Empire of Rubber
Firestone’s Scramble for Land and Power in Liberia
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
An ambitious and shocking exposé of America’s hidden empire in Liberia, run by the storied Firestone corporation, and its long shadow
In the early 1920s, Americans owned 80 percent of the world’s automobiles and consumed 75 percent of the world’s rubber. But only one percent of the world’s rubber grew under the U.S. flag, creating a bottleneck that hampered the nation’s explosive economic expansion. To solve its conundrum, the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company turned to a tiny West African nation, Liberia, founded in 1847 as a free Black republic.
Empire of Rubber tells a sweeping story of capitalism, racial exploitation, and environmental devastation, as Firestone transformed Liberia into America’s rubber empire.
Historian and filmmaker Gregg Mitman scoured remote archives to unearth a history of promises unfulfilled for the vast numbers of Liberians who toiled on rubber plantations built on taken land. Mitman reveals a history of racial segregation and medical experimentation that reflected Jim Crow America—on African soil. As Firestone reaped fortunes, wealth and power concentrated in the hands of a few elites, fostering widespread inequalities that fed unrest, rebellions and, eventually, civil war.
A riveting narrative of ecology and disease, of commerce and science, and of racial politics and political maneuvering, Empire of Rubber uncovers the hidden story of a corporate empire whose tentacles reach into the present.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian and filmmaker Mitman (Breathing Space) delivers a harrowing and richly detailed account of U.S. tire manufacturer Firestone's exploitation of Liberian workers in the 20th century. Eager to break the British monopoly on rubber supplies, Firestone secured a concession of one million acres of land from the Liberian government in 1926 and proceeded to build "the world's largest continuous rubber plantation." Though Firestone earned the support of African-American leaders including W.E.B. Du Bois by claiming that the project would foster humanitarianism and economic development in one of only two sovereign Black nations in Africa, Mitman documents how the company's labor system mirrored regressive scientific and medical stereotypes born out of plantation slavery in the American South. Liberians were subject to harsh working conditions, disease outbreaks, and exposure to carcinogenic chemicals. Fears that Firestone's "racist attitudes and policies" would undermine U.S. foreign policy in Africa led President Truman to increase aid to Liberia, but "continuing racial discrimination and growing wealth inequality" gave rise to political unrest and labor strikes in the 1960s. Mitman marshals a wealth of material to make his case, which encompasses ecological injustice, racial capitalism, and medical racism. The result is a devastating exposé of the tensions between "the interests of white capital and the desire for Black self-determination."
