ABSTRACT

Historians have long spoken of a “long nineteenth century” stretching from the American and French Revolutions of the late eighteenth century to World War I in the twentieth century. Such a characterization is a little bit Euro-centric. In this chapter, the authors investigate remarkable nineteenth-century changes in the organization of work, transport systems, the world of science, and agriculture. By 1914, though, European states had colonized most of Asia and almost all of Africa. Indeed Europe – or former European colonies in the Americas – controlled an astounding 84 per cent of the earth’s surface by 1914. Rubber trees are indigenous to the Amazon basin of South America and tropical Central America. The Mayans (or their predecessors) had developed a rubber ball from the sixteenth century bce. Europeans often argued that it was only proper to ensure that the resources of colonial lands were properly utilized.