Fordlandia. A Review of Greg Grandin's <em>Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City</em> (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009)

Abstract

Fordlandia represents a significant departure from Greg Grandin’s previous work on subaltern challenges to state structures in Guatemala. The story that Grandin relates is a fascinating and little known one. In 1927, car magnate Henry Ford purchased a huge tract of land buried deep in the Brazilian Amazon to grow rubber for export to the United States for use in the automobile industry. Ford never visited the settlement that carried his name, and his managers never were able to make the settlement flourish. Grandin focuses in particular on Ford’s failure to import western modernity into the Brazil Amazon.