1994/01/01 by Bradford L. Barham, Oliver T. Coomes · 81 citations
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Social Sciences · Engineering · #Natural Resources and Economic Development #Colonialism, slavery, and trade #International Development and Aid #Boom #Amazon rainforest #Real estate #Investment (military) #Economics #Population #Economy #Geography #Agricultural economics #Business #Economic history #Politics #Finance #Political science #Demography #Engineering #Sociology
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/s0023879100024134
published in Latin American Research Review 29(2), 73-109 (Cambridge University Press)
openalex publication_date 1994/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
Few periods in South American history have so captured the imagination and begged the attention of scholars as the Amazon rubber boom. For fifty years, the extraction of wild rubber from the jungles of the Amazon fueled unprecedented economic expansion in the region: per capita incomes in the Brazilian Amazon climbed by 800 percent; the regional population increased by more than 400 percent; urban centers and secondary towns blossomed along the river banks; and the vast Amazonian forest lands were integrated into national political spheres and the international market economy. But when low-cost rubber from British plantations in Asia flooded world markets in the 1910s, rubber prices plummeted, sharply curtailing financial returns from wild rubber extraction. The price shock drove scores of traders and export houses into bankruptcy when they were unable to collect debts that were based on the future value of rubber. Urban real estate prices crashed, and service industries withered along with their customers' incomes. By the early 1920s, the boom was over, and per capita income levels had shrunk to pre-boom levels. Today, nearly a century later, such incomes (in real terms) have yet to return to boom levels in many areas despite massive state investment in Amazonia.