Chapter 601: The Prospects and Crisis of the Rubber Industry
"The road to developing the automobile industry is a long one. For now, East Africa is merely imitating the basics. The only key component we might be able to export is the tire," Ernst sighed.
The so-called tire refers to rubber tires. Both Germany and Austria rely on imports for rubber, making rubber processing one of East Africa's core competitive industries, much like sisal. Although sisal grows in other regions worldwide, East Africa offers the most favorable growing conditions.
East Africa's rubber processing industry had only started a few years earlier, but the region—or more precisely, the Hechingen Consortium—held the patent for hollow pneumatic tires. Its greatest advantage lay in monopolizing the majority of rubber production, thanks to Ernst's early strategic planning.
South American countries would need time to respond, as expanding plantations and constructing new ones required significant effort and time.
In fact, once East Africa began large-scale rubber exports, the rubber-producing regions in South America—especially Brazil—realized the extent of East Africa's operations. Previously, East Africa had concealed its developments so well that it caught Brazil completely off guard.
This was one of the effects of East Africa's closed-door policy. Most of East Africa's rubber plantations were inland, with even the closest coastal plantations being 200 to 300 kilometers from the Indian Ocean. Foreign nations were barred from investigating within East Africa. Thus, before the first rubber exports, no one knew East Africa had surpassed Brazil to become the world's largest rubber producer.
Brazil's government didn't have much of a reaction, as only a few years had passed since East Africa secretly introduced rubber tree seeds. The British had quickly followed suit, and Southeast Asia was already experimenting with small-scale plantations.
Britain's actions were aboveboard, whereas East Africa had already begun harvesting from its first plantation in the Great Lakes region by the time Britain began its trials. Meanwhile, other East African plantations, including the largest one in the Province of Hessen (on the western slopes of the Mitumba Mountains' rainforest), had also been established.
Naturally, Brazil dared not accuse Britain, but East Africa's sudden rise to rubber export dominance was frustrating. Brazil had not strictly controlled rubber exports—due in part to its Portuguese colonial legacy, which came with inefficient administration and rampant corruption. Given such conditions, it had been impossible for Brazil to enforce a rubber export ban.
Now, it was too late. Rubber had already been planted in East Africa and Southeast Asia. East Africa, in particular, had quietly overtaken Brazil to become the global leader in rubber production. Even if Brazil wanted to enforce an export ban, it couldn't.
The only thing Brazil could do now was expand its own plantations and compete with East Africa—and, in the future, Southeast Asia. The road ahead looked grim.
Even if Brazil took immediate action, it might only be able to hang on for another 20 years. Ernst knew that in the early 20th century, South America's rubber industry would collapse due to South American Leaf Blight, dropping from over 90% of the global market to less than 1%.
At present, Brazil's rubber industry hadn't declined that severely. Although East Africa had captured most of the market, Brazil still held around 15%.
Previously, Brazil had little motivation to expand production, as it monopolized the industry and could wait for better prices. Meanwhile, East Africa's rubber development had been tightly concealed. Caught off guard, Brazil's industry was decimated.
The demographic difference also played a role. East Africa now had a population of over 50 million (including Black Africans) and had used tens of millions of them over the years. The eastern region alone had hosted over ten million.
In contrast, Brazil's total population was just over ten million. East Africa had an abundant supply of cheap labor—Brazil did not. However, Brazil was in better shape than in Ernst's original timeline.
In that timeline, Brazil abolished slavery in 1888. In this version, it's unclear when reform would take place, but Brazil had benefited from East Africa's labor exports and had become its largest recipient of Black laborers in the Americas.
Though the U.S. was wealthier, it had to be discreet, routing East African laborers through third-party countries like Haiti. East Africa, however, could ship them directly to Rio de Janeiro.
Thus, East Africa had effectively supplied Brazil with abundant cheap labor. When immigration to East Africa slowed, the original migrant ships were redirected to the Americas. As for Argentina, like East Africa, it was uninterested in Black labor.
In response to the threat of Leaf Blight, East Africa prepared by collecting wild rubber tree species from South America for genetic preservation.
In Ernst's previous life, the blight was devastating—even wild Brazilian rubber trees were not spared. Yet Ernst believed that the wild varieties would prove invaluable.
Within a few years of importing the first rubber seeds, East Africa had largely completed its genetic collection, unless undiscovered species still hid in the Amazon rainforest.
The blight was first recorded around 1905, although it likely emerged a bit earlier—probably near 1900. But it couldn't have been much earlier. For instance, Southeast Asia's rubber trees also originated in South America, but they were unaffected.
The destruction caused by the blight was comparable to Panama Disease's impact on Gros Michel bananas—there was no cure, only geographic isolation.
Therefore, East Africa's rubber and banana regions would eventually be isolated from South America.
When the Gros Michel banana went extinct, it had the Cavendish variety as a replacement. Rubber trees, however, had no easy substitute. The only practical solution was future genetic engineering or the use of synthetic rubber.
In preparation, East Africa aimed to preserve as many wild rubber tree species as possible to prevent a total collapse like Brazil's.
Moreover, East Africa had to prepare for a worst-case scenario. To avoid Brazil's fate, Ernst planned to manage East Africa's four major rubber-producing regions separately, without direct interaction, over the next twenty years.
It was similar to how, in Ernst's previous life, Thailand's government had banned planes from Leaf Blight-infected regions from landing, to protect its rubber industry.
East Africa would not only prohibit contact between its domestic rubber regions and South America, but also isolate its four internal regions from one another.
East Africa's four rubber-producing regions, ranked by plantation size, were: the Province of Hessen, the Great Lakes region, Lake Turkana region (southern Ethiopian Plateau), and the Eastern Coastal Plain.
These regions were geographically distant from one another, making it easier for East Africa to "put its eggs in different baskets."
Additionally, East Africa's banana industry would take similar precautions. Banana wilt was another major threat, and Ernst hoped that the Gros Michel variety would survive in East Africa until the 21st century.
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