In the twentieth century, the automobile drove a surging desire for rubber. In 1895, there were only 350 cars in France, 70 in Germany, and almost none anywhere else; soon afterward the automobile became a mass-produced item. These automobiles required ever-growing amounts of rubber for their tires and other parts, a demand largely met by the rubber plantations of Southeast Asia. As latex production shifted from South American and African forests to Southeast Asian plantations, European capital and Asian labor quickly replaced varied landscapes with geometric plantations.
