In Search of the Amazon : Brazil, the United States, and the Nature of a Region / Seth Garfield.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Garfield, Seth, author.

Series:

American encounters/global interactions

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Rubber industry and trade.

International economic relations.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 343 pages) : illustrations.

Other Title:

In Search of the Amazon

Place of Publication:

Durham, NC : Duke University Press, 2014.

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Chronicling the dramatic history of the Brazilian Amazon during the Second World War, Seth Garfield provides fresh perspectives on contemporary environmental debates. His multifaceted analysis explains how the Amazon became the object of geopolitical rivalries, state planning, media coverage, popular fascination, and social conflict. In need of rubber, a vital war material, the United States spent millions of dollars to revive the Amazon's rubber trade. In the name of development and national security, Brazilian officials implemented public programs to engineer the hinterland's transformation. Migrants from Brazil's drought-stricken Northeast flocked to the Amazon in search of work. In defense of traditional ways of life, longtime Amazon residents sought to temper outside intervention. Garfield's environmental history offers an integrated analysis of the struggles among distinct social groups over resources and power in the Amazon, as well as the repercussions of those wartime conflicts in the decades to come.

Contents:

Border and progress : the Amazon and the estado novo

"The quicksands of untrustworthy supply" : U.S. rubber dependency and the lure of the Amazon

Rubber's "soldiers" : reinventing the Amazonian worker

The environment of northeastern migration to the Amazon : landscapes, labor, and love

War in the Amazon : struggles over resources and images

Epilogue: From wartime soldiers to green guerrillas.

Notes:

This eBook is made available Open Access under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

1-4780-9132-0

OCLC:

1167759663