Tropical Products Research Articles

The Anatomy of an Investment: Firestone's 1927 Loan to Liberia

Although Americans made a major contribution to the founding of the Liberian nation in 1822, it was over one hundred years later before the United States acquired a tangible economic stake in the West African republic. The change took place in 1926, when the Liberian Government granted a major rubber concession to the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company and accepted a large loan from one of Firestone's subsidiaries. The Liberian Government had teetered on the verge of bankruptcy several times since the eighteen sixties, when Liberia's export trade in coffee and other tropical products had seriously declined. In 1906 and 1912, bankers' loans had shifted control of Liberia's customs revenues to foreign hands. 2 But the Liberian Government's turn towards Firestone in 1926 was more than another desperate effort to save the nation from bankruptcy. The Government' s chief aim was to secure the nation's borders from French and British encroachments. In December, 1926, in order to secure the long-run protection that it hoped would accrue from a permanent American investment in Liberia, the Liberian Legislature approved a bill that was the sine qua non of Firestone's Liberian project. 3

Insect and Animal Studies at the Tropical Products Research Institute Arusha, Tanzania

Insect and Animal Studies at the Tropical Products Research Institute Arusha, Tanzania

Export diversification through tropical products

Export diversification through tropical products

Director of the Tropical Products Institute, London: Mr. E. S. Hiscocks, C.B.E.

Director of the Tropical Products Institute, London: Mr. E. S. Hiscocks, C.B.E.

Director of the Tropical Products Institute, London: Dr. P. C. Spensley

Director of the Tropical Products Institute, London: Dr. P. C. Spensley

Open Day at the Tropical Products Institute

Open Day at the Tropical Products Institute

Drying and Storage of Tropical Products

Drying and Storage of Tropical Products

The Tropical Products Institute

The Tropical Products Institute

The Tropical Products Institute: Report for 1961

The Tropical Products Institute: Report for 1961

The Tropical Products Institute

The Tropical Products Institute

Natural wealth of tropical American forests

The forest is a vast storehouse of wealth, not only in the form of wood, but also of a wide variety of other commercial materials of major or minor importance. W\e are apt to regard wood as the sole product of the tree and ignore other products or consider them secondary even though they play an important role in commerce. This is true of temperate forests and is particularly applicable to those of tropical regions. The bullet-tree (Manilkara bidentata [A. DC.] A. Chev.) of the Guianas and lower Amazon, for example, furnishes a timber suitable for heavy durable construction, while its bark yields a latex of still greater value as the source of balata utilized in the manufacture of transmission belts, golf-balls, and dentures. In British Guiana, balata extraction has been a foremost industry, for many years classed as the third most important of the country in volume of exports, with approximately 700,000 pounds shipped in 1959, mostly to England. Like Europe for centuries, the United States has been an importer of tropical forest products since Colonial days. Throughout the years, the consumption of these materials has been tremendous and continues undiminished. Despite the lack of a conservative, rational utilization, tropical forests continue to pour out a great tide of goods essential to the economy of certain nations. Their products may be laticiferous exudates, exemplified by rubber and allied elastomers; soluble gums and resins; essential and other oils; waxes; edible fruits; vegetable ivory; raw sources of fibers, pulp, lignin,

The Tropical Products Institute

The Tropical Products Institute

Tropical Products Institute

Tropical Products Institute

The Challenge of Tropical Australia: Part II

The pastoral and mineral industries have remained the prime sources of the wealth derived from the sub-humid part of tropical Australia, and it is appropriate to review their recent progress, the potential for further expansion and the extent to which they may be able to contribute to the full development of the area. The prospects of achieving a substantial agricultural production may next be examined in relation to the capacity of the land, developmental costs and the probable demand for tropical products in Australian and oversea markets. We may then be better able to assess the value of estimates of population capacity for the tropical north and to evaluate the strength of conflicting proposals and programmes for more rapid settlement.

Pacific Island Agriculture: The Contemporary Position in Western Samoa and Some Wider Implications

T nHE postwar boom in agricultural prices for tropical products has not been accompanied by uniform effects in the various island groups of the South Pacific Ocean. While agricultural maladies are apparent and obvious in the Cook Islands, the prosperity of native-commercial and plantation agriculture in Fiji and Western Samoa is in striking contrast.' Within the extensive field of economic development, postwar programs in the Pacific Ocean area have been directed towards the increased productivity of the islands and the extension of the, hitherto, narrow agricultural base of the insular economies. During the last 20 years greater attention has been focussed on Western Samoa where, among the native people, there is a growing national consciousness, and an increasing impatience with existing social, political, and economic inequalities. Western Samoa has been exposed to European civilization for barely 100 years and Samoan society, socially and to a limited extent economically, has been able to absorb and modify the external influences to which it has been

Native Welfare in the Southwest Pacific Islands

THERE IS LIKELY to be increasing public interest after the war in the islands of the Southwest Pacific especially Papua, Mandated New Guinea, and the Solomons. With their wide range of climate from the humid regions of the coast to the cooler uplands, these areas are suited to the cultivation of a large variety of tropical products. Coconuts, rubber, coffee and cocoa are all grown commercially today, and experiments have proved that oil-palm, cotton, kapok, hemp, sugar, rice, tobacco, tea, and such drugs as cinchona and cocaine can also be produced. At the same time, the fact that some of these crops may in the future cease to be profitable for foreign enterprise should be borne in mind. Coconuts, for example, are already being replaced by soya beans and cotton seed, and the stimulus given by wartime needs to the development of synthetic substances may soon restrict the demand for rubber and cinchona. The major portion of colonial revenue is everywhere derived from taxes levied on commercial undertakings, and considerable profits have to be made before schools, hospitals, law courts, and the other institutions of civilization can receive adequate support. Liberal welfare policies have so far been possible only in territories subjected to intensive exploitation. The Malay States, producing enormous quantities of rubber and tin, were able to operate elaborate health services and an excellent system of education, whereas the Solomon Islands, almost wholly dependent upon copra, the price of which was consistently low for more than a decade, could not afford to establish a single properly equipped hospital or school. Modern commercial enterprise requires land and labor, however, and the first part of this article is devoted to a consideration of the harmful effects which a failure to restrict these demands will have on the local

PUERTO RICO TO RAISE VANILLA, SPICES, QUININE AND OTHER TROPICAL PRODUCTS

School Science and MathematicsVolume 41, Issue 9 p. 827-827 PUERTO RICO TO RAISE VANILLA, SPICES, QUININE AND OTHER TROPICAL PRODUCTS First published: December 1941 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1949-8594.1941.tb05522.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume41, Issue9December 1941Pages 827-827 RelatedInformation

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH TO COLONIAL DEVELOPMENT

IN discussing colonial conditions, I shall in the main limit myself to those prevailing in the British Colonies. The character of the British colonial empire was modified as a result of the expansionist policy of the latter part of the last century. The Indian Empire and Burma have, of course, never been ranked as colonies. Up to about the eighties of last century, therefore, the Colonies comprised mainly Ceylon and a small part of Malaya in the eastern hemisphere, a number of trading settlements on the coasts of Africa, and in the western hemisphere, the old British possessions in the West Indies. The period of expansion added in Africa alone an area roughly equal to that of British India, together with parts of Borneo, an extended area in Malaya, and some of the Southern Pacific islands. The new territories were largely tropical in character; but, what is more important, the majority of then–popúlations were at a stage at which they had needs, both material and social, far greater than those of some of the older dependencies. Judged in terms of approach to our own type of civilization, they were far more backward. On the other hand, we had then available to us the result of much previous experience of colonial development; above all, we had by this time at our service an amount of knowledge regarding the employment of the applied sciences in social development which was far in advance of that possessed by our predecessors. We had another advantage. Earlier in the last century, tropical products (excluding, of course, certain of the minerals, and the precious metals) were in demand only in the luxury market of the more highly developed countries. But the rapid growth of standards of living in those countries has made the luxuries of our grandfathers the necessities of whole populations to-day. Such things as cocoa, the great range of vegetable oils, coffee or bananas are typical of the tropical products which have become essential to the general population of Europe and America, and thus can assist the tropical peoples in financing the social services needed to improve their standards of life.

A Note on “Buchanan's Laterite”

In 1909 I wrote a letter to the GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE (p. 431) objecting to a statement in a review of the late Sir John Harrison's Goldfields of British Guiana that only products of weathering containing free aluminium hydroxide in hot moist climates should be considered as laterite. This letter led to contributions from the late J. W. Evans, T. Crook, and Sir John Harrison. It is particularly interesting now to read again J. W. Evans's remarks. In the volume for 1910, pp. 189, 190, he said hehad intimate acquaintance with the material to which the name laterite was first given in the area in which it was typically developed. On p. 190 he said that laterite varies, but one feature remains constant, the small amount of combined silica in proportion to the alumina present and that “it is in this respect that laterites differ from clays, which also occur as tropical decomposition products and are sometimes incorrectly described as laterites ”. On p. 381 of the same volume J. W. Evans wrote: “I admit that he (Buchanan) did not know its true chemical composition, but in spite of that it must be accepted as the type of what we ought to call laterite.”

Unused Capacity as a Factor in Canadian Economic History

The significance of navigation in the economic development of a region penetrated by the St. Lawrence to the south and by Hudson Bay to the north has been evident in concentration on production of raw materials for consumption in the highly industrialized area of Europe, and in problems which have arisen with intense specialization, such as unused capacity in terms of vessel space as a result of inability to secure a balanced two-way cargo. The green fishery as conducted from French ports on the banks and along the coast required heavy outbound cargoes of salt to balance return cargoes of fish, but the dry fishery, which became important with the development of Spanish trade at the beginning of the seventeenth century, required smaller quantities of salt and equipment on the outgoing voyage and made necessary the carrying of ballast. The English dry fishery in Newfoundland involved a further lack of balance in that crews necessary to carry on the industry were larger than those necessary to man the vessels, and, because of the seasonal fluctuations and agricultural limitations of that area, men were carried back at the end of the season. Sale of fish in the markets of Spain and the Mediterranean necessitated the dispatch of vessels to England with the men necessary to carry on the fishery, and additional larger vessels (sack ships) with cargoes of fish to market. The addition of sack ships lowered the cost of provisions and facilitated the beginnings of a settlement in which men remained over the winter. Consequently, competition between sack ships and fishing ships for cargoes of fish and for profitable return cargoes of salt, tropical products, and specie from Spain and the Mediterranean to England, contributed to the long severe struggle which dominated the history of Newfoundland and placed severe restrictions on the introduction of political institutions. New England, with a winter fishery and a favourable area for the development of agriculture, lumbering, and shipbuilding, offered possibilities of all-year-round operation. Settlers rather than ballast, therefore, were brought to New England. Expansion of settlement contributed to more effective exploitation of the fishery, shipbuilding, and trade and to the decline of control of fishing ships from England. Numerous small New England vessels extended the fishery to the banks and the shores of Nova Scotia, participated in the coastal trade to Newfoundland in spring and summer, and carried products to the West Indies to exchange for sugar and molasses in winter when these products came on the market and there was freedom from hurricanes. Relative absence of unused capacity in New England shipping meant low costs and contributed to rapid economic development which facilitated control over Nova Scotia after the expulsion of the French in the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. The expansion of New England involved a continued drain of labour from Newfoundland and weakened the position of settlement in that area.