Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City [Paperback]

Greg Grandin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 27, 2010

The stunning, never before told story of the quixotic attempt to recreate small-town America in the heart of the Amazon

In 1927, Henry Ford, the richest man in the world, bought a tract of land twice the size of Delaware in the Brazilian Amazon. His intention was to grow rubber, but the project rapidly evolved into a more ambitious bid to export America itself, along with its golf courses, ice-cream shops, bandstands, indoor plumbing, and Model Ts rolling down broad streets.

Fordlandia, as the settlement was called, quickly became the site of an epic clash. On one side was the car magnate, lean, austere, the man who reduced industrial production to its simplest motions; on the other, the Amazon, lush, extravagant, the most complex ecological system on the planet. Ford’s early success in imposing time clocks and square dances on the jungle soon collapsed, as indigenous workers, rejecting his midwestern Puritanism, turned the place into a ribald tropical boomtown. Fordlandia’s eventual demise as a rubber plantation foreshadowed the practices that today are laying waste to the rain forest.

More than a parable of one man’s arrogant attempt to force his will on the natural world, Fordlandia depicts a desperate quest to salvage the bygone America that the Ford factory system did much to dispatch. As Greg Grandin shows in this gripping and mordantly observed history, Ford’s great delusion was not that the Amazon could be tamed but that the forces of capitalism, once released, might yet be contained.

Fordlandia is a 2009 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best of the Month, June 2009: Proving that truth can indeed be stranger than fiction, Fordlandia is the story of Henry Ford's ill-advised attempt to transform raw Brazilian rainforest into homespun slices of Americana. With sales of his Model-T booming, the automotive tycoon saw an opportunity to expand his reach further by exploiting a downtrodden Brazilian rubber industry. His vision, the laughably-named Amazonian outpost of Fordlandia, would become an enviable symbol of efficiency and mark the Ford Motor Company as a player on the global stage. Or so he thought. With thoughtful and meticulous research, author Greg Grandin explores the astounding oversights (no botanists were consulted to confirm the colony's agricultural viability) and painful arrogance (little thought was paid to how native Brazilians would react to an American way of life) that hamstrung the project from the start. Instead of ushering in a new era of commerce, Fordlandia became a cautionary tale of a dream destroyed by hubris. --Dave Callanan

Take a Closer Look at Images from Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City

(Click on images to enlarge)

A sketch of the opera house in Manus, Brazil (aka. "the tropical Paris")	An Amazonian family employed in the rubber trade	Ford executives on the deck of The Ormoc en route to the Amazon
Workers clearing the rainforest before construction can begin	Mundurucú mission children with German nuns	A Lincoln Zephyr stuck in Fordlandia mud
Fordlandia's Riverside Avenue near the Tapajós River	Ruins of Fordlandia's powerhouse	Ruins of the sawmill at Iron Mountain

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--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Gandin, an NYU professor of Latin American history, offers the thoroughly remarkable story of Henry Ford's attempt, from the 1920s through 1945, to transform part of Brazil's Amazon River basin into a rubber plantation and eponymous American-style company town: Fordlandia. Gandin has found a fascinating vehicle to illuminate the many contradictory parts of Henry Ford: the pacifist, the internationalist, the virulent anti-Semite, the $5-a-day friend of the workingman, the anti-union crusader, the man who ushered America into the industrial age yet rejected the social changes that followed urbanization. Both infuriating and fascinating, Ford is only a piece of the Fordlandia story. The follies of colonialism and the testing of the belief that the Amazon—where 7,882 organisms could be found on any given five square miles—could be made to produce rubber with the reliability of an auto assembly line makes a surprisingly dramatic tale. Although readers know that Fordlandia will return to the jungle, the unfolding of this unprecedented experiment is compelling. Grandin concludes that Fordlandia represents in crystalline form the utopianism that powered Fordism—and by extension Americanism. Readers may find it a cautionary tale for the 21st century. 54 b&w photos. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Picador; First Edition edition (April 27, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312429622
• ISBN-13: 978-0312429621
• Product Dimensions: 0.8 x 5.5 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (69 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #27,014 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #2 in Books > History > Americas > South America > Brazil
  • #9 in Books > Business & Investing > Industries & Professions > Transportation
  • #90 in Books > Business & Investing > Biography & History > Company Profiles

More About the Author

Greg Grandin is the author of Fordlandia, Empire's Workshop, The Last Colonial Massacre, and the award-winning The Blood of Guatemala. A professor of history of Latin American history at New York University and a Guggenheim fellow, Grandin has served on the United Nations Truth Commission investigating the Guatemalan Civil War and has written for the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The New Statesman, and The New York Times.

Grandin received his BA from Brooklyn College, CUNY, in 1992 and his PhD from Yale in 1999. His many books and articles explore the connection between the diverse manifestations of everyday life and large-scale societal transformations that took place in Central and South America related to agricultural commodity production and state formation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Grandin has published extensively on issues of revolution, popular memory, U.S.-Latin American relations, photography, genocide, truth commissions, human rights, disease, and the tensions that exist between legal and historical inquiries into political violence. In 1997 and 1998 Grandin worked with the Guatemalan Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico--the UN-administered truth commission set up to investigate political violence committed during Guatemala's thirty-six-year civil war.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

136 of 145 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Midwest of his imagination", June 15, 2009

By 

L.A. in CA - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City (Hardcover)

This book offers a rare and fascinating look into Henry Ford's grand economic experiment in the Amazon jungle.

In 1927, approaching his 65th birthday, Ford sent his first two ships to the area. He had purchased 2.5 million acres of Amazon land - roughly the size of Connecticut. He planned not only to plant rubber trees, but also to mine the land for gold; drill for oil; and harvest timber. In addition, he hoped to bring his American-style sensibilities to the region: the production line; sanitation; buildings such as Churches, cottages; a hospital; a movie theater; and the idea of fair wages for hard work. What he didn't bring was a an expertise in growing rubber trees, or an understanding of the Amazon and it's people.

One other thing Ford never brought to Fordlandia was himself. Between the inception of Fordlandia in 1927 and Ford's death in 1947, he never set foot in the Amazon.

This is the story of the creation of "Fordlandia", amazing in itself. But, it is also the story of Henry Ford (a man of sharp contradictions); the struggles of the American and Brazilian laborers who worked in the City; and of the Amazon. It also speaks of a different era, when seemingly impossible things could be attempted.

Very well written and researched. Lots of old photographs. I can find no flaws. Highly recommended.

44 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Riveting from Beginning to End, June 23, 2009

By 

History Teacher (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City (Hardcover)

One of the best books I have read on Henry Ford, and I've read most all of them. The author provides a fascinating rendition of so many topics, including the Amazon, Diego Rivera's Detroit murals, the booming 1920s and the hard times of the 1930s. The book is epic in scope, a really wonderful journey that takes readers from Detroit to the wilds of northern Michigan, the Tennessee River Valley (I didn't know that the idea for the TVA came from Ford!) and then to the Amazon. I fully recommend this book.

38 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, Well Written and Well Researched, June 29, 2009

By 

Sandra I. Oliver (Rochester, New York) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City (Hardcover)

Fordlandia is that rare non-fiction written by an historian that is a great read. Author Greg Grandin takes the reader on a wonderful voyage down the Amazon as he uncovers a magical mystery escapade of Henry Ford. Not unlike many of the recent forays into Southeast Asia and the Middle East, Ford's desire to claim the hearts, minds and raw materials of Latin America, specically Brazil seem very modern and familiar. He seems to have made all the classic errors of neo-colonism: ignoring the host culture, trying to impose an inappropriate culture and economic system, sending personnel not schooled in the language or culture.

On top of this, the Amazon was an unfriendly climate for those used to the cold winds of Michigan and the Puritan work ethic of the United States. Insects, diseases, "indolent" workers, lack of modern conveniences and the very essence of the area combined to doom Ford's dream of establlishing a town/plantation devoted to cornering the market on rubber.

Ford's efforts to transplant his River Rouge auto plant to the jungle of Brazil makes for fascinating and thought provoking reading.