Dutch East Indies

In 1942 the Japanese overran Malaya and the then Dutch East Indies to cut off the main sources of natural rubber for the United States and the British Commonwealth. Because of this the US Government initiated a crash programme for the installation of plants for the manufacture of a rubber from butadiene and styrene. This product, then known as GR-S (Government Rubber-Styrene), provided at that time an inferior substitute for natural rubber but, with a renewed availability of natural rubber at the end of the war, the demand for GR-S slumped considerably. (Today the demand for SBR (as GR-S is now known) has increased with the great improvements in quality that have been made and SBR is today the principal synthetic rubber). 

The oldest effective drug for the treatment of this disease is indisputably quinine. Although the antipyretic activity of cinchona bark was known to the Incas, it remained for the Jesuit missionaries to uncover its antimalarial properties in the early seventeenth century. The advance of organic chemistry led to the isolation and identification of the alkaloid, quinine, as the active compound at the turn of this century. The emerging clinical importance of this drug led up to the establishment of cinchona plantations in the Dutch East Indies. This very circum-... 

Lai, S. D. and B. K. Yadav. Folk medicine of Kurukshetra district (Haryana), India. EconBot 1983 37(3) 299-305. Hirschhom, H. H. Botanical remedies of the former Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). I. Eumycetes, Pteridophyta, Gymnospermae, Angiospermae (Monocotyledons only). J Ethnopharmacol 1983 7(2) 123-156. 

Wilhelm Homberg (1652-1713), though born in Batavia of German ancestry in what was then the Dutch East Indies, spent his adult career in... 

Our fatherland, Acheh, Sumatra, had always been a free and sovereign state since the world begun... However, when, after World War II, the Dutch East Indies was supposed to have been liquidated. .. our fatherland, Acheh, was not returned to us. Instead, our fatherland was turned over by the Dutch to the Javanese—their ex-mercenaries—by hasty fiat of colonial powers. The Javanese are alien and foreign people to us Achehnese Sumatrans. .. Indonesia was a fraud a cloak to cover up Javanese colonialism. (Tiro 1981 15-17)... 

Henley, David 1996. Nationalism and Regionalism in a Colonial Context Minahasa in the Dutch East Indies. Leiden KITLV Press. 

Nagtegal, Luc 1996. Riding the Dutch Tiger the Dutch East Indies Company and the Northeast Coast of Java, 1680-1743. Leiden KITLV. 

At the beginning of the seventeenth century the Dutch brought nautilus shells back from the Dutch East Indies and perfected the art of cutting and carving these in delicate and ornate designs, sometimes with pictures added that were etched into the shell and dyed with... 

During World War II the United States, cut off from India, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Malaysia, and the Dutch East Indies (areas which, since the late nineteenth century, had replaced South America as the main suppliers of natural rubber), developed several superior synthetic rubbers. The U.S. synthetic rubber industry originated from two discoveries that were serendipitous that is, they occurred while the researchers were searching for something else. 

Petroleum. Crude oil mineral oil rock oil coal oil seneca oil. Consists of a mixture of hydrocarbons from C2H6 and up—chiefly of the paraffins, cycloparaffins, or of cyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, with small amounts of benzene hydrocarbons, sulfur, and oxygenated compounds. Occurrence U.S., Mexico, Iran, Russia, Roumania, Poland, Dutch East Indies, etc. 

Prior to World War II some 70 per cent of the world s tin ore came from S.E. Asia, including Malaya, Dutch East Indies and China. Other sources are Australia, Tasmania, Nigeria, the Belgian Congo and Bolivia. 

Cocoa beans are produced in Central America, South America, Dutch East Indies, British West Indies, and West Africa. However, Ecuador is the home of the cocoa tree which was discovered by the Spaniards. 

The first indication of a connection between a diet-related elevated cholesterol exposure and heart disease in humans came from the Dutch physician Cornelis D. de Langen. In 1916, he reported from the Dutch East Indies (nowadays Indonesia), that the natives had a considerably lower cholesterol level than the Dutch colonists. He attributed this to their different dietary habits. Whereas the diet of the Dutch was very rich in meat, the natives lived mainly on vegetables and rice. Within the framework of an epidemiological study, he could prove that the cholesterol level of the latter rose by around 27 %, if they changed their diet to that of the Dutch. Regrettably, de Langen published his results in Dutch, in a journal, which received little attention from the experts. 

The IG Farben-Standard oil agreement was to have far greater significance. This was because it provided the American company with technical details of the production of Buna S, the peroxide-initiated emulsion-polymerized copolymer of butadiene and styrene. World War II had started in 1939 and in 1942 the Japanese had taken over Malaya and the then, Dutch East Indies. Supplies of natural rubber to Britain and to the United States were thus severely curtailed. As a direct consequence the US and Canadian governments... 

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