1493_ Uncovering the New World Columbus Created - Charles C. Mann [266]
41 1,325 acres: Contract between Ban Namma village and Huipeng Rubber, shown to author.
42 Wickham’s life: Jackson 2008; Lane 1953–54 (later appearance, pt. 9:7). Jackson, who found Wickham’s wife’s journal, movingly recounts the family’s sufferings.
43 Markham and cinchona: Honigsbaum 2001.
44 Markham, Wickham, and rubber seeds: Jackson 2008:chaps. 8–9 (abandoning relatives, 187; cold reception, 199–202); Hemming 2008:191–95; Dean 1987:7–24 (Wickham’s carelessness, 24); Baldwin 1968; Markham 1876 (“permanent supply,” 476).
45 Wickham as thief (text and footnote): Jackson 2008:188–93; Dean 1987:22–24 (“century and a half,” 23; “human species,” 22); Santos 1980:230 note (“international law”), 232.
46 Rubber in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia: Jackson 2008:204–05, 265–73; Dean 1987:26–31; Lane 1953–54:pt. 7, 6–7; Large 1940:196–207; Nietner 1880:3 (Sri Lanka coffee industry), 23 (“escaped it,” quoting G. H. K. Thwaites); Berkeley 1869 (“three acres,” 1157). For simplicity’s sake I use modern names—Sri Lanka instead of Ceylon, Malaysia instead of Malaya, and so on.
47 Creation of Fordlândia: Grandin 2009:77–119; Hemming 2008:265–67; Jackson 2008:291–98; Costa 1993:13–17, 21–24, 59–65; Dean 1987:70–76; Davis 1996:338–39. Strictly speaking, Ford did not buy the land but an exclusive concession on it plus a fifty-year tax exemption. Including tires, every car had about eighty pounds of rubber (Costa 1993:133).
48 M. ulei.: Money 2006:83–100; Lieberei 2007. I am grateful to Charles Clement for taking me to see some infected trees. The life cycle of the fungus is more complex than my brief summary indicates. For a typical view of the blight at the time, see Schurz et al. 1925:101.
49 Weir, blight, end of Ford’s project: Grandin 2009:304–31; Costa 1993:102–06, 127 (Asian percentages); Dean 1987:75–86, 104–07; Agreement for the Regulation of Production and Export of Rubber, 7 May 1934. In International Labour Office 1943:104–12 (“plant,” 110).
50 Natural vs. synthetic rubber: Author’s interviews, Rubber Manufacturers Association, Bryan Coughlin; author’s visit (condom factory); Davis 1998:134–36.
51 Xishuangbanna: Author’s interviews, Tang Jianwei (XTBC), Hu Zhaoyang (Tropical Crops Research Institute); Nicholas Menzies (UCLA); Mann 2009; Sturgeon and Menzies 2008; Stone 2008; Visnawathan 2007; Xu 2006; Shapiro 2001:171–85 (“criticism meetings,” 176); Zhang and Cao 1995 (biodiversity). Tang estimates that the planted area in 2008 was about 2,500 square miles. As Spurgeon and Menzies note (2008), the government regarded the Dai and Akha as irrational, backward, and potentially disloyal. The “educated youth” were Han Chinese, who were thought to have the necessary cultural advancement to produce a modern industrial good like latex. By importing Han workers, the government hoped both to produce needed rubber and to “settle” a crucial border with loyal citizens.
52 Expansion into Laos: Author’s interviews and e-mails, Jefferson Fox (East-West Center, Hawaii), Yayoi Fujita (University of Chicago), Horst Weyerhaeuser (National Agricultural and Forestry Research Institute, Vientiane), Klaus Goldnick and Weiyi Shi (GTZ, Luang Namtha), Yunxia Li (Macquarie University). Shi 2008 (subsidies); Fujita 2008 (Sing District); Vongkhamor et al. 2007 (2010 total, 6); Fujita et al. 2006; Rutherford et al. 2008:15–16. Sing District covers more than six hundred square miles, but most of it is unusably steep and roadless.
53 Increase in runoff, erosion, water depletion: Ziegler et al. 2009; Guardiola-Claramonte et al. 2008; Stone 2008; Cao et al. 2006 (fog); Wu et al. 2001. See also, Mann 2009.
54 Flights, highway: Fuller 2008; author’s visit, interviews with airlines in Bangkok and Vientiane. The road is only two lanes, but that’s more than ever before in the region.
55 Potential M. ulei disaster, lack of progress on blight: U.S. Department of Defense