Empire of rubber Firestone's scramble for land and power in Liberia

In the 1920s, postwar economic growth was booming at an unprecedented rate. As wealth spread across the U.S., demand for luxuries like personal automobiles grew. Rubber for tires had previously been imported from Singapore and Brazil, but as pricing for importation fluctuated on the whim of the countries' respective governments, Firestone looked to carve their own niche in the market while also controlling the supply. They settled on the rubber tree Hevea Brasiliensis and soon were granted a million acres of plantation land in Liberia. Founded as a sanctuary for formerly enslaved people, Liberia was targeted by some as a country ripe for exploitation. Firestone executives saw their riches accumulating while paying native workers a pitiful sum and ravaging the land with deforestation and shoddy waste disposal. Mitman (Future Remains, 2018) documents the fragile arrangement between Firestone and the Liberian government that has existed for 95 years, surviving civil war and power plays on both sides, proving lucrative for some while causing great devastation with its racism and the depletion of natural resources.

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." (Oct.)

A dismaying account of an American industrialist whose corporation ransacked Liberia and its people in pursuit of rubber. Mitman begins with a summary of Liberia's history. Founded in 1847 by White Americans seeking to "cleanse the United States of the troubling elements and problems that they believed jeopardized the future of a white settler nation," the nation was mostly unappealing to free African Americans. Only about 11,000 moved there before the Civil War, and by the early 20th century, Liberia was impoverished and vulnerable. In the 1920s, writes the author, the U.S. consumed most of the world's rubber but produced none. Britain controlled a monopoly through its colonial plantations and passed laws designed to keep prices high. This infuriated Harvey Firestone, whose eponymous company was competing with other familiar names such as Goodyear and Goodrich. Determined to grow rubber free of British control, Firestone sent experts around the world and found an ideal environment in Liberia. Few Americans, including prominent Black figures, objected when Firestone acquired a concession for about 1 million acres in what became "the world's largest contiguous rubber plantation." The clearing of the land required the removal of thousands of people from their villages and farms. Today, Firestone remains Liberia's largest private employer. Mitman delivers an expert education on the mechanics of rubber production along with vivid, dispiriting descriptions of working conditions in which privileged foreign White management controlled overworked Black laborers. The author accurately describes Firestone's management as racist, cutthroat businessmen focused on profit and efficiency, but readers may feel that he lets Liberia's rulers off too easily, mentioning in passing that they were mostly interested in staying in power and lining their pockets. Sadly, Mitman demonstrates, plantation capitalism is alive and well, as concessions for other resources have continued into the present, most of which are characterized by "layers of dispossession and violence." A well-rendered and -documented tale of exploitation in the developing world. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.