Since there's been a few threads lately on this subject, I figured I'd start my own on some insights I found.
Anyway, Rubber usage goes back millennia in Mesoamerica, where the Panama rubber tree Castilla elastica was tapped for its natural latex and processed into various goods such as balls, textiles, linings, and drinkware. They mixed the latex with varying degrees of juice from a vine of the genus Ipomaea (depending on the intended use) which contained sulfur compounds that vulcanised the rubber. But they were not the only rubber users in the Americas, since Hohokam use of rubber has been discovered as well for they played a similar ballgame as Mesoamericans. This Hohokam rubber seems to be from the guayule (Parthenium argentatum) plant, a desert shrub native to the hills of northern Mexico and a narrow band from southwest Texas to southern California and infrequently also used in Mesoamerica and by ethnicities like the Yaqui. Reason being for the infrequent use is the traditional process for tapping it was an entire community chewing the root until the latex leaked out.
Anyway, what if this use of rubber made it Europe in the Columbian exchange? Rubber use and production was documented by European writers, but it never seemed to have amounted to much. What if a Spanish writer catalogues the process and decides that water-repellant clothes would be nice to have aboard ships or simply to walk around on rainy days (i.e. the "Mackintosh" raincoat)? Anyone whose worn a garment with rubber outside on a day with pouring rain knows the comfort of it.
I find guayule a particularly interesting prospect, since it could theoretically be grown in the driest part of Spain as well as in the Canaries (where similar plants from that region like agaves and opuntia grow). It might be introduced by the Dutch to South Africa (and maybe spur the colonisation of Western Australia so they could grow some there, maybe for trade with the vast Chinese market) and by the Portuguese to the dry Brazilian Cerrado or the deserts of southern Angola. This could also open up other interesting prospects like an early Brazilian rubber boom where the OTL most used rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis) grows, or in Africa for that matter since their local sources of vine rubber would give African states in the Congo basin (like the Kingdom of Kongo and its offshoots and neighbours) another good to trade with Europe, albeit one in which would still involve a lot of slavery and brutality. Does the Castilla elastica/Ipomaea sort of rubber get spread to the Philippines by the Spanish?
So could rubber have truly been one of the most influential products of the Columbian exchange? What about the technological aspects of it? Would rubber being a vast global industry butterfly the OTL rubber boom and its tragic consequences in the Amazon and Africa?
Anyway, Rubber usage goes back millennia in Mesoamerica, where the Panama rubber tree Castilla elastica was tapped for its natural latex and processed into various goods such as balls, textiles, linings, and drinkware. They mixed the latex with varying degrees of juice from a vine of the genus Ipomaea (depending on the intended use) which contained sulfur compounds that vulcanised the rubber. But they were not the only rubber users in the Americas, since Hohokam use of rubber has been discovered as well for they played a similar ballgame as Mesoamericans. This Hohokam rubber seems to be from the guayule (Parthenium argentatum) plant, a desert shrub native to the hills of northern Mexico and a narrow band from southwest Texas to southern California and infrequently also used in Mesoamerica and by ethnicities like the Yaqui. Reason being for the infrequent use is the traditional process for tapping it was an entire community chewing the root until the latex leaked out.
Anyway, what if this use of rubber made it Europe in the Columbian exchange? Rubber use and production was documented by European writers, but it never seemed to have amounted to much. What if a Spanish writer catalogues the process and decides that water-repellant clothes would be nice to have aboard ships or simply to walk around on rainy days (i.e. the "Mackintosh" raincoat)? Anyone whose worn a garment with rubber outside on a day with pouring rain knows the comfort of it.
I find guayule a particularly interesting prospect, since it could theoretically be grown in the driest part of Spain as well as in the Canaries (where similar plants from that region like agaves and opuntia grow). It might be introduced by the Dutch to South Africa (and maybe spur the colonisation of Western Australia so they could grow some there, maybe for trade with the vast Chinese market) and by the Portuguese to the dry Brazilian Cerrado or the deserts of southern Angola. This could also open up other interesting prospects like an early Brazilian rubber boom where the OTL most used rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis) grows, or in Africa for that matter since their local sources of vine rubber would give African states in the Congo basin (like the Kingdom of Kongo and its offshoots and neighbours) another good to trade with Europe, albeit one in which would still involve a lot of slavery and brutality. Does the Castilla elastica/Ipomaea sort of rubber get spread to the Philippines by the Spanish?
So could rubber have truly been one of the most influential products of the Columbian exchange? What about the technological aspects of it? Would rubber being a vast global industry butterfly the OTL rubber boom and its tragic consequences in the Amazon and Africa?