Before synthetic rubber was invented. The only way to get rubber was by extracting it from plants. Different regions have different rubber producing plant species, but in the Congo Basin, the plant genus Landolphia, who defining characteristic is the product of liquid latex when their bark is damaged, is where the natural rubber comes from in this region. Rubber is used in so many applications that it would a waste of to list all their applications or to explain why a person might want it. Instead let just jump to case where the pursuit of natural rubber caused immense destruction: The Congo Free State.

The Congo ‘Free’ State was a country ruled by the King of Belgium, Leopold II, in a personal union (Where the monarch of two nominally independent nations just so happen to be the same person). To quickly summarize and oversimplify the diplomatic maneuvering of Leopold II, he essentially convinced all the great powers of the world that he was on humanitarian mission to Congo. That his purpose in annexing the Congo Basin wasn’t colonialism but rather a selfless desire to develop the region. In the Berlin Conference, the Congo Basin wasn’t given to Leopold directly but rather to a “International Association of the Congo” founded by the Belgian King. In reality, Leopold was simply out to make massive profit on the Rubber trade.

What happened next can be easily compared to the Holocaust. Huge parts of the population were forced into rubber production. Countless people lost their lives or their limbs for failure to meet rubber quotas. The exploitation was so brutal that even before the invention modern communications technologies, the treatment of the Congolese became a massive scandal. In 1908, the Belgian Government gave into diplomatic pressure, and forcibly ripped ownership of the Congo Free State away from their own King. But by that time incalculable human suffering had already occurred, some estimates say that the Free State Government had killed half of the native population.