Description
Book SynopsisBrazil once enjoyed a near monopoly in rubber when the commodity was gathered in the wild. In this innovative study, Warren Dean demonstrates that environmental factors have played a key role in the many failed attempts to produce a significant rubber crop again in Brazil.
Trade Review"Dean has written a lucid and solidly researched account of how a particular plant disease prevented the development of an important branch of agriculture in one country, thereby affecting its economic development, Brazil and the Struggle for Rubber is warmly recommended as a perceptive study of the relationship between humans and their environment." ISIS
"In his sophisticated integration of ecological concepts into a socioeconomic history of rubber cultivation, Dean sets a high standard." Martin T. Katzman, American Historical Review
"Warren Dean spins a good tale and draws some insightful conclusions about the limits of human ability to manipulate the environment." Report on the Americas
Table of ContentsExplanatory notes; Abbreviations; Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1. Prometheus in reverse, 1855–1876; 2. Awaiting developments, 1876–1906; 3. Production and folklore, 1876–1910; 4. The reason why, 1904–1923; 5. A jump in the dark, 1923–1940; 6. The battle for rubber, 1940–1945; 7. Administrative discontinuities, 1946–1961; 8. Complete perplexity, 1961–1972; 9. Economically guaranteed, 1973–1986; Conclusion; Appendix; Notes; Glossary; Index.
