Devil’s Milk

A Social History of Rubber

John Tully

From the early stages of primitive accumulation to the heights of the industrial revolution and beyond, rubber is one of a handful of commodities that has played a crucial role in shaping the modern world, and yet, as John Tully shows in this remarkable book, laboring people around the globe have every reason to regard it as “the devil’s milk.” All the advancements made possible by rubber have occurred against a backdrop of seemingly endless exploitation, conquest, slavery, and war. This book, the product of exhaustive scholarship carried out in many countries and several continents, is destined to become a classic. Tully tells the story of humanity’s long encounter with rubber in a kaleidoscopic narrative that regards little as outside its range without losing sight of the commodity in question. With the skill of a master historian and the elegance of a novelist, he presents what amounts to a history of the modern world told through the multiple lives of rubber.

Contents

INTRODUCTION
Why a Book on Rubber?
The Muscles and Sinews of Industrial Society

PART ONE
From the sacred essence of life to the muscles and sinews of industrial society
1. Rubber in Mesoamerican Civilizations
2. Rubber in the Industrial Revolution
3. The Dark Side of the Rubber Revolution

PART TWO
Wild rubber: a primitive “mode of extraction”
4. The Amazon Rubber Boom
5. The Lives of the Seringueiros
6. There is No Sin Beyond the Equator
7. Heart of Darkness: Rubber and Blood on the Congo
8. Gutta-Percha, Telegraphs, Imperialism, and Ecology

PART THREE
Monopoly capitalism in Akron
9. “Rubber’s Home Town”
10. The 1913 IWW Strike at Akron
11. Sisters, Brothers, Unite!
The Rubber Workers’ Union in Akron

PART FOUR
Plantation hevea: agribusiness and imperialism
12. The Triumph of Plantation Hevea
13. The Planters’ World
14. The Coolie Diaspora
15. The Coolies’ World
16. Coolie Revolts

PART FIVE
Synthetic rubber, war and autarky
17. The Long Road to Monowitz
18. Monowitz: “A Bulwark of Germandom”
19. The Only Way Out Is Up the Chimney
20. The Allied Struggle for Rubber in the Second World War
21. War Is Good for Business

EPILOGUE
Rubber in the Postwar World

BIBLIOGRAPHY
NOTES
INDEX

About the Author

John Tully is lecturer in politics and history at Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia.