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Craig White's Literature Courses Historical Backgrounds Ivory |
The economic background of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is the ivory trade, in which ivory appears as a resource leading to great wealth. Comparably, the plots of Tarzan movies sometimes showed ruthless white hunters seeking the legendary "elephants' graveyard" to harvest tusks.
Unfamiliarity with ivory as a trade commodity may confuse later audiences, however. Why was ivory so valuable?
Briefly, ivory may have been what people used to create products that today are constituted by plastics, which were first developed in the mid-1800s. After World War 1, plastics or polymers made from petroleum were increasingly developed.
Ivory could not be molded like plastic, but compared to wood, ivory may have been harder and more durable.
Products made from plastics appear to have replaced many common uses of ivory, which may now be reserved for uses in ornamentation and art.
Oxford English Dictionary 1a. The hard, white, elastic, and fine-grained substance (being dentine of exceptional hardness) composing the main part of the tusks of the elephant, mammoth, hippopotamus, walrus, and narwhal; it forms a very valuable article of commerce, being extensively employed as a material for many articles of use or ornament.
2. A substance resembling ivory, or made in imitation of it. Vegetable ivory, the hard albumen of the nut or seed of a South American palm, Phytelephas macrocarpa, which resembles ivory in hardness, colour, and texture, and is used for ornamental work, buttons, etc.
3. black ivory slang.: African slaves as an object of commerce. [ < the trade in these at the time being chiefly located in the same districts as that in ivory.]
[Dr. White: I've heard some old movies refer to white slavery as "the ivory trade."]
uses of ivory:
false teeth
dominoes
piano keys
billiard balls
buttons
season tickets
prosthetics?
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9th century cover to Lorsch Gospels, Carolingian Dynasty, France |
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Ivory Tooth Key (dentist's implement) |
The Ivory Trade has operated since ancient times and led to decimation of elephant populations in Northern Africa and Syria and to catastrophic declines in elephant populations in Africa and Asia. African nations and international environmental organizations have struggled to regulate the ivory trade. Elephants are near extinction in Southeast Asia, and all parts of the developing world must balance international demands for natural preservation with domestic pressures of exponentially growing populations.
Some stabilization of elephant populations has resulted, but the limiting of supply raises the price of ivory, encouraging poaching. Controlled harvests (comparable to those developed for whales, dolphins, and other sea life) are a possible outcome.
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Elephant tusks for ivory trade late 19c-early 20c, Tanzania (east coast Africa) |
Ivory Trade, East Africa, 1880s |
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