ABSTRACT
The ambiguities invested in the expression 'rubber boom' have implications for the way other historical Amazonian events are treated. 'The Amazon rubber boom' has been the subject of substantial historical monographs and is the centrepiece of Santos's widely cited economic history of the Amazon region. Weinstein's very detailed account of the Amazonian rubber trade tends toward an explanation for the collapse of the industry based on the structural inadequacy of extensive trade networks' connections to the intensive trading cynosures in Belem and Manaus. Subsequent efforts to produce plantation rubber in the Amazon by state agencies and international rubber companies proved ineffective in replicating anything approaching the scale of industry that had developed in Southeast Asia. The wildness that has been now contained also applies to the workers of the wild rubber domain. Rubber became designated 'wild' only after the plantation alternative appeared.
