Publishers Weekly
★ 08/16/2021
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.)
From the Publisher
Praise for Empire of Rubber:
Named One of the Best Books of the Fall by Bloomberg
“Mitman peppers this history with a wealth of fascinating details and interesting characters.”
—Foreign Affairs
“A fascinating and enlightening page-turner that uncovers Liberia’s often-overlooked importance in U.S. history.”
—Foreign Policy
“Calls into question Western ideas of progress, and powerfully traces the results of the Firestone experiment to the war and poverty that would wrack the nation.”
—Shelf Awareness
“Superbly crafted. . . . Empire of Rubber is primarily a portrait of power as it was and is exercised through American capital.”
—Africa Is a Country
“Gregg Mitman provides an accessible, compelling, and monumental account of the surprisingly American history of Liberia.”
—Science for the People
"A well-rendered and -documented tale of exploitation in the developing world."
—Kirkus Reviews
"[Empire of Rubber] 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.”
—Booklist
“A harrowing and richly detailed account of U.S. tire manufacturer Firestone’s exploitation of Liberian workers in the 20th century . . . 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.’”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“With the Firestone archives closed to him, Gregg Mitman has to strain for a clear view of how Harvey Firestone transformed a small Liberian rubber plantation into a Goliath that broke a British monopoly on latex. But Mitman’s lack of access to company archives makes Empire of Rubber a better book. He finds plenty of Liberians and Americans, or the archives and accounts left by their predecessors and by dissident scholars, to fill in the blanks. The reader is left with a gem of a social history linking two countries stuck in uncomfortable embrace for well over a century.”
—Paul Farmer, Kolokotrones UniversityProfessor and chair of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard University, and author of Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds: Ebola and the Ravages of History
“Empire of Rubber is at once an iconic story and utterly unique. In Mitman’s clear, complex, and compelling narrative, he provides privy to the measured and malevolent workings of the U.S. as an imperial formation. Mitman’s account . . . is told with erudition and grace in a powerful narrative that combines the political imaginaries and grounded conditions of racism, capitalism, and visionaries long at the heart of imperial democracies.”
—Ann Laura Stoler, Willy Brandt Distinguished UniversityProfessor of Anthropology and Historical Studies and director, Institute for Critical Social Inquiry, New School for Social Research, and author of Duress: Imperial Durabilities in Our Times
“Gregg Mitman has delivered a brilliant, compelling read. Empire of Rubber draws together the long history of commodity colonialism, the imperial roots of Liberia’s recent civil war, and the fraught relations between American medical institutions and racism at home and abroad. Empire of Rubber dramatizes intersectional thinking at its very best.”
—Rob Nixon, Barron Family Professor of Environment and Humanities, Princeton University, and author of Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor
“In this brilliantly rendered, epic tale of American racial capitalism in West Africa, Gregg Mitman details the profound and devastating effects of plantation agriculture. In the process he unearths the political and legal machinations of Firestone rubber in undermining Black sovereignty, and reveals the violence of corporate philanthropy in the guise of development.”
—Julie Livingston, professor of history, and social and cultural analysis at New York University, MacArthur fellow, and author of Improvising Medicine
“In this brilliant and powerfully moving narrative of the Firestone Tire Company’s activities in Liberia, Gregg Mitman provides an unprecedented account of the destructive power of racial capitalism on colonized bodies and ecologies . . . Empire of Rubber is unique in its exposition of the connection between the Firestone company and elite American universities and unrivaled in its account of the valiant fight Liberians put up to maintain their autonomy.”
—Simon Gikandi, Robert Schirmer Professor of English, Princeton University, and author of Slavery and the Culture of Taste
Kirkus Reviews
2021-08-25
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.
