The Story of Abaca

'The Story of Abaca' is a human story told through the experiences of farmers, traders, and entrepreneurs who cultivate, market, manufacture, and promote the Philippine abaca industry. Often called Manila hemp, abaca is indigenous to the Philippines and its commercial production has always been centred here. The king of Spain, the book reveals, rejected abaca rigging for his sailing fleet in the 17th century. Had he not been so short-sighted, he might have found the riches he sought in his Asiatic colony, not in spices or gold, but in the strength and durability of the fibres extracted from the abaca plant that grew so abundantly in the archipelago. Some two centuries later, other naval powers, notably the U.S. and the U.K., did discover these extraordinary characteristics for their marine cordage. The author chronicles the subsequent international competition, which continues today not so much for ropes, but for the specialty papers for which abaca is uniquely well suited. How can this fibre be so strong as to hold a ship in its mooring or tea leaves steeping in a teabag? 'The Story of Abaca' takes you to old ropewalks and harbours in London and Salem, to mills of modern pulpers and papermakers, and to research laboratories in the Philippines.