"This is an out-of-the-ordinary study into social history. It describes working conditions and labour relations down two centuries worldwide along an entire production chain. The "devil's milk" of the title is rubber. With exhaustive research and literary skill, the author drives his narrative forward with the poise and power of a surfer confidently navigating the rolling waves and slipstreams of history. Rubber first appeared in Europe in the slipstream of New World products that followed the conquest of America. Known and used by pre-Columbian civilizations, it was long confined to the cabinet of colonial curiosities. Obstacles to its use abounded: it was sticky, malodorous, and turned brittle when old or cold. It found the odd market, but nothing to speak of. The big breakthrough came with the invention of vulcanization in 1839 by the young chemist Charles Goodyear. Sulphur and other substances added to natural rubber give it a robust elasticity. Within thirty years, applications proliferated: industrial equipment, construction materials, insulation for the telegraph cables that would soon connect the five continents, and more. By the late 19th century, rubber had become a vital part of many manufactures. This stage in the history of rubber brought two production systems into contact. Harvesting takes place in primitive conditions in tropical forests, mainly in the Amazon basin. Industrial uses proliferated in the U.S.A. and Europe as modern technological inventions and new goods were developed for mass consumption. But one thing connects those who collect latex in near slavery conditions and the hundreds of thousands of workers in modern factories where rubber is processed: inhuman working conditions. In tropical forests, dreadful exploitation decimated the ranks of producers while jungle towns like Manaus in Brazil and Iquitos in Peru prospered on the industry's back with a showy but fleeting wealth. In the modern factories, wages are low and death rates from exposures to chemicals high. At the turn of the century, new rubber plantations appeared in Africa (mainly in the Congo Free State) and East Asia, followed by the first condemnations. The British diplomat Roger Casement inveighed against the hellish plantations of the Congo and Peru. Labour unrest also erupted in places where capital concentrated its workforce. The author recounts the mass strike of workers in BF Goodrich's Akron (Ohio) tyre factory in 1913 and the activist role played by Chinese rubber plantation labourers – the coolies − in the development of the communist movement in Indochina and Malaysia. The looming Second World War precipitated the development of new technologies for the production of synthetic rubber, with the U.S. and Germany at the forefront of developments. A cartel was created between Standard Oil and IG Farben. The German group stepped up war preparations. Closely associated with Nazism even before Hitler's rise to power, it invested in a new production facility attached to the Auschwitz concentration camp: Monowitz − run with slave labour supplied by the Nazi state. Working conditions in the factory have been described by one of the few survivors, Primo Levi, in his work of witness If This Is a Man. He races through the post-war history. The Nuremberg Tribunal showed immense leniency towards the Auschwitz plant managers, the main one of whom − Otto Ambros – had by 1950 become a leading figure of the West German chemical industry. On his death in 1990, BASF paid tribute to him in an obituary as "[a]n expressive entrepreneurial figure of great charisma". At Soviet behest, the huge East German plant at Leuna was seized and placed under state control with no real improvement in working conditions. The workers took an active part in the 1953 uprising against Stalinist leader Walter Ulbricht's regime. In an interview, John Tully disagreed with British historian Thomas Carlyle's dictum that, "History is but the biography of great men", and this book makes his case! He has produced a fascinating tale whose central protagonist is the serried ranks of millions of workers, and a stimulating analysis of the inegalitarian way in which capitalism conspired to develop. — Laurent Vogel"

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