A history of the modern world told through the multiple lives of
rubber
Capital, as Marx once wrote, comes into the world "dripping from head to
foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt." He might well have been
describing the long, grim history of rubber. 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--industrial machinery, telegraph technology, medical
equipment, countless consumer goods--have occurred against a backdrop of
seemingly endless exploitation, conquest, slavery, and war. But Tully is
quick to remind us that the vast terrain of rubber production has always
been a site of struggle, and that the oppressed who toil closest to "the
devil's milk" in all its forms have never accepted their immiseration
without a fight.
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.
