In Fordlandia Greg Grandin discusses the creation, from scratch, of a town on the banks of the Tapajós River, in the Brazilian Rainforest, by one of the world’s most famous car makers, Henry Ford. The idea behind the ambitious project was to source locally grown rubber for manufacturing purposes, to compete with British and French companies who had the monopoly on the world market with products from their former colonies.
The task proved to be a complicated and fraught journey that had many setbacks and false starts. The Ford Motor Company tried to replicate working methods and styles from their Headquarters in Michigan directly to the state of Pará in northern Brazil, in the heart of the Amazon jungle. The stark differences in climate, work ethic, language and lifestyle soon came to the fore and the Americans realised just what a gargantuan challenge lay ahead of them. But Fordlandia (and it’s later downstream sister town Belterra) soon became more than a rubber plantation, indeed it became an extension of American life and values of the 1930’s with schools, shops and a dance hall all built on the US model. Prohibition was even enforced for a time raising difficult questions about the jurisdiction of the land (which Ford had bought in 1927 but due to a lack of research by his lawyers, he could have got for free from the Brazilian government).
The working styles and culture inevitably encountered problems as the idealistic American workers grappled with Brazilian heat, humidity, tropical diseases, bureaucracy, corruption as well as their own shortcomings underlined by an almost total lack of research from the outset relating to the production of rubber in the Amazon. The methods of blind enthusiasm that had proved so successful in the US proved equally as unsuccessful in Brazil. When describing the people aboard a boat heading to set up the new town, Grandin questions the suitability of the staff selected.
“The Ormoc had plenty of science, brains, and money on board. What it didn’t have was a horticulturalist, agronomist, botanist, microbiologist, entomologist, or any other person on board who might know something about jungle rubber and its enemies.” (p.128)
Nor did the crew of this boat exercise due diligence in terms of researching the local geography and topography of the river it was navigating.
“No one told Sorensen that an underwater rock ledge cut across the Tapajós fifty miles downriver from where they planned to establish the plantation, making it impossible for ships the size of the Ormoc to reach the site during the dry season, when the water was low.” (p.125)
The town soon turned into a financial black hole and in the end never made a profit, but this didn’t stop Ford continuing on his mission of exporting his way of life to a part of the world that was woefully unprepared to receive it. The idea of consumer capitalism to people living in one of the most rural and undeveloped parts of the world at that time was a hard sell.
Ultimately what did for the project was the inability of their farmers and planters to contain a pestilence know as South American Leaf Blight (or mal-das-folhas in Portuguese) which ravaged successive crops year after year. This was down to a lack of understanding of how the sophisticated and complex jungle ecosystem worked.
This book was published by Picador in 2009, and written by Greg Grandin who is a professor of history at Yale University. It is an excellent read and demonstrates a high level of research, which is manifested in the thorough degree of detail that is provided on the topics considered. The historian’s writing style is clear and coherent, and whilst some prior knowledge of Brazilian and American 20th century history would be helpful to the reader, Grandin’s in depth explanations mean that even complete newcomers to the subject can be guided through the events. The quality of this book is also demonstrated by the breadth of the themes that it covers meaning that it has a broad appeal. These themes include industrialization, the motor industry, the Great Depression and Wall Street Crash, the rise of Unionism, the New Deal and the presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt in the US and Getulio Vargas in Brazil.
Historians, economists and political scientists would find this book especially appealing, as well as students of Brazilian and American 20th century history. But this really is a book for everyone such are the variety of the issues that are dealt with and the enjoyable pace at which the story is told.
One of the most intriguing aspects of this book is the portrayal of Henry Ford himself as such a complex and talented individual who also had extremely contradictory personality traits that ranged from benevolence to sadism, from traditionalist to modernist. Undoubtedly one of the greatest engineers and businessmen of all time, the author exposes the inconsistencies of the magnate through his, at times, unpredictable decision making process.
The subtitle of this book is “The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s forgotten Jungle City.” And indeed this is a forgotten chapter in history. When I asked Brazilian friends about Fordlandia, nearly all said that they had never heard of the place, let alone know the history that goes with it. This adds to the book’s weight as shining a light on a topic that is rarely discussed.
The epilogue is particularly engaging as it concentrates on the impact that the creation of Fordlandia had on the Amazon and how that impact can be felt today. These broadly fall into two categories; deforestation and globalisation (which in this case are clearly linked). Ford’s town was responsible for the clearing of countless hectares of Amazon Rainforest to build the settlement and its rubber plant, a process that has accelerated at an alarming rate until the present day. The author highlights how the Amazon region has become an extremely violent and dangerous place due to the conflict between the illegal logging trade and the attempts at containing it. Readers also learn about the shocking number of ecological activists who have been murdered in the north of Brazil in recent decades including a high profile case in which an American nun was shot dead.
“In 2005 in eastern Pará, gunmen hired by loggers killed Sister Dorothy Stang, a Maryknoll nun from the United States who had been working with local rural communities to oppose illicit logging.” (p.363)
The trajectory of neoliberal economics is also considered in the epilogue. Henry Ford became famous for his high salaries paid to factory workers. If we compare that with the situation now where workers’ salaries are constantly being driven down in the quest for higher profit margins, it is shocking to see how much things have changed.
“Instead of Ford’s virtuous circuit of high wages and decent benefits generating expanding markets, a vicious one now rules: profits are derived not from well paid workers affluent enough to buy what they have made but from driving prices as low as they can go; this in turn renders good pay and humane benefits not only unnecessary for keeping the economy going but impossible to maintain, since the best, and at times only, place to cut production costs it labor.” (p.359)
Grandin also mentions the issue of modern slavery which, unfortunately, is still a system that continues to this day in the Amazon.
The epilogue is in many ways the part of the story that connects Henry Ford’s venture to the present day realities of pressing topics in the 21st century, namely global warming, neoliberal economics, the moral responsibility of business and the role business plays in international relations. Many of these issues are never far away from news headlines today. It is this relevance to current affairs that makes Grandin’s book such an interesting and timely piece of writing as a historical context is provided to many of the challenges that we are facing now.
This book exceeded all expectations and this is due to the in depth research and clarity of writing style that the author demonstrates. This is a must read for people interested in early 20th century history, Brazil – USA relations and the Amazon Rainforest. But this book will also appeal to curious people looking to broaden their knowledge and learn about an unusual series of events that took place on the banks of the Tapajós River.
WilliamGAFrost 