The Thief at the End of the World

by Joe Jackson

  229. “When I arrived there he had just lost the sight of one eye” William Miller, “A Journey from British Honduras to Santa Cruz, Yucatan, with a map,” Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography, vol. 11, no. 1 (Jan. 1889), p. 27. The handwritten copy of this article, with changes and a map, are preserved in the Archives of the Royal Geographical Society, London, JMS/5/74: received July 1888.

  229. “[T]he governor, fearing a raid by the Santa Cruz Indians” Lane, “The Life and Work of Sir Henry Wickham: Part VI—Pioneering in British Honduras,” p. 18.

  230. The Cross sat in the center in profound darkness Reed, The Caste War of Yucatan, p. 266. The description of the Ceremony of the Cross is culled from the accounts of several witnesses over the years.

  231. “Alas . . . back came [Henry’s] old longing for plantation life” Violet Wickham, “Lady Wickham’s Diary,” p. 11.

  231. Five houses were located on the Temash River British Honduras, Report and Results of the Census of the Colony of British Honduras, taken April 5th, 1891 (London: Waterlow & Sons, 1892), p. 11. Archives of the Institute of Colonial Studies, University of London.

  231-32. “as the man who brought the rubber seeds from the Amazon” National Archives, Kew, Colonial Office and Predecessors: British Honduras, Original Correspondence 1744-1951, “Mr. H. A. Wickham’s Temash Concession, (Pleadings in court case),” 1892. CO 123/200.

  232. “value to the extent of $10,000 to consist of India Rubber trees” Lane, “The Life and Work of Sir Henry Wickham: Part VI—Pioneering in British Honduras,” p. 19.

  232. In 1889-90, fever swept through Belize Bristowe, Handbook of British Honduras for 1891-1892, pp. 30-31.

  232. “maliciously fabricating false reports to the detriment of the colony” Ibid., p. 33.

  232. “as nearly as possible died” Violet Wickham, “Lady Wickham’s Diary,” p. 11.

  232. “He lived contentedly enough” Ibid., p. 12.

  233. the editor was ordered to pay court costs Bristowe, Handbook of British Honduras for 1891-1892, p. 33.

  233. the sale or lease of land to small settlers like Henry Swayne, “British Honduras,” p. 170.

  233. his account books showed a monthly balance between $13 and $47.96 Lane, “The Life and Work of Sir Henry Wickham: Part VI—Pioneering in British Honduras,” p. 18.

  234. His replacement, Sir C. Alfred Maloney, made twelve thousand pounds Bristowe, Handbook of British Honduras for 1891-1892, p. 13.

  234. “honest men, as a rule, [kept] aloof ” Clegern, British Honduras, Colonial Dead End, 1859-1900, p. 80, quoting the Colonial Guardian of October 4, 1890.

  235. “great and rare experience” National Archives, Kew, Colonial Office and Predecessors: British Honduras, Original Correspondence 1744-1951, “Mr. H. A. Wickham’s Temash Concession, (Pleadings in court case).”

  235. In 1892, Victoria had been on the throne for fifty-five years Hector Bolitho, ed., Further Letters of Queen Victoria: From the Archives of the House of Brandenburg-Prussia, trans. Mrs. J. Pudney and Lord Sudley (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1971, first printed 1938), pp. 259-261.

  235. Victoria understood perfectly the importance of her colonies Lytton Strachey, Queen Victoria (London: Penguin, 1971, first published 1921), pp. 236-242.

  236. “Let Justice be done. Victoria R. & I” Lane, “The Life and Work of Sir Henry Wickham: Part VI—Pioneering in British Honduras,” p. 19.

  Chapter 12: Rubber Madness

  237. on September 7, the courts awarded him $14,500 in damages” National Archives, Kew, Colonial Office and Predecessors: British Honduras, Original Correspondence 1744-1951, “State of Wickham’s Case,” 1893. CO 123/281.

  237. A hurricane hammered the colony that summer National Archives, Kew, Colonial Office and Predecessors: British Honduras, Original Correspondence 1744-1951, “Damage Caused by Gale,” 1893. CO 123/204.

  237. “His keen analytical mind and authoritarian manner” Lane, “The Life and Work of Sir Henry Wickham: Part VII—The Conflict Islands and New Guinea,” India Rubber Journal, vol. 126 (Jan. 16, 1954), p. 10.

  238. “appalling roughness . . . I have encountered nowhere such difficulties as in New Guinea” Henry O. Forbes, “British New Guinea as a Colony,” Blackwoods Magazine, vol. 152 (July 1892), p. 85.

  238. “great and salubrious ‘Treasure Island’ ” Ibid., p. 82.

  238. on the island of Samarai Arthur Watts Allen, “The Occupational Adventures of an Observant Nomad,” an unpublished memoir written by Allen and kept in the care of David Harris and Jenepher Allen Harris. The author has not seen the book, which is apparently uncopied and in fragile shape, but the Harrises described its contents in detail in an e-mail message dated December 30, 2006.

  239. “like the Cocos Islands, in the Indian Ocean” J. Douglas, “Notes on a Recent Cruise through the Louisiade Group of Islands,” Transactions of the Royal Geographical Society of Australia, Victorian Branch, vol. 5, part 1 (March 1888), p. 55.

  239. The islands varied in size The description of the islands and central lagoon is found in “The Conflict Islands,” www.conflictislands.net.

  239. “business is a dirty one but profitable” Quoted in Bolton, A Thousand Miles Away, p. 141.

  240. Sir William Macgregor “MacGregor, Sir William,” www.electricscotland.com.

  240. According to a tale told to distant relatives Arthur Watts Allen, “The Occupational Adventures of an Observant Nomad,” Chapter 1.

  241. “This gentleman has been making trial of the sponges” Lane, “The Life and Work of Sir Henry Wickham: Part VII—The Conflict Islands and New Guinea, ” p. 8.

  241. “roughly ceiled to make a loft or sleeping place” Violet Wickham, “Lady Wickham’s Diary,” p. 12.

  242. First there were spongesThe Sponging Industry, A booklet of the Exhibition of Historical Documents held at the Public Records Office (Nassau, Bahamas: Public Records Office, 1974), Archives of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London.

  242. This was planting coconut palms, from which he sold copra “Coconuts and Copra,” www.msstarship.com/sciencenew.

  243. “Then they turn it on its back” Violet Wickham, “Lady Wickham’s Diary,” p. 12.

  243. “not a locality where anyone would, or could, work Mother-of-Pearl” Lane, “The Life and Work of Sir Henry Wickham: Part VII—The Conflict Islands and New Guinea, ” p. 9.

  244. “During the whole time of my sojourn there” Violet Wickham, “Lady Wickham’s Diary,” p. 12.

  244. “We expected to be respected, have privileges, be superior” Colonist Judy Tudor is quoted in James A. Boutilier, “European Women in the Solomon Islands, 1900-1942: Accommodation and Change on the Pacific Frontier,” in Rethinking Women’s Roles: Perspectives from the Pacific, Denise O’Brien and Sharon W. Tiffany, eds. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984), p. 181; also, Chilla Bulbeck, Staying in Line or Getting Out of Place: The Experiences of Expatriate Women in Papua New Guinea 1920-1960:

  Issues of Race and Gender (London: Sir Robert Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, 1988), Working Papers in Australian Studies, no. 35.

  244. “shaped like the claws of a crab” Basil H. Thomson, “New Guinea: Narrative of an Exploring Expedition to the Louisiade and D’Entrecasteaux Islands,” Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography, vol. 11, no. 9 (Sept. 1889), p. 527.

  244. “I did not come in contact with their family life” Violet Wickham, “Lady Wickham’s Diary,” p. 12.

  245. “boy-proof ” sleeping rooms, enclosed in heavy chicken wire Bulbeck, Staying in Line or Getting Out of Place, p. 8.

  245. “a few Government weatherboard buildings” Forbes, “British New Guinea as a Colony,” pp. 91-92.

  245. “we woke to find our boys had gone off with one of the boats” Violet Wickham, “Lady Wickham’s Diary,” p. 13.

  246. cannibal tales served as
an “agenda” Frank Lestringant, Cannibals: The Discovery and Representation of the Cannibal from Columbus to Jules Verne (Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 28-29.

  246. As late as 1901, the missionary James Chalmers Diane Langmore, “James Chalmers: Missionary,” in Papua New Guinea Portraits: The Expatriate Experience, ed. James Griffin (Canberra, Australia: Australian National University Press, 1978), p. 24.

  247. North American rubber imports jumped . . . half of all the rubber produced in the world Michael Edward Stanfield, Red Rubber, Bleeding Trees: Violence, Slavery and Empire in Northwest Amazonia, 1850-1933 (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1998), pp. 20-21.

  247. £14 million in rubber that came down the Rio Negro Collier, The River that God Forgot, p. 18.

  248. “I ought to have chosen rubber” Ibid., p. 19.

  248. The “trade gun” became notorious Coates, The Commerce in Rubber, pp. 139-140.

  249. an estimated 131,000-149,000 men were tapping from 21.4 million hevea trees Bradford L. Barham and Oliver T. Coomes. “Wild Rubber: Industrial Organisation and the Microeconomics of Extraction During the Amazon Rubber Boom (1860-1920),” Journal of Latin American Studies (Feb. 1994), vol. 26, no. 1, p. 41.

  249. the average tapper produced about 1,750 pounds a year Charles H. Townsend, Report on the Brazilian Rubber Situation (Belterra, Pará, Brazil, May 17, 1958), p. 3. Other sources estimated that, based on a 100-day season, the average tapper would harvest 550-660 pounds of rubber (Barham and Coomes, “Wild Rubber,” p. 45); J. Oakenfull, Brazil in 1912 (London: Robert Atkinson, 1913), p. 189.

  249. A January 1899 report by the U.S. Consul in ParáU.S. Consular Reports, vol. 59, no. 220 (Jan. 1899), p. 70.

  249. Death rates as high as 50 percent were recorded Barham and Coomes, “Wild Rubber,” pp. 10, 36ff.

  250. “400 tame Mundurucu Indians” Barbara Weinstein, “The Persistance of Precapitalist Relations of Production in a Tropical Export Economy: The Amazon Rubber Trade, 1850-1920,” in Michael Hanagan and Charles Stephenson, ed., Proletarians and Protest: the Roots of Class Formation in an Industrializing World (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986), pp. 2-3.

  250. “model, prosperous plantation” Eugene C. Harter, The Lost Colony of the Confederacy (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1985), p. 28.

  250. “I have made enough to live well on” Ibid.

  251. in 1884, he planted rubber, and by 1910, this had grown J. T. Baldwin, “David Riker and Hevea brasiliensis; the Taking of Rubber Seeds out of the Amazon,” Economic Botany 22 (Oct-Dec., 1968), p. 384; Harter, The Lost Colony of the Confederacy, pp. 28-29.

  251. Tapajós Pará Rubber Forests Ltd. National Archives, Kew, “Articles of Association, Tapajós Pará Rubber Forests Ltd.,” BT 31/8165/59032.

  251. an economic expansion so rapid and comprehensive William Schell Jr., “American Investment in Tropical Mexico: Rubber Plantations, Fraud, and Dollar Diplomacy, 1897-1913,” Business History Review, vol. 64 (Summer 1990), p. 223.

  252. Journalists were hired to write copy that sold confidence instead of value Schell, “American Investment in Tropical Mexico,” p. 223.

  252. A monthly investment of $5-$150 assured an annual income of $500-$5,000” Ibid., p. 224, quoting “Why Do You Remain Satisfied?”—an advertisement for the Mexican Development and Construction Co. of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in Modern Mexico (1901).

  252. the Peru Pará Rubber Company, with a reported capital of $3 million John Melby, “Rubber River: An Account of the Rise and Collapse of the Amazon Boom,” The Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 22, no. 3 (Aug. 1942), p. 465.

  252. Lucille Wetherall, who, like thousands of others, lost her life savings Ibid., p. 227. 252. enriched the state’s treasury by as much as £1.6 million annually Collier, The River that God Forgot, p. 21.

  253. the city’s per capita diamond consumption Collier, The River that God Forgot, p. 26.

  253. The leading stores catering to women bore French names Burns, “Manaus 1910: Portrait of a Boom Town,” p. 403.

  254. Every Sunday, the Derby Club held horse races Robin Ferneaux, The Amazon: The Story of a Great River (New York: Putnam’s, 1969), pp. 151-155.

  254. Another paid four hundred pounds for a ride in the city’s only Mercedes Benz Collier, The River that God Forgot, p. 17.

  254. 133 rubber firms and buyers Burns, “Manaus 1910: Portrait of a Boom Town,” p. 415. Although 133 people and firms bought and sold rubber in Manaus, ten of these dominated the market. They are listed here in order of the amount of rubber they exported in 1910:

  254. “clear vision, incomparable energy, and extraordinary activity” Ibid., p. 416.

  255. “a crusade worthy of this century of progress” Mason, Cauchu, the Weeping Wood, p. 54.

  256. “It is collected by force; the soldiers drive the people into the bush” Ibid.

  256. “The most rigid injunctions enforcing free trades” Ibid.

  256. “[I]t is the call to brutality which comes from above” Ibid, pp. 55-56.

  257. “One, a young man, both of whose hands had been beaten off ” From “Atrocities in the Congo: The Casement Report, 1903,” http://web.jjay.cuny.edu/~jobrien.

  257. That equalled one life per every 5 kilograms, a little more than the amount used in one automobile tire Mason, Cauchu, the Weeping Wood, p. 56.

  258. “The insatiable desire to obtain the greatest production in the least time” Ibid., p. 64.

  259. “He grasped his carbine and machete and began the slaughter” Walter E. Hardenburg, The Putumayo, the Devil’s Paradise (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1912), p. 260.

  260. “advances, bends down, takes the Indian by the hair” Ibid., p. 236.

  260. “I have seen Indians tied to a tree, their feet about half a yard above the ground” Ibid.

  260. “designed . . . to just stop short of taking life” Michael Taussig, “Culture of Terror—Space of Death: Roger Casement’s Putumayo Report and the Explanation of Terror,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 26, no. 3 (1984), p. 477. Taussig quotes Roger Casement’s report, “Correspondence Respecting the Treatment of British Colonial Subjects and Native Indians Employed in the Collection of Rubber in the Putumayo District,” House of Commons Seasonal Papers, Feb. 14, 1912 to March 7, 1913, vol. 68, p. 35.

  260. mothers were beaten for “just a few strokes” to make them better workers Ibid, p. 477, quoting Casement’s report, p. 17.

  260. “that a man might be a man in Iquitos, but ‘you couldn’t be a man up there’ ” Ibid., p. 478, quoting Casement, p. 55.

  261. “Rubber has taken the blood, the health, and the peace of our people” Louis Mosch, “Rubber Pirates of the Amazon,” Living Age, vol. 345 (Nov. 1933), p. 223.

  261. Allen was twenty-three Allen, “Occupational Adventures.”

  Chapter 13: The Vindicated Man

  263.maki Henry Wickham, “The Introduction and Cultivation of the Hevea in India,” India-Rubber and Gutta-Percha Trades Journal, vol. 23 (Jan. 20, 1902), p. 82.

  263. He invented a machine for smoke-curing latex Lane, “The Life and Work of Sir Henry Wickham: Part IX—Closing Years,” India Rubber Journal, vol. 126 (Jan. 30, 1954), p. 6.

  263. He invented a three-bladed tapping knife Ibid., p. 5.

  263. “most valuable,” “quick-growing” tree Lane, “The Life and Work of Sir Henry Wickham: Part VIII—Piqui-Á and Arghan,” India Rubber Journal, vol. 126 (Jan. 23, 1954), p. 7.

  263. “of at least equal magnitude to that of Pará rubber” Ibid.

  264. the Irai Company Ltd. Ibid., p. 9.

  264. “Its salt-water-resisting qualities are remarkable” Ibid.

  264. “there would be sufficient demand in Lancashire alone to take up the production” “Arghan Company, Limited. Commercial Value of the Fibre,” Times (London) , April 4, 1922, p. 20.

  264. “All of us know what a good thing he has done for this country” Lane, “The Life and Work of Sir Henry Wickham: Pa
rt VIII—Piqui-Á and Arghan,” p. 9.

  266. He observed the techniques used there for tapping rubber Dean, Brazil and the Struggle for Rubber, pp. 30-31.

  267. “at least eight English thumbs deep” Simon Winchester, Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded, August 27, 1883 (London: Viking, 2003), p. 223.

  268. “little regard for those who did not share his views on botanical matters” D.J.M. Tate, The RGA History of the Plantation Industry in the Malay Peninsula (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 201.

  268. “Never mind your body, man, plant these instead!” O. D. Gallagher, “Rubber Pioneer in his Hundredth Year,” Observer (London), June 20, 1955; also, Henry N. Ridley, “Evolution of the Rubber Industry,” Proceedings of the Institution of the Rubber Industry, vol. 2, no. 5 (Oct. 1955), p. 117.

  268. “I looked on him as a ‘failed’ planter” Lane, “The Life and Work of Sir Henry Wickham: Part IX—Closing Years,” p. 7.

  268. “like junket . . . toffee in vacuum driers” Wolf and Wolf, Rubber: A Story of Glory and Greed, p. 162.

  268-69. “sometime commissioner for the introduction of the Pará (Hevea) Indian Rubber Tree” Ibid., p. 161.

  269. “almost with the air of looking down paternally on his ‘children’ ” Lane, “The Life and Work of Sir Henry Wickham: Part IX—Closing Years,” p. 7.

  269. “Turning over what you said to me in the path-ways yesterday” Royal Botanic Gardens-Kew, Miscellaneous Reports: India Office: Caoutchouc I, “Letter from Wickham to Sir Thistleton-Dyer at Kew, Sept. 4, 1901,” file folder 131.

  270. In 1905, Ceylon was still the world leader In 1905, Ceylon had 40,000 acres planted with hevea, while Malaya had 38,000; by 1907, Ceylon had 150,000 while Malaya had 179,227. Ceylon’s plantings stalled after that, totaling 188,000 acres in 1910, while Malaya’s acreage totaled 400,000. Herbert Wright, Hevea Brasiliensis, or Para Rubber: Its Botany, Cultivation, Chemistry and Diseases (London: Maclaren & Sons, 1912), p. 79. Wright traces the race between the two countries in the following table:Malaya Takes Premier Position