fungus.
Moreover, speed is of the essence. EB11 warns that "the seeds readily lose their vitality," and suggests that they should be "loosely packed in dry soil or charcoal." According to Polhamus (273), in the open, the seeds are only viable for seven to ten days, but packed in charcoal or sawdust, they can be expected to germinate if planted within four to six weeks.
Collecting Other Wild Rubbers Information is limited (and unavailable in 1632), but Treadwell says that in the British Honduras in the twenties, one man working eleven days in fifty acres of jungle could collect 700 pounds of Castilla rubber.
Rubber Plantation Management Most of Grantville"s information concerning rubber tree cultivation relates to Hevea. EA suggests that the Hevea trees be raised in a nursery for one year, then planted outside in rows about 15 to 20 feet apart. It says that, after casualties from disease, accident, and so forth, there are about 150 trees per acre (see also Brown 104). The trees are mature enough to be tapped when they are five to seven years old; tapping can continue for another thirty to forty years. The older trees are more productive.
It will be found that the trees vary in productivity. This variation can be exploited in a number of ways, including cross-breeding and bud grafting. According to CE, "Bud grafting consists of grafting a dormant bud from a proved high-yielding tree to a seedling one to two years old. After several months the bud forms a healthy bud shoot termed a scion, which grows to form the new tree. The seedling is then cut off just above the bud patch." A photograph shows how the foreign bud has been inserted into a "bark flap."
Hevea has been grown in African and Asian plantations alongside other crops, notably ca.s.sava, sesame, ground-nuts, tea, coffee, cocoa and tobacco. The EB11 advises against this interplanting, except in the case of cocoa.
The first rubber plantation in southeast Asia raised Ficus elastica (first planted in 1872), because at that time, before Ridley devised his improved tapping scheme, it yielded more rubber than did Hevea brasiliensis (Joshi). The most successful Ficus elastica plantations have been in Asia, in the mountainous districts of a.s.sam, Ceylon and Java. (EB11) * * *
The "Angiosperms" article in the modern EB claims that Funtumia elastica has the advantage that it will grow in parts of tropical Africa which are too dry for Hevea. It nonetheless discourages the cultivation of Funtumia elastica, declaring that it must be grown for twenty years before commercial yields become obtainable. However, this source is plainly in error; Christy"s African Rubber provides ample data that Funtumia yields rubber even when it is just five years old, although he recommends that tapping not commence until the next year. It is regrettable that this specialist knowledge will not be available in Grantville, and hence the development of Funtumia plantations in the new timeline may be delayed.
There is only limited information available to Grantville on the cost of production and, of course, the old timeline data is of limited relevance to the hybrid economy created by the Ring of Fire. For what it is worth, EB11 reports that circa 1911, the cost of Ceylonese plantation production was about one shilling a pound, for a field planted at a density of 150 trees an acre.
However, another source (unavailable in Grantville) pegs the Asian (Malaysian) plantation cost somewhat lower; just 0.75 shillings a pound. In contrast, the cost of Brazilian rubber was four shillings a pound. (Coates, 156) The price of rubber was then about 2.5 shillings (US$1.25) per pound.
For Castilla plantation rubber harvesting in northern tropical America in the Twenties, Treadwell says that the cost of production was 25 U.S. cents a pound. (32) The Geopolitics of Foreign Rubber One of the problems of developing a post-Ring of Fire (RoF) rubber industry was expressed in an aside to readers by Mike Stearns: "the natural resources were halfway around the world under the political control of other nations . . ." (1633, Chap. 34) Even the citizens of nations that are allies in Europe (the English and Dutch in the old time line, "OTL") may take advantage of each other elsewhere. This is an era in which the term "cutthroat compet.i.tion" is taken literally, and there is "no peace beyond the line" defining the bounds of Europe.
Even if you didn"t have to worry about the predatory habits of your fellow humans, there is the question of disease. Up-timers are perturbed enough by the public health conditions of down- time Europe, but the rest of the world is worse off. The mortality rates are three to four times higher in the Indian Ocean area, ten times higher in the American tropics, and fifty times higher in West Africa. (Landes, 170) The New World Let us first examine the situation in the New World. The Castilla Rubber Tree grows in "New Spain" (in Mexico and Central America) and in "New Castile" (which includes western South America). All of these regions are claimed by Spain. Legally, there is a ban on immigration, and even trade visits, by foreigners. All transatlantic trade leaves from Seville, takes cargoes of manufactured goods to specified colonial ports (Veracruz in Mexico, Portabello in Panama, and Cartagena in Columbia), and brings gold, silver and other American products back to Seville.
Only a Spaniard can buy a licencias de toneladas (the right to ship a certain number of tons of freight on a ship heading out to Spanish America). However, he could be acting as a front man (testaferro) for a foreign merchant. A particular kind of testaferro was the cargadore (the word now means a porter), who actually went on board with the cargo and made sure it was sold for a good price. A foreign merchant could also have a Spanish agent who was a resident of one of the American ports of call for the Spanish trade fleets. Another trick was to sell a foreign ship (with a cargo) to a Spanish figurehead, who would rename it, obtain a sailing license, include it in the Spanish trade fleet, and ultimately sell it back to the original owner (at a price which included a profit on the cargo). (Braudel II, 152-3; Solana) As early as 1608, two-thirds of the shipments to the Indies was of foreign goods (msu.edu).
These practices were geared toward moving foreign manufactures to the Americas, in return for gold and silver. However, a resident testaferro could in theory set up a rubber collection program on behalf of a USE customer. The catch, of course, is that there could be no direct supervision by a non-Spaniard.
Mexico, at least, has some degree of native trade in rubber, probably of Yucatan origin. In the sixteenth century, the Aztecs and Maya used it in making footgear, headgear, game b.a.l.l.s, and incense (Shidrowitz, 2-5, 372-3). Hence, a local agent could put the word out that he was interested in rubber products, and expect to see some results. The rubber would have to be shipped overland or by "coaster" to Veracruz.
Of course, dealing with testaferros-not to mention Spanish officials-is going to cut into your profit margins, and it is conceivable that, once they recognize the military importance of rubber, the Spanish government will take pains to prevent the transfer of rubber from Spain to the USE. (Although Spain and the Netherlands happily traded with each other even while Spain was trying to reconquer the latter, and the special taxes which they imposed on trade with the enemy helped finance the war.) You have the option of ignoring Spanish law and dealing directly with the Indians (or collecting the rubber yourself). If you are caught, you will likely to be tortured and put to death.
So, my advice is, don"t get caught.
The secret to success is to travel, preferably in fast, well-armed ships, to areas where the Spanish are weak, and where the natives, if any, are hostile to them.
One such area is the eastern half of the Yucatan peninsula.
Some of the Yucatec Maya have been in a state of revolt since 1610. Moreover, an independent Mayan state still exists in northern Guatemala (it wasn"t conquered until 1697).
The southeast portion of the Yucatan is essentially uninhabited. Beginning in 1638, it was infiltrated by British logwood cutters. The Spanish attempted to expel the intruders, but in general were not successful, and the region ultimately became British Honduras (Belize).
Another weak point is the Meskito (Mosquito) Coast of Nicaragua. There are no significant Spanish towns or forts in-between Trujillo (Honduras) and the mouth of the San Juan River (which divides Nicaragua from Costa Rica). In fact, in our timeline, the English established a settlement at Cape Gracias a Dios in 1633, and went on to establish an informal alliance with the local Meskito Indians which endured for two centuries. (Perez-Brignoli, 13, 37, 53; Burns, 209, 362-5).
The USE could collect rubber from the Castilla trees in the Yucatan, British Honduras, northern Guatemala, Nicaragua and eastern Honduras. The Indians can be taught how to tap the rubber, and then we can visit them periodically to collect the material. If hostile forces compel us to engage in a quick in-and-out operation, we fell the trees and save seed for replanting in a more secure locale. We can increase our security by allying with the English Puritans on Providencia Island (about 150 miles off the coast of Nicaragua), and by capturing Jamaica (taken by the English in 1655). (Burns, 202-211) The latex-producing properties of Castilla lend themselves to hit-and-run operations. A single tree can yield a great deal of latex at one tapping, but it can only be tapped one to three times a year. The specialist literature reports that Mexican bandits could steal a half-year"s yield in a night, by surrept.i.tious tapping. (Polhamus, 262) * * *
While the Castilla tree is the oldest source of natural rubber, the Para Rubber Tree is the most important commercially. How readily can it be exploited by USE entrepreneurs?
Consulting an atlas, you will see that Para is the name of the province in Brazil which includes the mouths of the Amazon. There is also a map in CE which shows sources of wild rubber in South America. If we compare it with a physical map of the continent, it appears that the best places to look are along the banks of the Amazon proper, as well as near certain tributary rivers: the Rio Negro, j.a.pura, Ica, Putumayo, Jurua, Madeira, and Tapajos. (Some of these may actually be sources of other kinds of wild rubber.) The difficulties of navigating these waterways is discussed in the EB11 "Amazon" entry, which also calls our attention to "the great india-rubber districts of the Mayutata and lower Beni .
. ." It additionally mentions that nineteenth-century rubber traders plied the Negro, the Madeira, and the Purus, that the "finest quality of india-rubber comes from the Acre and Beni districts of Bolivia, especially from the valley of the Acre (or Aquiry) branch of the river Purus," and that 35% of the Amazon Basin rubber is from the province of Para. The rest, presumably, is from the province of Amazonas.
The hazards of this venture are more political than navigational. The Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) sought to avoid conflict between Spain and Portugal in pagan territory, giving most of the Americas to Spain, and reserving Africa, Asia and northeastern Brazil to Portugal. The treaty actually gave the Amazon region to Spain. However, in 1580, the main royal line of Portugal came to an end, and Philip II of Spain became king of Portugal. In consequence, the Spanish rulers allowed the provincial authorities in Lisbon to take responsibility for policing the mouth of the Amazon.
In the late sixteenth century, the Portuguese were preoccupied with northeast Brazil, and the Spanish with Peru and Mexico, permitting the French, Dutch, English and Irish to establish settlements in the lower Amazon (the Dutch at the mouth of the Xingu river, and the English as far as 300 miles upriver). However, in the early seventeenth century, the Portuguese reacted violently to these incursions. They began by establishing the town of Belem, just south of the Amazon, in 1615. Then, during the period 1623-25, they sallied out and destroyed all of the non- Iberian holdings. Even the Catholic intruders were ma.s.sacred. (Furneaux, 49-51; Smith, 141-2) A logical question is, why not just send traders to Belem? Unfortunately, this would not be officially tolerated. Prior to 1591, the Portuguese allowed immigration into their colonies by anyone of the Catholic religion. However, after that date, they adopted the Spanish law which excluded all aliens.
Hence, if the USE wishes to trade openly in Belem, or indeed anywhere in Latin America, it must do so through Spanish or Portuguese intermediaries. Spanish agents are fine if you want to use them to arrange shipments of Castilla rubber. However, it is doubtful that they can help you get Para rubber from Brazil. Despite Spanish rule, it is not clear that the Belem authorities will be receptive to Spanish agents.
In 1637, a small Spanish party (two friars and six soldiers), originating in Ecuador, descended the Amazon. One friar was sent to Lisbon for questioning, the rest of the party was detained, and later that year Pedro de Teixeira took a force of over 1,000 men upriver, reaching Quito almost a year later. The obvious purpose of this expedition was to strengthen the Portuguese claim to the Amazon Basin. (Smith, 143-8) Consequently, to set up a quasi-legitimate rubber collecting operation based in Belem, the USE may need to identify the Portuguese equivalent of the Spanish testaferros. There are conversos (Jews who converted, at least publicly, to Christianity) in Brazil, and the Nasi family may be able to identify possible recruits from this community.
You can avoid this rigmarole if the inhabitants of Belem are willing and able, despite the law, to trade with foreigners. Such illicit trade was common in the Caribbean. The visitors might land a party in a secluded cove, and it would then make surrept.i.tious contact with the locals. They could approach the harbor, and plead that they had been driven off course by a storm. They could "win their market at sword"s point"; make a show of force and then, perhaps after real or pretended resistance by the local garrison, receive the governor"s license to trade. (The foreigners might even pay duties or license fees.) Or a neglected settlement might welcome them openly, without coercion, as seems to have occurred on Trinidad in the early 1600s. (Naipaul, 60-70; Burns, 142-6) Even if the local Portuguese are uncooperative, you may be able to infiltrate the Amazon region. Belem itself is at the mouth of the Para, which lies to the south of the Amazon and is not directly connected to it. Hence, in order to discourage further foreign activities on the Amazon, Portuguese also built a new fort at Gurupa (Furneaux, 50), which overlooks the more southerly of the two main entry channels. Nonetheless, it may be possible to sneak into the Amazon by way of the northerly channel, the Ca.n.a.l do Norte.
The odds are improved if we are forearmed with detailed knowledge of its navigational peculiarities. Grantville"s maps of the region are probably not particularly detailed, but Dutch sailors did serve from time to time on Portuguese ships, and may have some knowledge of these waters. Or there may be Portuguese mariners who are sufficiently estranged from their native land (perhaps because it is under Spanish rule) to be willing to guide us through.
Unfortunately, the Para rubber trees do not lend themselves to s.n.a.t.c.h-and-run operations.
While they are prolific latex producers, their wound-healing mechanisms a.s.sure that only a small amount of latex is extracted on a given day. Nor has it been found to be productive to fell the trees in order to get a "one time" bonanza. So that means lingering in the Amazon, for weeks or months, until one has collected an adequate cargo of rubber. Which, in turn, increases the risk that native allies of the Portuguese will report your presence, guaranteeing that you have to fight your way back to the ocean.
It is safe to say that it is impossible to establish a USE trading post in the lower Amazon, and supply it on a continuing basis by ships traversing the entrance channels, without either obtaining the permission of the king of Spain, or overwhelming the Portuguese military forces in the region.
While you cannot hope to collect a substantial amount of rubber in the lower Amazon without your presence becoming known to the authorities in Belem, a stealth run could be made for the purpose of collecting seeds. However, we then run up against the problem that Hevea seeds have a very short period of viability. Hence, for such a mission, you really want to have a ship with both sails and steam engines. It enters and leaves the river quietly, under sail, and it steams home.
(Ocean steamers can navigate the Amazon as far upriver as Iquitos, 2,300 miles from the ocean.) When Wickham needed to collect Hevea seeds for Britain in 1876, he chartered the steamship Amazonia. The "seed raid" is probably impractical prior to the conclusion of the Baltic War.
Another option is to seek out a "back door" into the Amazon basin. The shortest routes are through the Guyanas, the coastal region between Venezuela and Brazil. The stretch separating the mouth of the Orinoco River (Venezuela) and the mouth of the Amazon was known in this period as the "Wild Coast," because of the paucity of European habitation. The Spanish made no effort to settle it, and minimal effort to control it (Hemming, 182-3; Burns, 173).
Of the possible routes, the most interesting one is probably the one exploited in our timeline by the Dutch. Beginning in 1617, they established settlements on the Essequibo River (in British Guyana). They ascended the Essequibo River, then its tributary, the Rupununi, portaged over to the Rio Branco (the Rupununi savannah is flooded over during the rainy season), and then sailed on to the Rio Negro, the Amazon, and the Madeira. Once in the Amazon basin, they traded in iron and slaves. In OTL, the Portuguese eventually blocked this traffic, first with a fort at Manaus (1667), and later with a mission at the mouth of the Rio Branco (1720). (Furneaux, 51; Guyana.org; Burns, 173-6, 196, 214) The EB11 entry for "Guiana" warns, "The Essequibo can be entered only by craft drawing less than 20 ft. and is navigable for these vessels for not more than 50 m., its subsequent course upwards being frequently broken by cataracts and rapids." So, if we use this route to trade for rubber, much of the traveling would have to be done by canoes. This would result in much higher transportation costs and longer transportation times than if we could take full advantage of the Amazon River.
There are alternative routes which look shorter on paper, but are less likely to be practicable.
For example, one could ascend the Maroni and Litani Rivers (the border between Suriname and French Guyana), and portage over to the Paru or the Jari tributaries of the Amazon, but that requires crossing the Tumuc.u.maque Mountains.
These routes also allow you to play "Johnny Rubber Seed": collect Hevea seeds in the Amazon basin; plant them on your return trip, at a marked location, while they are still viable; and come back four years or so later to collect the seeds from your transplants. Eventually, you will get the seeds to the coast and onto a ship.
It is not strictly necessary to cross the Guyana Highlands into the Amazon Basin in order to find rubber trees; there are some in the Guyanas. These are not the famous Hevea brasiliensis, but another Hevea species, Hevea guianensis. Hence, USE exploration of the Guyanas could be somewhat improvisational; we try to use the river system to reach the Amazon Basin, but if we find rubber trees along the way, we exploit them.
The third possible source of natural rubber in the New World is the Ceara Rubber Tree (Manihot glaziovii). "Ceara" is the name of a province in northeast Brazil (the part that bulges toward Africa). Ceara was pretty much ignored by Europeans prior to 1649. However, USE exploration in that region could attract the attention of the Dutch and Portuguese, who are struggling for control of the sugar plantations farther south. The plant we are seeking is native to the sertao (the arid highlands), and hence may also occur in the hinterland of Rio Grande del Norte, Paraiba, Pernambuco and Bahia (the first two are confirmed by Polhamus, 51). Keep your distance from Bahia and Recife if you don"t want to be drawn into the Dutch-Portuguese war.
We only have a written description of the Pernambuco Rubber Tree (Hancornia speciosa), and it occurs in the very region that the Dutch and Portuguese are fighting over. If this rubber enters commerce, it most likely will be the result of their own activity.
Finally, there is guayule (Parthenium argentatum). This occurs in the Chihuahua desert region of Mexico and Texas, and was used during World War II as an emergency source of rubber. This desert is the largest one in North America, covering over 200,000 square miles, and including parts of modern Mexico, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. There is a map in Collier"s Encyclopedia (CE) which shows where guayule is found in the wild.
The easiest route into the region is by way of the Rio Grande river. Unfortunately, there are Spanish settlements on the river, at San Juan Bautista and El Paso del Norte, as well as to the south, at Janos, Chihuahua, Parral and Monclova (Spanish Bannon, 4). Hence, the least protected route would be from the northwest, through Apache and Comanche territory. Even to reach that territory, you will have to make a long journey, most likely up the Llano River and then south.
Since you could not expect to make this journey repeatedly without interdiction by Spanish forces, you would mostly like want to do it just to gather seeds and seedlings for transport to a safer region, perhaps one of the Caribbean islands, or somewhere in Africa or in Italy. Asia The position of Asia in the natural rubber industry is a curious one. While there are native rubber-producing plants, OTL Asian rubber production is mostly based on the transplanted Hevea brasiliensis. The up-timers have a great advantage over their late-nineteenth-century forebears; they know where Hevea production was most successful. The World Book Encyclopedia says, "more than 80 percent of the world"s natural rubber grows on plantations in the Far East, chiefly in Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia." Natural rubber-producing regions are mapped by both WBE and CE; they are in rough yet incomplete agreement.
Based on those maps, OTL Thailand has rubber plantations in the valley of the Chao Phraya.
The early seventeenth-century Siamese capital was on that river, at Ayudhya (Ayutthaya).
Thailand was then a powerful and cosmopolitan kingdom, which traded vigorously, mostly with Portugal, Spain, the Philippines, China and j.a.pan, but also with England, the Netherlands, Denmark, and the Muslim states of the Indian Ocean region. There are no European forts in the Siamese kingdom; Europeans are most likely to be found in Ayudhya or in Pattani, as traders or in the royal service. (Van der Kraan; Polenghi; Thai MFA). While the Europeans may offer us compet.i.tion, they don"t dominate the polities of the Thai state, and hence cannot exclude the USE. As of RoF, Thailand is ruled by an usurper, King Prasat-Thong (1629-1656). Despite the usurpation, Thailand offers sufficient political and economic stability to make it reasonable to establish Hevea rubber plantations there, knowing that the trees will not be tappable for five to seven years. The one problem with Thailand is that it was not densely populated in the 1630s.
The Grantville encyclopedias also reveal that OTL rubber plantations of Malaysia and Indonesia are in the Malay peninsula (southern half), Sumatra, Java, and along the coast of Borneo (princ.i.p.ally on the north and west coasts, but there are smaller cl.u.s.ters near Saraminda and Bandjarmasin). Of these regions, the only one which is densely populated is Java. European activity is much greater in this region than in Thailand, as the area receives trade from the Spice Islands (the Moluccas). In 1632, the princ.i.p.al European forts were those of the Portuguese at Malacca (Malaya), the Dutch in Batavia (Java), and the Spanish in Tidore and Ternate( Moluccas). You can expect to run into both Dutch and Portuguese traders pretty much anywhere in Malaysia and Indonesia.
As is apparent from the Grantville maps, rubber can also be grown in south India, Ceylon, Burma, Cambodia, south Vietnam, and the Philippines. The Dutch and Portuguese have major settlements in India and Ceylon, as the Spanish do in the Philippines. The other areas are more open to infiltration by USE.
It is important to note that the Dutch are, at least for the time being, the dominant naval power in both the Indian Ocean and the southeast Asian waters. Before the RoF, the Dutch were in the process of taking control of the spice trade away from the Portuguese, and were ruthless in their treatment of trade rivals. However, since the Dutch are not going to be receiving reinforcements from home any time soon, they are likely to be on the defensive, and low in morale. The second European power of the region, the Portuguese, is likely to rea.s.sert itself. Moreover, the English may come back in force, looking for revenge for the 1623 Dutch ma.s.sacre of the English at Amboina, as well as for profit.
If the USE tries to establish rubber plantations in the Indian subcontinent or in southeast Asia, its agents will need to build fortifications and make alliances, lest they be eliminated (like the English in Amboina in 1623, or the Portuguese in Malacca in 1641). To me, the best bets are in Thailand, in the southern Malayan state of Joh.o.r.e, in the Mataram kingdom of Java, and in north Borneo, where other Europeans are either relatively weak, or balanced by a strong indigenous power.
Africa In Africa, the indigenous rubber trees (Funtumia elastica) are said to be in central Africa, from "Uganda to Sierra Leone" (EB11). You can get a better idea of where to look by consulting the vegetation map in the Hammond Citation World Atlas (I feel it safe to a.s.sume that someone in Grantville owns a copy.) This shows that there is tropical rainforest in modern-day Senegal, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, Congo and Zaire, and light tropical forest in those countries as well as in Uganda. There are also economic maps in that atlas, and they show that rubber is presently grown in Liberia, Nigeria, and the middle reaches of the Congo.
EB11 also reveals that it is possible to cultivate, not only Funtumia elastica, but also the Latin American rubber trees, in Africa. The Para and Castilla rubber trees thrive under pretty much the same conditions as Funtumia, while the Ceara tree is better suited for drier conditions (compare the Hammond Citation Atlas vegetation maps for Brazil and Africa).
If the February, 1948, issue of National Geographic can be found in someone"s attic or bas.e.m.e.nt, it will reveal the location of the Firestone Para Rubber plantation in Liberia as being mostly within the triangle formed by the modern towns of Careysburg, Kakala and Harbel.
In West Africa, the Europeans don"t control large territories. However, they do have forts and trading posts. The princ.i.p.al Portuguese forts are at Elmina, Axim and Chama in Ghana, Sao Salvador, Sao Felipe and Sao Jose in the Congo and Luanda/Sao Paulo in Angola. The Dutch are based in Mouri (Ghana) and the fort of Sao Tome (near Guinea). This would be well-known to the major down-time merchants. My inclination is that if the USE tries to develop a rubber trade in Africa, it will look to Liberia and Nigeria first.
What might be the effect of the rubber industry on the slave trade? It is very likely that if the down-time Europeans outside USE control awake to the advantages of rubber, that they will use African slaves to collect it in the New World. If USE citizens employ foreign factors there, they may unwittingly contribute to this tragedy.
On the other hand, a West African-based rubber industry might serve as a brake on the slave trade, by giving the local chiefs an incentive to keep the available labor force home to grow rubber rather than send it abroad. Besides attempting to grow rubber, we could also have African partners cultivate cocoa, coffee, oil palms, and so forth, and perhaps we could even drill for oil in Nigeria (see Drillers in Doublets).
Transplanting rubber seeds from one part of the world to another was much practiced in OTL, and has the advantage that the new home may be more congenial for both the plants (escape animals, insects and microorganisms which normally prey upon it) and the planters (lower transportation costs, more easily defended).
The Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch are certainly able to play this game if they want to produce rubber for themselves. The Portuguese can transplant Hevea seeds from the Amazon to their holdings in Africa and Asia. The Spanish can demand those seeds from their Portuguese subjects, and then plant them in the Philippines. For that matter, they might be able to cultivate guayule in Spain. The Dutch and Portuguese can establish Manihot or Hancornia plantations in the drier parts of Africa or Asia. Or raise Funtumia in Brazil, or Trinidad (Christy 237).
The main limitation on these compet.i.tive activities is a subtle one; it is not worth the trouble of establishing a plantation if you will not be a.s.sured of a market for many years. Any down-time government which is astute enough to realize that natural rubber is desirable is also going to realize that at some point Grantville will be producing synthetic rubber. We can certainly play on their fears; they lack the experience in up-time technology which would allow them to estimate how soon synthetic rubber factories would come online.
By the same token, it may not be strictly necessary for us to establish rubber plantations.
However, natural rubber is superior to synthetic rubber for tires.
Homegrown Rubber The USE in 1632 is in a position somewhat like that of Russia during World War II, and therefore has an incentive to look at sources of natural rubber which, while they may not be economical in the long run, are less susceptible to disruption by enemy action.
CE mentions several rubber plants which grow in temperate regions: guayule, goldenrod (studied by Edison, it notes), and Russian dandelion. There is no reference in any of the "rubber"
entries to milkweed, but I believe that it is reasonable to a.s.sume that Grantville residents would know that it exudes a latex when cut.
Guayule isn"t likely to grow in northern Europe, and there are problems with obtaining guayule and Russian dandelion for planting purposes, so I expect that the domestic rubber production, if any, will be based on milkweed or goldenrod.
Milkweed Over 100 species of milkweed are found in the United States. At least thirteen of them are native to West Virginia. The Monarch is the West Virginia state b.u.t.terfly, and it lays its eggs on milkweeds. Thus, it is quite likely that milkweeds were actually cultivated in Grantville gardens, before the Ring of Fire, in order to attract Monarchs. But even if that was not the case, we can expect that milkweeds, being hardy and abundant roadside, thicket and pasture plants, accompanied the up-timers on their involuntary voyage to seventeenth-century Thuringia.
How many? We can make an estimate using USDA wild milkweed density data: 0.027 to 0.039/m2 (Maryland), 1.052/m2 (Wisconsin), and 3.604/m2 (Ontario), all for nonagricultural land. If the Ring of Fire had a three mile radius, then that is an area of about 28 square miles, or about 72,500,000 square meters. If half of that area were nonagricultural, with milkweed at the lowest density quoted-0.027-that would still add up to almost 1,000,000 plants.
Milkweeds have several advantages as a source of rubber. First and foremost, they will grow in the USE; we don"t have to worry about running overseas milkweed rubber plantations. They are also extremely hardy; well suited for machine harvesting because the stalks grow tall and erect (Whiting, 24); and productive of other useful materials (see below) besides rubber. Finally, their rubber is equivalent in quality to Para rubber.
Their princ.i.p.al disadvantage is their relative low rubber productivity. Also, the rubber cannot be harvested without killing the plant, while Hevea trees can be tapped for several years. This second disadvantage is somewhat offset by the rapid growth rate of milkweed; the harvested plants will be quickly replaced, certainly by the following year.
The Russians experimented with A. syriaca during the Second World War, and they reported an annual yield of 100-150 kilograms of rubber per hectare, from a crop of two tons of leaves.
(The rubber content is highest in the leaves, especially mature ones.) The necessary seed was about four to five kilograms per hectare. Of course, the up-timers are going to have to learn all this the hard way.
Because of its relatively low rubber yield, milkweed rubber never became a commercial product. However, the labor costs of producing it are somewhat offset by the possibility of extracting a second useful product from the crop. In 1746, Germans began using the seed hairs (floss) as padding material. In 1918, it was suggested that it could be used as a subst.i.tute for kapok, a silky fiber, with excellent buoyancy, used for stuffing and insulation. (Whiting) During World War II, Americans collected 11 million kilograms of pods, filling 1.2 million "Mae West"
life jackets (Witt). About 24% of the pod is floss. The reported average annual yield of floss from wild milkweed is, depending on who you ask, 187-349 (Witt), 550 (Whiting) or 1,368 (Duke) kilograms per hectare.
Harvesting the widely scattered wild milkweeds would not be productive. However, we can collect their seeds, and then plant them in rows. Each stalk has four to six seed pods, each pod contains, on average, 220 viable seeds. One hundred seeds weigh about 42-73 milligrams.
(DeGooyer) Based on the Russian seeding data, we need about 100,000 seeds per hectare-the seed production of 1,000 stalks. The first plot would probably be an experimental plot where the up-timers experiment with different s.p.a.cings, seed times, fertilizers, and so on. They would begin production farming in the second year.
The up-timers don"t know which parts of the milkweed plant have the highest rubber content, so they will have to find this out by trial and error. The leaves provide more rubber than the stems; yellowing leaves provide more than young leaves, and autumn leaves provide more than spring or summer leaves.
Milkweed latex has a fairly high resin content (perhaps 9-23%). Several methods of recovering the rubber were developed in the old timeline. Ka.s.sner treated the latex first with benzene or carbon disulfide, and then with alcohol and caustic lye. After each solvent addition, he distilled. The rubber was the final residue. Hall and Long used boiling acetone, followed by boiling benzene. Students in a modern introductory organic chemistry lab used acetone to extract various impurities and then cyclohexane to extract the rubber. (Whiting, 20-23; Volaric) None of this will be known in Grantville. Up-timers will probably first try a simple hot water treatment of chopped-up plant material. If they don"t like the properties of the rubber, they will probably then just experiment with different solvents until they get results that they like.
Of course, organic solvents are going to be in short supply until we can extract the necessary compounds from coal or oil. The most readily available organic solvents will be ethanol and acetic acid. And any solvent treatment step is going to increase production costs.
It may be possible to cure the resin content problem at its source by breeding milkweed for low resin content (this of course a.s.sumes that you have a way of measuring resin content!). I have also come across a hint that in the 1930"s, the Russians found a method of chemically treating the plant so that it produced latex with more rubber and less resin. (Whiting, 18) Goldenrod Thomas Edison devoted the last four years of his life (1927-31) to an attempt to develop a method of producing rubber from domestic plants. Edison ultimately settled on the goldenrod, because "it would grow in most parts of the country, it grew to maturity in just one season, and it could be harvested by machines." He increased goldenrod rubber production several-fold by breeding methods, although his technique was not "cutting edge" (Vanderbilt 316) and could certainly be improved upon by a modern breeder with access to a variety of material.
Goldenrods originated in Europe. There are about two dozen species of goldenrods found in the wild in West Virginia, and thus, presumably, in the land transported by the a.s.siti shard. Since goldenrod is an ornamental plant, there may be additional varieties in Grantville gardens. We can collect the latex from as many different species as we can find, and decide which species is the best rubber producer. Edison preferred Solidago rugosa and Solidago leavenworthii, but this would not be known in Grantville. Nor will anyone know what to expect in terms of yield, unless someone has an informative Edison biography in his or her personal library. (Edison"s results are set forth in Table 2.) Likewise, it will be necessary to reinvent the methods developed by Edison for harvesting the plants (he wanted to just collect the upper leaves, since they have the highest rubber content) and for recovering the rubber from the latex (he used acetone to pull out the resin, and then benzene or benzol to extract the rubber). The solvents can be recycled. (Baldwin, 398; Vanderbilt, 313) My thinking is that goldenrod will be grown and harvested primarily as a source of yellow dye, with any rubber production being strictly a bonus. The trick will be to identify a variety that is a good dye source and a good latex source.
Rubber Reclaiming In 1910, when the price of rubber was high, about half of all of the rubber sold was reclaimed.
(Reschner) Rubber is going to be in high demand, and the only immediately available source of rubber is sc.r.a.p rubber. Since more than half of all modern rubber goes into tires, the latter are also the foremost source of sc.r.a.p. An automobile tire weighs about twenty pounds. Of this, about 60% is recoverable rubber. (tfhrc.gov). A truck tire weighs twice as much as an automobile tire, and has a proportionate rubber content.
The residents of Grantville are likely to look first at tires that have been discarded or set aside. These may be in dumps, landfills, garages, backyards, and so forth. The rule of thumb is that modern Americans generate sc.r.a.p rubber at a rate of one pa.s.senger tire equivalent per person per year.
Unfortunately, there is a catch. Grantville is based on the real town of Mannington, West Virginia . . . and its dump was not within the Ring of Fire (Boatright, Grantville Gazette, Vol. 1).
So we have to hope that the GV residents were not efficient about setting out their used tires for pickup.
There may also be small amounts of rubber that can be recovered from rubber goods that are no longer useable for their original purpose. Personally, I think that is going to be a real small supply.