Summary Of Fordlandia By Greg Grandin

Greg Grandin’s book, “Fordlandia” displays the struggles of Henry Ford’s intention to build the largest rubber plantation in the Amazon, in order to make his car manufacturing company self-sufficient, which results in bringing a series of problems based on environmental assails. In the beginning of the book, the author discusses about Henry Ford’s views on companies in the United States, his impression about industrialization, and how he utilizes his business to influence his idea of a perfect society. Ford attempts to form his ideal society by purchasing a huge area of land in the Brazilian Amazon, to construct a rubber plantation in order to grow rubber for car parts, and to establish the American way of life in the Amazon. Throughout the

Grandin does this by expressing Henry’s opinions about how a company should be managed; believing that his way of running a business is successful and better than other competing industries. Henry supposes that his plan to build a rubber plantation will prove to be an achievement in expanding his car manufacturing company by showing the world how to be tangible and self-sufficient as an ideal value, for instance, “Ford nonetheless saw the jungle as a challenge, but it had less to do with overcoming and dominating nature than it did with salvaging a vision of Americana… entailed using his wealth and industrial method to safeguard rural virtues… and the settlement became the terminus for a lifetime of venturesome notions about the best way to organize society” (Fordlandia 8). It is through Henry Ford’s nature that his plan becomes unsuccessful because he fails to see the reality of how difficult it is to establish something that is not suitable for this type of environment, thinking that he can manage an ideal society based on his disposition, Henry does not stop to consider the outcomes of forming Fordlandia, being that he does not know much about the Amazon’s characteristics and its peoples