Raw Materials
The demand for raw materials that could be processed into manufactured goods and shipped away—often back to the providers of raw materials— turned colonies into export economies. Imperial attention focused on the tropical climates that were conducive to the presence of raw materials, unlike some imperial countries.
Cotton Britain’s Parliament banned Indian cotton textiles in 1721 because they competed with the native wool industry. Soon after, cotton from Britain’s southern colonies in America shifted production. The colonies would provide the raw materials, and England would manufacture textiles. During the Industrial Revolution, Britain’s great textile mills got 80 percent of their cotton from the United States.
When the American Civil War erupted, northern warships blockaded Confederate ports, cutting off the supply of cotton. As a result, farmers all over the world, from Australia to the West Indies, replaced food production with cotton to make up for the shortage. Cotton farmers in India were able to benefit from the shortages caused by the Civil War, but Egypt benefited most. Egypt had already developed a fine long-staple variety of cotton and ramped up production. By the end of the 19th century, 93 percent of Egypt’s export revenue came from cotton. Raw cotton production from Egypt and India supported the manufacturing of textiles that Britain exported all over the world.
Rubber Natural rubber is made from the latex sap of trees or vines. It softens when warm and hardens when cold. In 1839, Charles Goodyear developed a process known as vulcanization that eliminated these problems and helped create the modern rubber industry. Rubber was used to produce tires for bicycles (and eventually automobiles), hoses, gaskets, waterproof clothing, and shoe soles, among other items.
Rubber trees are native to the Amazon rainforest of South America, where they grew wild but widely dispersed. Latex could also be extracted from vines native to Central Africa, though they were destroyed in the process. Each source provided about half the world’s rubber supply, but they soon were inadequate to meet the demand as rubber became an important industrial material. In both sources, “rubber barons” forced indigenous people into virtual slavery. In some cases, companies mutilated or killed workers who failed to meet their quotas.
In 1876, the British India Office obtained rubber tree seeds from Brazil. After being propagated in England, the seedlings were sent to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and Singapore. Before long, thousands of acres of forest were cleared to make room for rubber plantations in Malaya, Indochina, the Dutch East Indies, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
Palm Oil The machinery in Europe’s factories required constant lubrication to keep it working, creating a demand for palm oil, which was also used for candle making. The oil palm originated in West Africa, where it was used as a staple food product for 5,000 years. Palm oil was so valued that it was used in place of money in many African cultures. Palm oil became an important cash crop in West Africa, where prisoners of tribal war were often enslaved to help with the palm oil crops. European colonists established oil palm plantations in Malaya and the Dutch East Indies.
Ivory The tusks of elephants provide the product ivory. Most of the ivory trade was with Africa, since both male and female African elephants have large tusks, which average six feet in length. Ivory was prized for its beauty and durability. It was used primarily for piano keys, billiard balls, knife handles, and ornamental carvings. In the mid-19th century, the European scramble for ivory preceded the scramble for colonies. The Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire) got its name from the fact that the French originally set up trading posts there for the acquisition of ivory and the purchase of enslaved people.
Minerals Some of the most valuable products were mineral ores used in manufacturing. They came from around the world:
• Mexico produced silver.
• Chile produced copper, which was used for telegraph cables and electrical power lines.
• Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and the Belgian Congo produced copper.
• Bolivia, Nigeria, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies produced tin, which helped meet the growing demand for food products in tin cans.
• Australia and South Africa, as well as parts of West Africa and Alaska, produced large deposits of gold.
Diamonds Because of his frail health, Cecil Rhodes was sent to South Africa in 1870 to join a brother on a cotton farm. In 1871 the brothers joined the diamond rush and went to Kimberley, the center of mining activity. After completing a degree at Oxford University, Rhodes acquired some of the De Beers mining claims and formed the De Beers Mining Company in 1880. By 1891, De Beers accounted for 90 percent of the world’s diamond production. Rhodes also had a large stake in the world’s largest gold fields, which were discovered in 1886 on South Africa’s Witwatersrand. (Connect: Analyze Africa’s changes in trade from the trans-Saharan trade, including the effects of the slave trade, through the industrial era. See Topics 2.4 and 4.4.)
By the age of 29, when Rhodes was elected to the Cape Parliament, he was the most powerful man in Southern Africa. He sought to expand to the north, into Bechuanaland (Botswana) and what became known as Rhodesia and is now Zimbabwe and Zambia, with the dream of building a railroad from Cape Town to Cairo—and claiming all the land along the route for the British Empire. In 1890, Rhodes became the prime minister of the Cape Colony where his racist policies paved the way for the apartheid, or racial segregation, that plagued South Africa during the 20th century.