Tongkat ali, the world's new most valuable plant
There have been times in human history over the past 500 years when countries that are now considered impoverished developing nations were actually baskets of wealth.
Sometimes, these baskets of wealth were self-governed, and sometimes, the beneficiaries were colonial powers.
But always, the wealth was generated by highly valuable plants.
Take the Caribbean, for example.
In the second half of the 18th century, Haiti (then the French colony of Saint-Domingue) was one of the richest places on earth, entirely due to the production of sugar.
"Haiti ... was the richest colony in the entire world. Economists estimate that in the 1750s Haiti provided as much as 50% of the Gross National Product of France."
Bob Corbett, webster.edu, Why is Haiti so poor?
A search for the keywords "Haiti richest colony" will bring up numerous references to attest to this fact. And if you have the time for well-researched historical novels, you may enjoy this topic in Michener's Caribbean.
It was a similar story with rubber in the Brazilian Amazon basin before the English botanist Henry Wickham smuggled 70,000 tree seeds out of Brazil in 1876 to establish rubber plantations in British-owned Malaysia.
At the end of the 19th century, Manaus, the largest city in the Amazon basin, was one of the richest cities in the world, entirely owed to rubber sap.
Some 200 years earlier, in the second half of the 17th century, it was the Indonesian spice islands that financed much of the Dutch political power of that era. By 1669, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was the richest company the world had ever seen, with its own private army of 10,000 soldiers and its own fleet of warships.
Well, if there ever is again a wealth record based on plants from developing countries, then Indonesia and Malaysia will probably again have a role in it.
But this time it won't be rubber or spices.
The most likely candidate is Tongkat Ali, the tree with the scientific name Eurycoma longifolia. While it is often hyped as possessing the magic power to turn every man into a hybrid of Arnold Schwarzenegger in terms of muscle mass and Casanova in terms of libido, and while it is studied for various potential health benefits, claims that it prevents and cures all kinds of cancers are scientifically unfounded.
I recommend the Indonesian government guards its borders well, so that this time, Tongkat Ali seeds won't be smuggled to Brazil... or even Haiti.