Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin explores what happens when one person or society attempts to impose its world view on another society. In 1927, automobile magnate Henry Ford bought 2.5 million acres in the Brazilian Amazon with the intention to grow rubber trees to supply his factories with latex and to establish a settlement to manage the plantation, called Fordlandia, that would replicate the small-town American culture his automobiles were effectively destroying in the United States. Grandin suggests that Fordlandia was "quintessentially American" because "frustrated idealism was built into its conception" (15). He notes that "Ford's frustrations with domestic politics and culture were legion: war, unions, Wall Street, energy monopolies, Jews, modern dance, cow's milk, the Roosevelts, cigarettes, alcohol, and creeping government intervention. Yet churning beheath all these annoyances was the fact that the force of industrial capitalism he helped unleash was undermining the world he hoped to restore" (16). Ford hoped to bring a nostalgic version of small-town American life to the Amazon, including the streets and houses, the movie theaters and ice cream parlors, and, of course, the values, especially the value placed on working in order to purchase goods.Ford's belief in the value of paying workers high wages so that they could, in turn, become consumers of the products they created came to be known as "Fordism," and by the 1920s, "Fordism" and "Americanism" became interchangeable terms. Grandin notes that the Washington Post cynically but presciently defined the term in 1922 as "Ford efforts conceived in disregard or ignorance of Ford limitations" (73n). Grandin animates what Time calls a "quintessentially American fable" with colorful characters and well-paced misadventures, ultimately offering readers a comparison between the ruins of Fordlandia in the heart of the Amazonian jungle and the ruins of Iron Mountain and Detroit in the heart of the American Midwest to highlight the complexities of industrialism, consumerism, environmentalism, and globalism we still face today.
Fordlandia was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was chosen by multiple media sources for their "best of" lists in 2009. We hope you will join our conversation: Tuesday, April 5, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, April 21, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.
