Until artificial rubber was invented by the colony-impaired Germans, no modern economy could exist without the natural stuff. All of the important powers had tropical colonies where rubber was produced. For the Netherlands, it was Indonesia; for France, it was Indochina; for the British, it was what they then called Malaya, as well as many other places.

Without rubber and another kind of tree resin called gutta-percha, it would not have been possible to wire the world. Early telegraph lines were just naked conductors strung from pole to pole, but this worked poorly, especially in wet conditions, so some kind of flexible but durable insulation was needed. After much trial and error, rubber became the standard for terrestrial and aerial wires while gutta-percha (a natural gum also derived from a tree grown in Malaya) was used for submarine cables. Gutta-percha is humble-looking stuff, a nondescript brown crud that surrounds the inner core of old submarine cables to a thickness of perhaps 1 centimeter, but it was a wonder material back in those days, and the longer it remained immersed in salt water, the better it got.

So far, it was all according to the general plan that the British had in mind: find some useful DNA in the Americas, stockpile it at Kew Gardens, propagate it to other botanical gardens around the world, make money off the proceeds, and grow the economy. Modern-day Penang, however, is a good example of the notion of unintended consequences.

As soon as the British had established the rule of law in Penang, various kinds of Chinese people began to move in and establish businesses. Most of them were Hokkien Chinese from north of Hong Kong, though Cantonese, Hakka, and other groups also settled there. Likewise, Tamils and Sikhs came from across the Bay of Bengal. As rubber trees began to take over the countryside, a common arrangement was for Chinese immigrants to establish rubber plantations and hire Indian immigrants (as well as Malays) as laborers.