Keeping power afloat: kapok across Dutch and American empires, 1900-1950

• In Event: Commodity Extraction across Transimperial Spaces

Abstract

Kapok, a fiber from Ceiba pentandra seed pods, has long been used to stuff mattresses and pillows. It took on new strategic importance in the 20th century as stuffing for life preservers, in addition to other new roles in aircraft insulation and niche industrial tasks. Both plantations and smallholders in the Netherlands East Indies competed for this growing market under the political constraints of Dutch colonial rule. The tree’s biology aided smallholders in their struggles for economic independence, keeping plantations on the margins of the kapok trade, though plantations growing other crops found ways to extract more labor from their workers by diversifying into kapok. While most kapok on the world market came from the Netherlands East Indies, the greatest consumption was in the United States, and US policies toward kapok came to have far-reaching impacts on livelihoods and landscapes. Swift changes brought by war and technological change upended the world of kapok growers, leading to plummeting kapok exports and declines in kapok tree coverage, as smallholders switched to more profitable–but less sustainable–crops.

Author

• Jonathan Robins, Michigan Technological University