Paper short abstract:

Kapok was an important industrial commodity in the 19-20th centuries before being replaced by plastic. Yet kapok was not one thing or even one species. This paper traces the development of kapok as a commodity category and efforts to improve, transplant, or replace kapok trees around the tropics.

Paper long abstract:

During the 19-20th centuries, kapok was an industrial super material: an ultra-light, waterproof, buoyant, insulating fiber, kapok fiber harvested from kapok tree seed pods appeared in a range of industrial products in addition to its traditional uses in stuffing pillows and mattresses. Like cotton, another key industrial fiber, kapok was not one uniform thing or even one species of plant. This paper will examine the scientific and commercial construction of “kapok” as a commodity from the late nineteenth century into the early twentieth centuries.

Using evidence from botanists, merchants, inventors, and colonial administrations, I identify how kapok trees and fiber were categorized and standardized into two main types from two species: “Java kapok,” Ceiba pentandra, produced mostly in Indonesia under Dutch colonial occupation; and “Indian kapok,” Bombax ceiba, produced in India and other parts of South Asia under British colonial rule. The paper then shows how colonial projects to expand kapok production attempted to move these species around the globe, to improve them in places where the trees already grew, and to find new fibers that could substitute for kapok in commodity markets. The paper will also explore characteristics of the trees that discouraged plantation production and sustained smallholdings, and will conclude with a brief review of the impact of plastics and other synthetics on kapok markets and kapok producers.