Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-03T19:17:26.678Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The end of red rubber: a reassessment1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Robert Harms
Robert Harms
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The African rubber boom, which lasted from 1890 to 1913, had a significant economic and political impact on many parts of Africa. While the broad outlines of the boom were determined by the world market, the numerous local and regional variations were influenced more by the depletion of the rubber supplies. The factors that influenced the depletion varied according to whether the region in question was a free trade area or a concession area.

The end of the notorious concession companies in the Congo Independent State has generally been attributed to the efforts of English and Belgian reformers. Recent research on Abir, a major Congo concession company, has revealed that attempts at reform were ineffective, and that exhaustion of the of the rubber supplies had caused the rubber system in the Abir concession to break down by 1906, when serious debate on the Congo question was just beginning in Europe.

The article shows how the Abir system, which was designed to constantly increase production, led to depletion of the rubber resources. When the depleted areas merged, the territory passed into a period of crisis during which Abir lost control and production plummeted. Production figures for other Congo concession companies suggest that events in their territories followed a similar pattern.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , January 1975 , pp. 73 - 88
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

2 Hopkins, A. G. has made a similar point with regard to palm oil production in West Africa in An Economic History of West Africa (London, 1973), 125–6.Google Scholar

3 Suret-Canale, Jean, La République de Guinée (Paris, 1970), 101Google Scholar; Childs, Gladwyn, Umbundu Kinship and Character (London, 1949), 208Google Scholar; Dumett, Raymond, ‘The Rubber Trade of the Gold Coast and Asante in the Nineteenth Century’,.J. Afr. Hist., XII, 1 (1971), 79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lauer, Joseph, ‘Economic Innovations among the Doo of Western Ivory Coast, 1900–1960’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1973), 55.Google Scholar

4 Henry, Yves, Le caoutchouc dans l’Afrique occidentale française (Paris, 1906), 30Google Scholar; Tetzlaff, Rainer, Koloniale Entwicklung und Ausbeutung (Berlin, 1970), 71Google Scholar; Christy, Cuthbert, The African Rubber Industry and Funtumia Elastica (London, 1911), 10.Google Scholar

5 Woodruff, William, The Rise of the British Rubber Industry during the Nineteenth Century (Liverpool, 1958), 68–74.Google Scholar

6 Asian rubber also ruined the growing plantation rubber industry in German East Africa, where plantation production had surpassed wild production by 1909. 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 Hill, J. F. R. and Moffett, J. P., Tanganyika: A Review of its Resources and their Development (Govt. of Tanganyika, 1955), 460–1Google Scholar; Tetzlaff, , Koloniale Entwicklung, 123–30Google Scholar; Iliffe, John, Tanganyika under German Rule 1905–1912 (Cambridge, 1969), 100–1, 140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Christy, , Rubber Industry, 2, 10, 18Google Scholar; Henry, , Caoutchouc, 77–8.Google Scholar

8 Arhin, Kwame, ‘The Ashanti Rubber Trade with the Gold Coast in the Eighteen Nineties’, Africa, XLII (1972), 33Google Scholar; Dumett, , ‘Rubber Trade’, 91–8Google Scholar; Lauer, , ‘Economic Innovation’, 54.Google Scholar

9 Henry, , Caoutchouc, 85.Google Scholar

10 Coquery-Vidrovitch, Catherine, Le Congo au temps des grandes compagnies concessionnaires, 1898–1930 (Paris, 1972), 424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Miller, Joseph, ‘Cokwe Trade and Conquest in the Nineteenth Century’, in Precolonial African Trade, ed. Gray, Richard and Birmingham, David (London, 1970), 186–7Google Scholar; Henry, , Caoutchouc, 77–8, 85.Google Scholar

12 Dumett, , ‘Rubber Trade’, 86, 100Google Scholar; Henry, , Caoutchouc, 62.Google Scholar

13 Coquery-Vidrovitch, , Le Congo, 180–3.Google Scholar

14 Coquery-Vidrovitch, , Le Congo, 288–94, 432.Google Scholar

15 Louis, William Roger, ‘The Triumph of the Congo Reform Movement’, Boston University Papers on Africa (Boston, 1966), 11, 300.Google Scholar

16 Stengers, Jean, ‘The Congo Free State and the Belgian Congo’, in Colonialism in Africa, ed. Gann, Lewis H. and Duignan, Peter (Cambridge, 1969), 1, 270–1.Google Scholar

17 This research has drawn on the previously untapped De Ryck Collection of Zaire Colonial Documents, housed at Memorial Library, the University of Wisconsin.

18 Waltz, Heinrich, Das Konzessionswesen im Belgischen Kongo (Jena, 1917), 11, 372–3Google Scholar; Van Eetvelde to Lemaire, 12/2/1892, in Vandervelde, Emile, La Belgique et le Congo (Paris, 1911), 44.Google Scholar Abir was founded as the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber and Exploration Company, and commonly used the abbreviation A.B.I.R. When the company was reorganized in 1898, all British capital was withdrawn and the company dropped the name ‘Anglo-Belgian India Rubber and Exploration Company’, taking instead the shorter name ‘Abir’, which was simply a name and no longer an abbreviation. In this article I have consistently used the spelling ‘Abir’.

19 Frost to Morel, in Morel, E. D., King Leopold's Rule in Africa (London, 1904), 434Google Scholar; Special Congo Supplement to the West African Mail (01 1905), 239.Google Scholar

20 Casement, Roger, Correspondence and Report from His Majesty's Consul at Boma Respecting the Administration of the Independent State of the Congo (Africa No. 1, 1904), 45Google Scholar; Congo Supplement (02 1905), 251Google Scholar; Abir circular no. 36, in Mille, Pierre, Le Congo Léopoldien (Paris, 1906), 165.Google Scholar

21 Regions Beyond (1894), 187–8Google Scholar; letters from missionaries printed in Morel, Rule, 161, 437, 440.Google Scholar

22 Mouvement Géographique (1906), 542Google Scholar; Archives africaines, Brussels, IRCB (722), 73/1.

23 Plas, J. and Pourbaix, Victor, Les Sociétés Commerciales Belges et le Régime Economique et Fiscal de l'Etat Indépendant du Congo (Brussels, 1899), 136–7.Google Scholar

24 Casement, Report, 45Google Scholar; Plas, and Pourbaix, , Sociétés Commerciales, 71.Google Scholar

25 Abir's dividends and profits for 1900 are given in Cattier, Felicien, Etude sur la situation de l'Etat Indépendant du Congo (Brussels, 1906), 194.Google Scholar Abir's rubber exports for that year were calculated from notices appearing irregularly in Mouvement Géographique. I arrived at Abir's contribution to the State by adding the State's share of Abir's dividends to the two per cent tax on Abir's profits and 0.50 franc duty per kilo of rubber exported. The total State income is difficult to calculate accurately. The figures that I used were budgetary estimates listed in the Bulletin Officiel, not actual income. Jean Stengers has shown that actual revenue generally exceeded the estimates (Louis, William Roger and Stengers, Jean, E. D. Morel's History of the Congo Reform Movement (Oxford, 1968), 261–2).Google Scholar The estimated revenue for 1900, about twenty-six million Belgian francs, included a two million franc advance from the Belgian treasury, a million francs from King Leopold II, and 700,000 francs from the Domaine de la Couronne.

26 Burrows, Guy, The Curse of Central Africa (London, 1903), 78–80.Google Scholar

27 Van Eetvelde to Abir, 28 Oct. 1893, in Waltz, , Konzessionswesen, 11, 373.Google Scholar

28 Plas, and Pourbaix, , Sociétés Commerciales, 17Google Scholar; Mouvement Géographique (1905), 16.Google Scholar

29 Allart, M. J. B., Etat Indépendant du Congo, 1898–1901. Extrait du Recueil Consulaire Belge (Brussels, 1903), 25Google Scholar; Mouvement Géographique (1902), 326Google Scholar; Singleton-Gates, Peter and Girodias, Maurice, The Black Diaries. An Account of Roger Casement's Life and Times with a Collection of His Diaries and Public Writings (New York, 1959), 163Google Scholar; Congo Supplement (02 1905), 257–60.Google Scholar

30 Procès-Verbal, of 25 10 1904Google Scholar, in Zaire Colonial Documents: De Ryck collection of material on general administration, Equateur, Kivu, and Ruanda-Urundi (Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin), file 6/1/4.

31 Details of mission-State relations up to 1903 can be found in Lagergren, David, Mission and State in the Congo (Uppsala, 1970).Google Scholar

32 Morel, E. D., Affairs of West Africa (London, 1902), 338.Google Scholar

33 Casement, Report, 51–2Google Scholar; Casement to Vice Governor-General, 4 Sept. 1903, in Congo Supplement (07, 1904), 105–6.Google Scholar

34 Congo Reform Association (henceforth C.R.A.), Evidence Laid before the Commission of Inquiry (Liverpool, 1905), 70.Google Scholar

35 Stannard to Morel, , 4 04 1905Google Scholar, in C.R.A., Evidence, 71Google Scholar; Harris, to Morel, , in Official Organ of the Congo Reform Association (01 1906), 11Google Scholar; Stannard to Morel, in Congo Supplement (10 1905), 405.Google Scholar

36 Wahis to Smets, 19 Jan. 1906 and 26 Jan. 1906, Zaire Colonial Documents, file 6/1/4.

37 Congo Supplement (01 1905), 236Google Scholar; Harris testimony, in C.R.A., Evidence, 22Google Scholar; Padfield to Morel, in Official Organ (01 1906), 2.Google Scholar

38 Harris and Padfield to Morel, in Morel, E. D., Great Britain and the Congo (London, 1909), 101.Google Scholar

39 Harris to Vice Governor-General, 17 Jan. 1905, in C.R.A. Evidence, 67.Google Scholar

40 ‘Rapport de la Commission d'Enquête’, Bulletin Officiel (1905), 200.Google Scholar

41 Tableau des Impositions Rentrées, Zaire Colonial Documents, file 6/1/5.

42 Details of these events can be found in Congo Supplement (07 1905), 344Google Scholar; Official Organ (12 1905), 19Google Scholar; (Jan. 1906), 2, 7–9, 11; (Feb. 1906), 7; Regions Beyond (1906), 256Google Scholar; Tableau.

43 Abir to State Prosecutor, 20 May 1906, Zaire Colonial Documents, file 6/1/4; Regions Beyond (1906), 289, 294Google Scholar; E. Boelaert, L'Abir (typescript), 29, in Zaire Colonial Documents, file 6/1/1.

44 Regions Beyond (1906), 319.Google Scholar

45 Ruskin to Morel, , in Official Organ (12 1905), 14Google Scholar; Tableau; Casement, , Report, 49.Google Scholar

46 Mountmorres, Viscount, The Congo Independent State. A Report on a Voyage of Enquiry (London, 1906) 46Google Scholar; Archives africaine, IRCB (722) 73/1.

47 Mouvement Géographique (1906), 542Google Scholar; Cattier, Félicien, Etude sur la situation de l'Etat Indépendant du Congo (Brussels, 1906), 194.Google Scholar

48 Bulletin Officiel (1906), 345.Google Scholar At that time rubber commanded 13·5 francs per kilo at Antwerp. See Mouvement Géographique (1907), 8.Google Scholar

49 Official Organ (06, 1907), 118.Google Scholar

50 Boelaert, , L'Abir, 30; Regions Beyond (1909), 82Google Scholar; Official Organ (06, 1907), 25Google Scholar; Vandervelde, Emile, Les Derniers Jours de L'Etat du Congo (Mons, 1909), 167.Google Scholar

51 Waltz, , Konzessionswesen, 11, 350–372Google Scholar; Mouvement Géographique (1906), 542Google Scholar; Casement, , Report, 44.Google Scholar

52 Abeele, Marcel Van Den and Vandenput, Rene, Les Principales Cultures du Congo Belge (Brussels, 1951), 384.Google Scholar At about the same time, plantations of hevea trees imported from Southeast Asia were being established in Oriental Province, Equator Province, and the Sankuru region by various private groups. Although these plantations produced rubber that could compete favourably with the Asian product, their production did not become significant until the 1940s.