In 1913 sudden disaster hit Brazilian rubber. The world price fell to a quarter of the two shillings it had been three years earlier. The Far East had only exported four tons of rubber in 1900; in 1914 Ceylonese and Malay plantations poured over 70,000 tons onto the world market, and within five years their exports approached the 400,000-ton mark. By 1919 Brazil, which had had a virtual monopoly, was supplying only one-eighth of world consumption. A half-century later Brazil is buying more than half its rubber from abroad.
Dependency upon profits from exports and the world market price, and dependency upon imports of the goods no longer produced domestically; specialized niche
