Tin, Rubber and Tourists
 Have
been the major he economic forces that have shaped the development
and history of Phuket. The following pages are a brief look at the
past and present of these dynamic forces and what future impact
they are likely to have.
Tin ranks 49th in abundance of the elements in
the earth's crust. The principal ore of tin is the mineral cassiterite
(or tinstone), SnO2, found abundantly on Phuket Island. Tin is a
widely sought metal and is used in hundreds of industrial processes
throughout the world. Tin is important in the production of the
common alloys bronze (tin and copper), solder (tin and lead), and
type metal (for printing presses, tin, lead, and antimony), and
pewter (tin and lead). In the form of tinplate, it is used in the
manufacture of tin cans, and similar articles, it is used as a protective
coating for steel, copper, and other metals. It is also used as
an alloy with titanium in the aerospace industry and as an ingredient
in toothpaste and some insecticides.
On Phuket tin is often found in placers, or deposits
of sand and gravel containing particles of the mineral. At first
tin was mined by waiting for nature to wash away the soil layer
and expose the veins of tin bearing gravel. Open-shaft mining was
the next innovation the tin ore was removed from deposits that cropped
out near the surface. A narrow shaft would be dug 20 to 40 feet
deep through the soil into a vein of tin that was usually oblong
or bell shaped. The tin ore bearing gravel could then be hand-carried
to the surface for processing. In spite of the back-breaking labor
and danger of this type of mining the landscape was dotted with
hundreds of open-shaft mine entrances.
By the mid-eighteenth century Phuket had large
state-of-the-art, tin strip mining operations. Mining technology
evolved to allow surface excavation by power shovels, bucket-wheel
excavators, and high-speed conveyors, that could deliver huge amounts
sand and gravel bearing ore to a mechanical system of screens, jigs,
and sluices used to recover the tin ore. During the rainy season
ample water was available to feed huge high-pressure hydraulic nozzles
that could break down and sluice away the gravel bank from entire
an hillside.
The introduction of the first tin dredger in 1907
allowed the tin mining industry on Phuket to expand into a vast
new area that had previously been untouched. Several types of dredges
were used locally. Hydraulic dredges sucked the ocean floor for
the alluvial deposits of tin through a pipe, separated the tin and
discharged the spoil on the shore through a floating pipeline. Elevator
dredges employed an endless chain of small buckets to scrape the
ocean floor and separate the tin ore from the rest of the spoil,
which was discarded back into the ocean. The coastline of Phuket
and the surrounding ocean floor have been dramatically altered by
the dredging for tin.
In the extraction of tin, the ore is first ground
and washed to remove all impurities and then roasted to oxidize
the sulfides of iron and copper. After a second washing, the ore
is reduced in a furnace; the molten tin that collects on the bottom
is drawn off and molded into blocks known as block tin. Tin melts
at 232°C (about 450° F) , boils at about 2260° C (about 4100° F).
Ordinary bar tin, when bent, issues a crackling sound called ‘tin
cry’, caused by the friction of the tin crystals. Smelting
tin ore produces small amounts of other valuable minerals usually
tantalum (used in the aerospace industry), niobium and wolfram.
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Tin was discovered a couple of millennia ago in
the Kathu district of Phuket (central area) and has been mined with
varying degrees seriousness and success until 1992 when the last
mine on Phuket closed
Mining for metals like tin is one of the oldest
human activities. Since ancient times mining has had a fundamental
political impact on society. The institution of slavery received
much of its legitimacy from the need to compel some members of a
society into the onerous and often life-threatening work of mining.
The value of minerals like tin was enough to initiate wars and invasions.
Tin mining at Cornwall, England predates history. It was conquered
by the ancient Romans who exported the tin ore by ship to Rome.
Control of the tin mines passed to the Saxons, the Celts and finally
the Normans. Since 1337 the heir to the British crown has held the
title of ‘Duke of Cornwall’. The colonization of many
areas of Asia was in part due to the need of Europe to acquire the
metals to feed the factories of the Industrial Revolution.
The primary use of tin in the ancient world was
to smelt with copper to form the alloy of bronze. Throughout the
development of mankind the discovery and use of tin to form the
alloy of bronze heralds the passage of a society from the Stone
Age. Early bronze was mainly used for weapons and cutting tools,
bronze is stronger and harder and holds an edge better than any
other common alloy except steel. Bronze weapons, swords, spears,
arrowheads, shields, adzes, and axes, offered a huge technological
advantage over weapons made from stone, bone, wood or copper. Harder
iron weapons appeared at later times, but bronze remained in use
to make cannons until fairly recent times, when steel making was
perfected. Long after bronze was superseded by iron and steel for
weapons, it remained in use in Thailand for temple bells and other
religious items, for bowls, caldrons as an artist's medium.
Tin is rarely used by itself, though blocks of
pure tin were used as currency and were considered as legal tender
to pay taxes with in Phuket until the democratic revolution in 1932.
The Industrial Revolution of the early eighteenth century saw the
primary use of tin shift to that of a protective coating to prevent
corrosion on metals like iron and steel. It has only been in the
last twenty years that many new high-tech composite materials, and
resins have been developed to replace the use of tin. Although many
of the traditional uses for tin have been replaced with more modern
materials, words like ‘tin can’, ‘tin shack’,
and ‘tin roof’ will long evoke memories of a bygone era.
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Rubber
 Rubber,
an ubiquitous material that comes in so many shapes, sizes, textures,
and has so many uses that modern life would be literally impossible
without it. ‘Where the Rubber Meets the Road’, an advertising
slogan from major tire company may sum up best how vital rubber
products have been to the transportation revolution of the last
century. Rubber, natural or synthetic is a substance characterized
by elasticity, water repellence, and electrical resistance. Natural
rubber is obtained from the milky white fluid called latex, found
in many plants; commercially the most important is the Hevea Brasiliensis
tree a native of the Amazon jungle of South America. Synthetic rubbers
are produced mostly from petroleum and petroleum by-products.
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The Hevea Brasiliensis tree is most productive
within a narrow belt extending about 1100 km (about 700 MI) on either
side of the equator. About 250 trees are planted per hectare(100/acre),
and the annual yield for ordinary trees is about 450 kg hectare(400
LB/acre) of dry crude rubber. In specially selected high-yield trees,
the annual yield may range as high as 2225 kg hectare(2000 LB/acre),
and experimental trees that yield 3335 kg hectare(3000 LB/acre)
have been developed. Planted in straight rows rubber trees dot the
landscape of southern Thailand and Malaysia.
Today the method of collecting the latex from the
trees is basically the same as when devised by Nicholas Ridley over
a century ago. The tapers begin work about 2AM and continue until
sunrise. A cut is made through the bark of the tree; this cut extends
one-third to one-half of the circumference of the trunk and is made
in the shape of a chevron. The latex exudes from the cut and is
collected in a small cup, the amount of latex obtained on each tapping
is about 30 ml (about 1 fl oz). Thereafter, a thin strip of bark
is shaved from the bottom of the original cut to retap the tree,
usually every other day. When the cuttings reach the ground, the
bark is permitted to renew itself and a new tapping panel is started.
The gathered latex is strained, diluted with water, and treated
with acid to coagulate the particles of rubber then poured into
a pan to harden. Once the latex turns solid, the sheets are turned
through one mangle (roller) to stretch them and then another mangle
which scores them with deep lines to squeeze out the liquid and
make them pliable. A common sight on Phuket are what appear to be
dirty white sheets about the size of large floor mats hanging outside
on a clothes line. These are raw sheets of rubber being air dried
for shipment.
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History of Rubber
The British scientist Joseph Priestley, observing
its ability to "rub out" pencil marks, gave rubber its
English name. Its name in French, caoutchouc, is more apt, however,
coming from the Indian-American word cachuchu, "the wood that
weeps."
Some of the properties and uses of rubber were
discovered by the Indians of tropical South America long before
the voyages of Columbus made the knowledge available to the western
world. For many years, the Spaniards tried to duplicate the water-resistant
products (shoes, coats, and capes) of the Indians, but they were
unsuccessful. Rubber became merely a museum curiosity in Europe
for the duration of the next two centuries. In 1736 Charles Condamine
in South America on a geographical expedition sent back to France
several rolls of crude rubber, together with a description of the
products fabricated from it by the Indians of the Amazon Valley.
General scientific interest in the substance and its properties
was revived. In 1791 the first commercial application of rubber
was initiated when an English manufacturer, Samuel Peal, patented
a method of waterproofing cloth by treating it with a solution of
rubber in turpentine. In 1823, a Scottish inventor Charles Macintosh
began manufacturing waterproof cloth and developed a line of rainproof
garments that bears his name to this day. Rubberized goods had become
popular by the 1830s, and rubber bottles and shoes made by the South
American Indians were imported in substantial quantities. The major
drawback to these items were that they became brittle in cold weather,
and tacky and malodorous in summer. In 1839 the American inventor
Charles Goodyear patented a process of cooking rubber with sulfur
that removed these unfavorable properties from raw rubber, in a
process called vulcanization.
The wild rubber trees of the South American jungles
continued to be the main source of crude rubber for most of the
19th century. Attempts to establish commercially viable rubber plantations
in the western hemisphere failed because of widespread tree loss
as a result of a leaf blight. In 1876 as world demand for rubber
far exceeded production, the British explorer Sir Henry Wickham
acquired some 70,000 seeds of Hevea Brasiliensis (known to the world
as rubber), and, despite a rigid embargo, smuggled them out of Brazil.
The seeds were successfully germinated in the hothouses of the Royal
Botanical Gardens in London, and were used to establish plantations
first in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and then in other tropical regions
of the eastern hemisphere. Eleven seedlings arrived at the Singapore
Botanical Garden in 1877 where Henry Nicholas Ridley developed a
method to propagate them rapidly and tap them for their lucrative
white sap. In 1896, a Chinese farmer in Malacca would change the
face of, and the economic future of not only Malaysia
but the whole of Southeast Asia by becoming the first to successfully
grow rubber locally.
Phuket soon profited as well. The first rubber
tree on the island appeared in 1903 and steadily expanded to the
point where rubber plantations covered more than a third of the
land area of Phuket Island. Many large and profitable plantations
were established and created another wave of immigration to fill
the needs of this labor intensive industry. Thai Muslims make up
the vast majority of people working the rubber tree fields.
The developing automobile and aircraft industries
helped fuel a staggering demand for natural rubber. Synthetic rubbers
had been developed but they were expensive and were used only when
special properties were required. Rubber rode a continuous wave
of prosperity that lasted until the early 1940s. The political and
economic significance of natural rubber became evident when, during
World War II, the supply from the Far East was terminated. The acute
rubber shortage accelerated the development of synthetic rubber.
With the outbreak of the war the United States embarked on a scientific
program that rivaled the Manhattan Project (atomic bomb) in its
scope and significance. Nearly a billion dollars was spent on research
and development of synthetic-rubber needed to keep the Allied war
effort in motion.
After the war the rubber industry spiraled through
a series of boom and bust cycles for the next forty years. The high
production levels achieved by the synthetic-rubber industry stabilized
its price at a time increased labor costs, environmental concerns,
and political instability, plagued the natural rubber industry.
Periodically the price and demand for natural rubber would gyrate
erratically as the U.S. and other world powers sought to accumulate
natural-rubber stockpiles sufficient to ensure their national security.
The development of high-tech industries like the space and computer
fields created a continuous demand for new and exotic products that
lead to further advances in synthetic-rubber technology and drove
down the demand for natural rubber, and production fell sharply.
By the early 1980s the annual U.S. consumption of natural rubber
was about 280,000 metric tons, compared to well over 2,000,000 metric
tons of synthetic rubber. The downward spiral continued into the
mid 1980s when the worldwide AIDS epidemic sent the demand for latex
rubber to manufacture condoms, surgical gloves and related products
to near record highs. Today most of the abandoned rubber fields
have been brought back into production and are being upgraded with
higher yielding trees.
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Until 1972 and the prolonged recession in the metals
industry Phuket island had been rich in tin and rubber and tourism
was of no importance. Despite the fact that until recently Phuket
regularly contributed more than any other province to the national
revenue, it remained for many years an obscure and isolated southern
province. Roads in southern Thailand were scarce, infested with
gangsters, and often impassable during the rainy season. The only
reliable way of getting to or from the island was by boat. A major
road building program, the opening of regular air service, and most
of all the opening of the Sarasin Bridge connecting the island with
the mainland dramatically changed this state of affairs. In the
mid-70s "Newsweek" magazine, in a special feature, listed
Phuket as a destination for travelers seeking something special
and undiscovered. Within a short time, people begun flocking to
Phuket’s splendid west-coast beaches and a significant new
industry was born. Today, the island hosts over one million visitors
annually.
After a period of astonishing growth Phuket is
now grappling with the dilemma of how to sustain growth without
destroying the environment that makes Phuket so desirable. Without
a master plan to channel the growth and to develop the island into
an integrated tourist destination much of the recent growth has
been haphazard and counterproductive. Traditionally, it has been
the awesome beauty of Phuket the white sandy beaches, the balmy
air, and warm sea that has been the principal attraction to the
island, but the current trend seems to favor the continued development
of glitzy and expensive tourist resorts that require massive environmental
changes to the island.
Some of the more bizarre encounters you may experience
here as a visitor are caused in part by the travel industry struggling
to maintain the profit margins of the high growth years. For example,
millions of dollars are spent yearly promoting Phuket as the ideal
tropical paradise but the first experience many have upon arrival
is being locked into a mini-van or bus with a driver with the mentality
and driving skills of a five-year old. It is difficult to relax
after a long journey and enjoy the beautiful scenery while hanging
on for dear life, gasping for breath, waiting to die at the hands
of the maniac behind the wheel. To the vehicle owner and driver
it is simple the more people they deliver the more profit. Untold
millions are spent building hotels and resorts for which they expect
to charge a world class price, then you walk outside and fall through
the sidewalk.
A number of establishments on the island and throughout
Thailand charge a different price (higher) to farangs (foreigners)
than to Thais. To help the Thais understand how have offensive and
obnoxious this practice is we attempt the quote the different prices
charged, and you may choose to join the growing number of people
who will not patronize an offending establishment until the policy
is changed.
For Phuket to enhance and maintain it’s status
as a world class travel destination it will need a greater level
of cooperation between the local government and the business community.
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