Empire of Rubber Audiobook Libro.fm

Description

In the early 1920s Americans owned eighty percent of the worlds automobiles and consumed seventyfive percent of the worlds rubber But only one percent of the worlds rubber grew under the US flag creating a bottleneck that hampered the nations 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 Americas 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 Americaon 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