From oil palm, my bread and butter, I often find myself rubbernecking into the history of rubber. One curiosity that has long tugged at me is how Prang Besar — once just another plantation in the Malayan heartland — was reborn as Putrajaya, Malaysia’s gleaming administrative capital.

Putrajaya may dazzle with its domes and boulevards, but I can’t help seeing another lost era. Beneath the glass and granite once stretched regimented lines of rubber, a living laboratory of clones and science. Visitors see a city; I see a plantation that traded its latex for legislation.

The landscape began, oddly enough, not with politicians or planners, but with soldiers. After the cannons of World War I fell silent in Europe, some ex-servicemen from the West sailed East in search of new fortunes. They did not bring parades or victory medals, but machetes, tapping knives and the grit to transform the dense Malayan jungle into orderly rows of rubber. And so, Prang Besar Estate was carved out — a plantation born of war’s aftermath, an outpost of latex and labour.

The name itself, Prang Besar, which translates to “Great War” in Malay, was no accident. In 1921, nine British officers, still shaking off the mud of Flanders, were each handed a slice of Ulu Langat jungle as their post-war “thank you” from the Crown. Bayonets were traded for tapping knives, trenches for terraces, and soon neat rows of rubber trees replaced the chaos of Europe’s battlefields.

Who would have thought then that these same grounds — once echoing with the tap-tap of rubber tappers — would one day resound with the clatter of government convoys and policy pronouncements?

Before domes, boulevards and tinted government convoys, Putrajaya was just another plantation where the morning air smelled of latex, kerosene lamps flickered in planters’ bungalows, and monkeys launched raids on seed gardens like seasoned guerrillas.

By 1924, the estate had doubled in size, complete with its own emblem: a sapling springing boldly from a bomb shell burst. Only planters could dream up such symbolism. Peace through latex. The seal was sketched by Lt Commander JC Amcotts proving that some men leave war with medals, others with a knack for logos. One Commander GHA Willis also stamped his presence on the map with Ladang Willis because if you can’t conquer empires, at least you can name an estate after yourself.

At the helm was Major Henry Gough, the soldier-turned-scientist, who guided the estate until his death in 1952, still steering the “Great War Estate” decades after the guns had gone silent.

The estate had three founding spirits:

Major Henry Gough — the soldier-turned-scientist. With no formal training, he became Malaya’s apostle of budgrafting. By 1926, he had established 600 clones and even published Gough’s Practical Budgrafting and Seed Selection. His seed gardens in Bangi were raided so often by monkeys they could have been called “rubber buffets”. Undeterred, Gough shifted operations to Bagan Datoh, and from there, his famed PB86 clone spread across estates.

Sir Eric Macfadyen — the Oxford man-turned-corporate brain. Legend has it he bought into Prang Besar after literally stepping on a partner at Port Swettenham. A career civil servant-turned-planter, he saw beyond profits: Prang Besar could become a research station. He was right — the estate’s work would influence the creation of the Rubber Research Institute (RRI), one of Malaya’s greatest scientific legacies.

Captain RO Jenkins — the Welsh organiser with a gift for detail. He succeeded Gough as manager in 1926, became a Visiting Agent (VA), and later chaired the company. His reports became planters’ bedtime reading, redolent not of roses but of “clever VA wisdom”.

Another key chapter in the Prang Besar legacy lies in its research station, where the pioneering work of Ronald Shephard and his team led to the creation of many famous PBRS rubber clones including PB260. The clones have since been successfully cultivated in other countries around the world.

Work on improving planting materials at Prang Besar Estate kicked off in 1921, the same year the estate itself came into being. By 1925, the Rubber Research Institute of Malaya (RRIM) was established, and in 1928, systematic rubber breeding programmes started. Breeding work at Prang Besar came to an end in 1994 when the estate was acquired by the government. From that point on, the art and science of rubber research became the domain of RRIM/MRB, continuing the legacy of pushing the boundaries of what rubber could and would be.

Prang Besar was no Eden. The jungle may have been tamed into rows of rubber, but danger lurked at every turn. Malaria stalked the workers, labour was perpetually short, and by the late 1940s the estate was rattled by the communist insurgency of the Malayan Emergency.

Armed patrols by constables and army squads became as routine as morning muster. The threats were real: in one ambush, tappers were gunned down as they were returning from work. On another occasion, a school bus carrying estate children had its tyres shredded by gunfire — a brush with tragedy that ended, mercifully, with shaken passengers but no casualties.

Yet life went on. Among the unsung was Haji Osman Said, who joined Prang Besar in 1927. For 33 years he quietly turned theory into practice, ensuring rubber clones thrived in the field. When he retired in 1960 with a modest pension, he was remembered simply as a “born agriculturalist”. Men like Osman rarely appear in history books, but they were the true lifeblood of estates — the hands that made the science live.

And through it all, the clones thrived. PB86 and others bred at Prang Besar quietly raised yields across Malaya and beyond. To planters, these clones were more precious than gold bars; they were latex factories on stems.

When the last Mat Salleh manager, Ken Wallace finally hung up his planter’s hat, the mantle of management passed not to another expatriate but to a local: VD Nair. His appointment as the first Asian manager, though a milestone, was met with mixed feelings. In his Handing-Over Report, Nair dryly noted that the transfer came from Travers “not with his blessings but with obsession” — a barbed line that said more about the times than about the men themselves.

Back then, such grudging acceptance was almost the norm. Still, Nair’s promotion marked more than a personal achievement: it signalled the slow but inevitable shift from expatriate dominance to local stewardship, opening a new chapter in the history of Harrisons & Crosfield and in the wider story of Malayan plantations.

Later Prang Besar was taken over by Harrisons and Crossfield Ltd, under Harrisons Malaysian Estates Ltd, and Harrisons Malaysian Plantations Bhd. In 1982, Harrisons and Crosfield sold the estate to Golden Hope Plantations.

Fast forward to the 1990s, when the Malaysian government acquired Prang Besar — not for rubber, but for reinvention. Its 4,000 hectares were transformed into the nation’s new administrative capital, Putrajaya, and the adjoining Cyberjaya. Nearby, Sepang Estate gave way to another national landmark: KLIA.

By 1998, the Prime Minister’s Department would move in, soon followed by ministries, except a few that clung to Kuala Lumpur. Putrajaya today dazzles with domes, manicured boulevards, and lakeside vistas. But beneath the granite and fountains lies the ghost of Prang Besar — soldiers-turned-planters, tappers who braved insurgency and clones that shaped the fortunes of a young nation.

Rubber was one of the twin economic pillars with tin that built Malaya’s prosperity. To erase its name is to forget the latex that lubricated the economy before oil palm took the stage.

Perhaps it is time for a nod to its past: a Prang Besar Rubber Park. After all, without it, Putrajaya might never have had such firm roots. Because history, like latex, always leaves a trace.

Joseph Tek Choon Yee is a former president of the Malaysian Estate Owners’ Association (MEOA) and past chief executive of the Malaysian Palm Oil Association (MPOA).