The Rubber Empire.
Firestone in Liberia: A century of Blood, sweat, and profits.
Hello Reader,
Liberia in the 1990s was a theatre of blood. But to understand the story of this bloodshed, one needs to understand the role Firestone and its plantations played in this unusual history.
Firestone arrived in Liberia in the 1920s. By that time, Harvey S Firestone, the little farmboy from Ohio, had become one of the biggest industrialists of the Gilded Age. It was the era of aggressive industrialisation. The United States was in one of its most prosperous eras, but Liberia was in one of its most severe financial crises.
Since Liberia was a creation of the United States, the country went to the US for a $5 million loan to bail itself out of its crisis. The short story is that Washington refused to lend Liberia the money, and that’s when the American Millionaire and tiremaker, Harvey Firestone, stepped in. Firestone sought rubber sources to meet the growing industrial demand in America, and Liberia had extensive uncultivated arable land.
They struck a deal, Harvey got 1 million acres of land for 6 cents an acre. Let’s do the maths, $0.06 an acre means that the total land area cost Harvey $60,000. The duration of the lease is even more astonishing: ninety-nine years, 6 cents an acre for nearly a century. This is probably the craziest deal of the century.
By the way, that land was about 10 percent of Liberia’s total arable land.
Before the Arrival of the Americo-Liberians (the freed American slaves and freeborn American blacks), there were people in the area now called Liberia. They were the indigenous Liberians. However, when the Americo-Liberians arrived, they created a prototype of the United States and ruled from a capital they named after a United States President, James Monroe. The indigenous Liberians became sub-citizens. Their land was taken, and they were being forcefully employed as slave labourers in their own land by visitors. Sometimes they went days without food, and payment was not up for discussion. Those who did not meet production quotas were whipped or subject to some of the most inhumane punishments.
Firestone tightened its relationship with whoever was in power. First, they did that by helping them become rubber farmers, and then, second, by providing agricultural advice. When rubber began to flow, they purchased it. Everybody wins.
The problem is that, since the creation of Liberia, the Americo-Liberians have been the ones in power. They ruled for over 130 years.
They make up just 5% of the population, but they rule the remaining 95%, and they did that unkindly. Firestone was aiding whatever divide was going on in the country, and we can not say they were doing that unknowingly. In fact, they were driven purely by profit and showed little concern for the consequences.
They aided President Tubman’s thirty-year dictatorship–one of the cruelest ever experienced by indigenous Liberians. Firestone’s relationship with President Tubman was so close that when the daughter of one of the company’s executives got married, she and her husband honeymooned at Tubman’s retreat house outside Monrovia.
In government, Indigenous Liberians were left out. In these plantations, they were employed as slave labourers. This growing dissent led to a coup by Master Sergeant Doe, an indigenous low-ranking soldier who overthrew the government in a bloody massacre.
Doe’s relationship with the Company grew sour first until he decided, after the prices of rubber had skyrocketed, that the company would enjoy tax exemption.
The investigation of the League of Nations did not stop the company’s shady activities in the country. They thrived even better after. They contributed to complicating the turbulent history of Liberia.
They came into the country during a financial crisis, but by the time they left, the citizens were fighting to stay alive. You were happy if you had two changes of clothing and enough food to eat at any given time of the week.
Firestone ran the plantation, which became the headquarters of Charles Taylor’s Rebellion. He built his army of butchers and believers in part with the resources of the Company. They fed his obsession with taking over the country.
They left with millions as profit, but behind them a country ravaged by civil wars.