The thief at the end of the world : rubber, power, and the seeds of empire
"At the height of the Victorian era, Henry Wickham - a man with no formal education, little funding, and limited experience - went adventuring in the darkest jungles of Venezuela and Brazil. He had learned of a particular kind of rubber tree that produced the strong and durable rubber that scientists and entrepreneurs in England craved. After repeated brushes with death, disease, and madness that awaited the unwary in the Amazon valley, he emerged exhausted, ragged, and transformed, with 70,000 illegally obtained rubber tree seeds. It was the first case of massive biopiracy in the modern era, and it would change the world." "The Thief at the End of the World is the story of the use and misuse of nature in the quest for global dominance, and of how one ordinary man's obsessions drove him to extraordinary lengths. Wickham's seeds were transported successfully to London's famous Kew Gardens, and biologists there quickly shipped them off to colonial outposts throughout the far-flung British Empire. Within a few years, those seeds produced the trees that yielded the rubber used in everything from trains and airplanes to condoms and baby bottles. It is no exaggeration to say that rubber was the oil of its day - an incredibly valuable resource found in only a few remote places that powerful governments would go to great lengths to get their hands on." "Henry Wickham and his wife Violet were gradually shut out of the wealth and glory of the rubber boom by the very government they had hoped to serve, and they wandered further and further from the new world they had helped to create. Joe Jackson draws from their letters and journals and the innumerable records left behind to paint a vivid, fascinating portrait of the man known in Great Britain as "the father of the rubber trade" and in Brazil as the "Executioner of Amazonas."" "Ultimately, Wickham's tale is also the story of Victorian England's adventures in the Amazon with all the characteristics of the era: idealistic patriotism, ambitious colonialism, and a colossal greed rivaled only by fanatic industry."--Jacket
History
414 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm
9780670018536, 0670018538
141482653
Prologue : Henry's dream
The need
The fortunate son
Nature belongs to man
The new world
The mortal river
Instruments of the elastic god
The source
The return of the planter
The jungle
The seeds
The voyage of the Amazonas
The world
The edge of the world
The talking cross
Rubber madness
The vindicated man
Epilogue : the monument of need
Appendices
Glossary
Bibliography
Endnotes
Acknowledgments