Agile Manaus tourism and culture of the Amazon
Book tells the story of the theft of rubber tree seeds from Brazil
"By this time, the legend of Henry Wickham had become iconic, and his deception in the service of queen and country was part of the stories of the Empire. In newspapers and magazine, his wrinkled, sunburned face looked toward a vague distance, his white wig floating like a cloud around his huge head. Detractors claimed he was gorsky and selfish, nothing more than an opportunist who was in the right place at the right time. To others, it was an embarrassing reminder of the Empire's rapacious ambition. But these were the opinions of a minority, unrelated to popular opinion." This is an excerpt from the book The Thief of the End of the Worldreleased in Brazil in 2011 by Objetiva publishing house. The work tells the story of how the Englishman Henry Wickham, a common man with no money, smuggled 70,000 rubber tree seeds from the Amazon rainforest to England in the 19th century, constituting perhaps the first case of massive biopiracy in the modern era.
O thief at the end of the world was written by investigative journalist Joe Jackson, who dissected one of the most notable cases of international smuggling, responsible for the decline of the economic model based on the production and export of rubber, the basis for the development of northern Brazil.
Driven by the ambition to grow in the rubber industry - a niche led by Brazil at the time - Wickham decides to venture into the Amazon jungle in search of a particular type of rubber tree that produced the strongest, most durable rubber desired by the British.
Sir Henry Alexander Wickham, English botanist, known for smuggling some 70,000 seeds of the rubber tree, Hevea brasiliensis, into the region of Santarem in Pará in 1876 (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
After facing the dangers of the forest, having encounters with giant insects and inhabitants of the Amazon River, among other experiences that almost led to his death, Henry Wickham returns to England with thousands of rare rubber tree seeds that, after being studied in London's botanical garden, Kew Gardens, were sent for plantations in the English tropical colonies.
Thirty years later, England managed to overtake Brazil in the rubber monopoly and dominate the world supplies of the raw material. The Thief at the End of the World is the story of the use and abuse of nature by man in the struggle for world domination.
