Henry Ford dreamed of establishing Fordlândia, a rubber plantation city in Brazil, to ensure a steady supply of rubber for his automobiles. He invested millions to build the city from scratch, and included luxuries for the workers such as an 18-hole golf course and a dance hall.
However, poor management led to pest infestations in the tightly planted trees. Workers also revolted as they were only paid a fraction of what Ford had promised and forced to abandon their local customs. As conditions deteriorated further during World War 2, Ford was forced to sell the failing operations for just $250,000 in 1945, despite having invested over $20 million (equivalent to $325 million in 2022).
Fordlândia remains completely abandoned today, serving as an example of a grand vision brought down by cultural clashes and economic mismanagement.
Aerial View of Fordlândia, Brazil, 1934 (source)
What remains of Fordlândia Hospital (source)
- Wikipedia: Fordlândia
- The Guardian
- Album on Flickr
- mysteries of the world (in Portuguese, Google Translated version)
e: added more sources and edited content to be more accurate
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an example of a failed utopian vision
Excuse me? Utopic for who exactly? A racist with aspirations of colonisation powered by slave labour?
It’s not an uninteresting post, but gtfoh with that noise…Utopian for White Protestants, I’m guessing?
Fuck that white supremacist piece of shit, Ford.
For some reason, this post in combination with this comment reminds me of ERB’s latest rap battle (Henry Ford vs Karl Marx).
Had to look up what that was, but yeah I can see why…
To be honest, that’s an AI summary of the Portuguese post. I clearly didn’t check it properly before posting and I don’t know much about Ford himself.
Remember Hanlon’s Razor.
e: The Portuguese post seems to be largely based on this Guardian article, that also describes it as utopian:
Ford believed fair treatment would make his workers more responsible citizens and, in the process, solidify a client base for manufacturers. The Rev Samuel Marquis, one the heads of Ford’s employee relations office, once proclaimed that Ford’s cars were “the by-products of his real business, which is the making of men”.
But some of Ford’s social ideas were highly sinister – most notoriously his anti-semitism, which featured prominently in a newspaper he himself printed, the Dearborn Independent.
so was it 2 or 20 million?
It was over both
Ford invested 20 mil, it failed, made another downstream, it failed, and his grandson sold it for 20 mil. Never went back
Yeah, it’s not very clear, sorry. I’ve edited.
It was $2 million in supplies and materials for the city, but the total venture lost him ten times that.
