The first modern automobile was invented in the 1870's, but the idea didn't really catch on. I mean sure, it was probably a hell of a lot of fun tooling around in one of those bad boys, not having to stare up the wrong end of a horse, but not everything was golden. For one thing, once you got the damn contraptions up to speed, it damn near shook you and your passengers to death. Such shit happens when you go too fast on wheels made of metal or wood. For nearly twenty years, early motorists put up with this shit, until finally some bright bulb came up with the idea of slapping some rubber on the wheels. Well, the idea caught on, automobile popularity went through the roof, and the rest is history.
Good, we're already done. What's that? Nope? Okay. Anyways, the huge new demand for cars with rubber tires unsurprisingly caused a huge spike in demand for rubber. Prior to the invention of the tire, rubber was mostly used for crap like erasers, rubber bands, balloons, and other such shit. Rubber is harvested by tapping rubber trees, which yes, pretty much works exactly the same as tapping maple trees for maple syrup. If you have no idea how that works, look it up. Anyways, throughout most of the 1800's, the only source for rubber in the world was Brazil, who guarded their monopoly as jealously as a so-so looking guy with a damn hot wife. Anyone caught trying to smuggle rubber tree seeds out of the country was arrested and threatened with execution. This monopoly eventually ended when a British businessman, because when something of extreme economic importance got stolen in the 19th century it was always by a British businessman, smuggled out a bunch of seeds and began to plant them across the British colonies in South Asia. However, even with these new sources of rubber, there was not enough to meet the booming demand for tires, and as a result rubber prices shot upward faster than old timey people could say, “hey did that fucking British guy just steal my seeds.”
It was around this time that it was discovered that rubber could also be harvested from a certain type of vine that grew in the Congo, a million square mile area owned by King Leopold II of Belgium because he wanted to get in on the whole grabbing up parts of Africa thing that was all the rage at that time, and up until the whole discovery of the rubber vine nobody else really wanted it. Now when I say it was owned by King Leopold, I don’t mean it was owned by the kingdom of Belgium, I mean good old Leopold personally owned it. Now Leopold was a fairly simple soul, only really loving money and screwing sixteen year old prostitutes. With the sudden boom in the rubber market, the Congo proved to be the perfect source for one, which of course could then be used to get the other. Not being the type to miss out on an opportunity, Leopold of course took full advantage of the situation. Now if your first thought is that this probably led to a great economic boom for the area, then buddy, you have no idea how these stories usually work.
It should probably be understood at this point that one problem with rubber vines is that the cost of production is higher than that of the traditional rubber tree. Leopold solved this little problem by simply turning the entire population of the Congo into a veritable slave society. The people who lived in the Congo were divided into numerous tribes, many of which didn’t like each other. Leopold picked certain tribes, pretty much at random, and used them to form the Force Publique, an official sounding entity tasked with organizing the local labor pool. Given the history of animosity between the tribes, this of course led to widespread enslavement and the whipping, beating, and murder of any who resisted. This in turn led to twenty years of unending warfare, which Leopold dealt with by giving his Force Publique tribes special privileges, which is a nice way of saying he gave them a bunch of guns and paid a bounty for any killed insurgents. The way the bounty was collected was by bringing in the severed hands of the dead. It didn’t take the members of Force Publique long to realize that one hand looks pretty much like any other, so they began to kill people indiscriminately. This eventually stopped, but only because it was realized that bullets were expensive and that it was much easier just to cut off people’s hands, which became the common punishment for anyone who failed to deliver enough rubber each month.
This literal hell on Earth continued until 1908, when under severe international pressure, Leopold was forced to turn control of the Congo over to the Belgian government, which quickly ended forced labor. However, by that time an estimated 10 million people had died of a combination of murder, starvation, exhaustion, exposure, and disease. Happy driving.
Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Early_car_racer,_CNE_grandstand_(4624214779).jpg