Along the Endless River
Page 36
She turned to Antonio. ‘The truth is this, my beloved son. Whether it is what you once wanted, or what you feared, you have no need to worry. You haven’t ruined me.’
She paused as the steamer let off its horn.
‘On the contrary,’ she continued, as the booming sound subsided. ‘You’ve set me free.’
Epilogue
The crash began in May 1910. Plantation rubber flooded the market and the price, which had risen to an eye-watering $3 a pound, fell catastrophically. South America was forgotten and suddenly everyone wanted a part of the new industry, triggering crowds that verged on riots to descend on London banks, demanding shares in businesses in the Far East.
By 1913, the Amazonian rubber boom was over. The entire system had been built on credit and debt and once it started to fall, the collapse was dramatic and spectacular. Anyone who wanted their money out was disappointed. There was no money there in the first place.
It took only a further three years until British plantations were producing enough rubber to fulfil 95 per cent of world demand. The industry in the Amazon never recovered. By the end of the First World War, large-scale production in the region had all but ceased.
For many, the end of the rubber boom marked the end of slavery, exploitation and degradation. Some say that every ton of rubber cost two lives, others that the figure was seven. At the time, around 600 million pounds of British money was invested in the Amazon, a fact that became a national shame when Roger Casement’s report into atrocities on the river Putumayo was published. The report makes grim reading: torture, rape and murder, burnings alive and live burials. It’s said that the uncontacted tribes that still exist deep in the rainforest today were driven there in part by the horrors of the rubber boom. They did not have to see much of the white man’s world to know they did not wish to be part of it.
And what of Henry Wickham, the man arguably responsible for it all? It’s impossible to say what would have happened if he hadn’t stolen the seeds and imported them to England and to Kew. Most likely, if not him, it would have been someone else, just as had already happened with the cinchona tree that produces quinine. When he shipped out of Santarem on the Amazonas, he left behind most of his family, who had come to join him in Brazil – those who hadn’t already died. He spent his life on hare-brained schemes in far flung lands, was knighted in 1920, and lived to the ripe old age of eighty-two.
He died alone and is barely remembered today, though his actions changed the world.
Acknowledgements
A massive thankyou to everyone who has helped me with the writing of this book. It goes without saying that my family is the first and foremost of these.
Thanks are also due to Megan Carroll, my agent at Watson Little, who has been instrumental in getting my work published, and to Emily Bedford at Canelo, who saw the potential in this book and added her invaluable enhancements.
I also want to thank my great friend Claire Wells, without whom I would probably never have gone to South America at all. Our first endeavour was a three-month backpacking trip through Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. We thought this was a perfectly sane and reasonable thing to do in our university summer holiday at the age of twenty-one and with £300 each in our pockets. I think our mothers begged to differ but nobody stopped us going and the experiences we had will stay with me forever. Back then, Colombia was said to be the most dangerous country on earth; we had the time of our lives there. We also visited the Amazon and it was then that my fascination began. After graduating, we went to Brazil to teach English and my Latin American love affair continued.
I hope this book embodies at least a small part of the wonder of the Amazon rainforest, one of Planet Earth’s most valuable, and threatened, places.
About the Author
Rose Alexander has had more careers than she cares to mention and is currently a secondary school English teacher. She writes in the holidays, weekends and evenings, whenever she has a chance, although with three children, a husband, a lodger and a cat, this isn’t always as often as she’d like. She’s a keen sewist and is on a mission to make all her own clothes.
First published in the United Kingdom in 2021 by Canelo
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
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Copyright © Rose Alexander, 2021
The moral right of Rose Alexander to be identified as the creator of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781800322172
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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