In response to Britian's attempt to establish a rubber cartel, Henry Ford started Fordlandia, a rubber plantation in the Brazilian rain forest. Rain-forest biology made running a rubber plantation difficult; Ford's ideas about expertise, labor relations, and culture made it effectively impossible; changing economic and political circumstances eventually made the rubber plantation impractical.
Excellent storytelling and detail with a strange choice to end
4 stars
To give full context for the story, this is partially a biography of Henry Ford and a history of the Amazon. The pacing and weaving together of storylines is excellent, and paints a vivid picture of the hubris and hopes of the project.
The epilogue could be done without. The author seems to feel he needs to close with a condemnation of “capitalism” as a whole, casting the Fordlandia folly as a specific consequence of capitalism. Keeping in mind the Soviet Union’s destruction of the Aral Sea, this rings hollow and ends an otherwise excellent book on environmental destruction, colonialism, and yes, self-impressed capitalism, on an unconvincing screed.
I gave it three stars because I liked it, but I did not love it. On the positive, it is a very interesting book on a very interesting topic. On the negative, there is a lot of small detail that can slow down the narrative a bit. At moments, I did skim through the book. The story itself is fascinating: Henry Ford decides to build and settle a town in the Brazilian Amazon jungle in order to have a place that supplies rubber for his car tires, thus bypassing other suppliers. This sounds good in theory. In practice, Ford went into the enterprise with a lot of ignorance. In many ways, it was not the jungle that defeated Ford. Ford more often than not was his worst enemy from his own ignorance about Brazil, the local customs, so on to the people he hired for the operation, who more often …
I gave it three stars because I liked it, but I did not love it. On the positive, it is a very interesting book on a very interesting topic. On the negative, there is a lot of small detail that can slow down the narrative a bit. At moments, I did skim through the book. The story itself is fascinating: Henry Ford decides to build and settle a town in the Brazilian Amazon jungle in order to have a place that supplies rubber for his car tires, thus bypassing other suppliers. This sounds good in theory. In practice, Ford went into the enterprise with a lot of ignorance. In many ways, it was not the jungle that defeated Ford. Ford more often than not was his worst enemy from his own ignorance about Brazil, the local customs, so on to the people he hired for the operation, who more often than not were even more clueless.
In addition to the story of Fordlandia, we also get a very good picture of Henry Ford, the company he created (Ford Motor Company), the revolution in industry he created (the assembly line and the idea of a lot of workers to make one small widget for a larger product at a time), and the time period (after World War I into the 1920s. Ford is portrayed as a man in conflict. On the one hand, he thinks industry is a savior, and yet he wants to return to a pastoral time that he himself helped destroy with his industry. It is a bit tragic yet fascinating to read. Fordlandia itself was finally sold off and turned over to the Brazilians after World War II. And no, this is not really a spoiler). You also get a bit U.S. as well as Brazilian and Latin American history in the process.
Overall, the author did a lot of research for this book, and he packs a lot of material in it. At times, it does get to be a bit much (thus why I skimmed some parts). Yet I still liked the book, and I enjoyed learning a few new things because of it. It is a book I would gladly recommend.
Final note: If you like this book, here are other books I have read that may appeal to readers as well:
The Lost City of Z Actually, Percy Fawcett, subject of this book, is mentioned in Grandin's book a few times. Also, this is another book about the Amazon and man going into it attempting to conquer the jungle.
Forgotten Fatherland: The Search for Elisabeth Nietzsche. This story is a biography of the philosopher's sister and the story of the Aryan utopian community her husband and her established in Paraguay. Again, man, or woman in this case, trying to conquer the jungle to create a utopia. In some ways, very similar to what Ford wanted with Fordlandia.
* The News from Paraguay. This is fiction, a novel about one of Paraguay's dictators and his Irish mistress.
