The Scramble for the Amazon and the "Lost Paradise" of Euclides da Cunha - Hardcover

Hecht, Susanna B.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226322815 ISBN 13: 9780226322810

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2013

Synopsis

The fortunes of the late nineteenth century’s imperial and industrial powers depended on a single raw material—rubber—with only one source: the Amazon basin. And so began the scramble for the Amazon—a decades-long conflict that found Britain, France, Belgium, and the United States fighting with and against the new nations of Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil for the forest’s riches. In the midst of this struggle, Euclides da Cunha, engineer, journalist, geographer, political theorist, and one of Brazil’s most celebrated writers, led a survey expedition to the farthest reaches of the river, among the world’s most valuable, dangerous, and little-known landscapes. The Scramble for the Amazon tells the story of da Cunha’s terrifying journey, the unfinished novel born from it, and the global strife that formed the backdrop for both. Haunted by his broken marriage, da Cunha trekked through a beautiful region thrown into chaos by guerrilla warfare, starving migrants, and native slavery. All the while, he worked on his masterpiece, a nationalist synthesis of geography, philosophy, biology, and journalism he named the Lost Paradise. Da Cunha intended his epic to unveil the Amazon’s explorers, spies, natives, and brutal geopolitics, but, as Susanna B. Hecht recounts, he never completed it—his wife’s lover shot him dead upon his return. At once the biography of an extraordinary writer, a masterly chronicle of the social, political, and environmental history of the Amazon, and a superb translation of the remaining pieces of da Cunha’s project, The Scramble for the Amazon is a work of thrilling intellectual ambition.

About this title

About the Author:

Susanna B. Hecht is professor in the School of Public Affairs and the Institute of the Environment at the University of California, Los Angeles, and coauthor, with Alexander Cockburn, of The Fate of the Forest: Developers, Destroyers, and Defenders of the Amazon.

Review:

“A journey into South America’s heart of darkness.”  (Nature)

“A vividly detailed account of the complex interactions of the diverse Amazon dwellers of the late 19th through early 20th centuries, including native people, descendants of runaway slaves, rubber barons, peasant rubber tree tappers, ranchers, scientists, explorers, and the Brazilian military. . . . This scholarly but accessible work about an individual now somewhat forgotten to history will be of greatest interest to scholars and . . . Brazilian and Amazonian history enthusiasts.” (Elizabeth Salt Library Journal)

“Hecht writes not only with extraordinary historical assurance about her remarkably complex subject, but also with great passion and literary elegance. The book is, like da Cunha’s own work, the product of years of mediation, and brings together Hecht’s political-ecological research on and in Amazonia with a lot of archival spadework. There is also elegance of characterisation: not all academic authors would dare to describe their subject as having ‘the lambent eyes of a nocturnal animal.’ Hecht does, she is right, and the reader is grateful for her authorial courage. . . . Da Cunha’s remarkable fusion of the scholarly and the literary with all its acuity and also its eccentricities is matched by Hecht’s; style mirrors subject.” (Robert J. Mayhew Times Higher Education)

“This is an exhaustive and highly original book that sheds light on little-known aspects of both da Cunha's life and the region's history.” (Patrick Wilcken Literary Review)

“In part the biography of [an] unjustly forgotten figure. Hecht hails da Cunha as a frustrated literary and scientific genius who was actively involved in Brazil’s political transitions before being gunned down in 1909, at age 43, by his wife’s young lover. . . . Hecht places da Cunha’s quirky personal tale inside the more ambitious story of a country at the crossroads, freed from colonialism and monarchy, ready-fractured in class and ethnic terms, and coming into existence as a republic within the global commodity economy that had always shaped it.” (Lorna Scott Fox The Nation)

“Hecht seamlessly integrates generous portions . . . of da Cunha’s writings into his riveting narrative. Both authors are acutely aware of the costs, to humans and nature alike, of incorporating Amazonia into wider political economies. While da Cunha should not remain a minor figure outside Brazil, Hecht is a major interpreter of Amazonian and environmental history. . . . Essential.”
(T. P. Johnson Choice)

“This is a tour de force that defies characterization; an exciting combination of geographical history and literary biography for sure. Its animating spirit, though, is intellectual history. Written from the perspective of a lifetime’s work in the region, and in clear and engaging prose, it is a major contribution to the understanding of the Amazon and its place in the wider continent.”
  (Imago Mundi: The International Journal for the History of Cartography)

“Hecht launches this feast of a book with a moving account of the Canudos rebellion. . . . Monumental. . . . Compelling and elegantly written. The author’s deep knowledge of the Amazon and its history bursts from every page with the exuberance of a tropical rainforest. The Scramble for the Amazon is a revelation of a period, region, and cast of characters unknown to many readers. It will long remain the definitive account of this episode of South American history.”
(John Hemming Times Literary Supplement)

“Susanna B. Hecht’s extraordinary book is as penetrating and graceful as its subject matter:  the lost writings of Euclides da Cunha on the Amazon. Indeed, Hecht is our modern-day da Cunha, presenting the miraculous forest and its people in all its complex wonder. And she throws in a tragic love story to boot. The Scramble for the Amazon and the ‘Lost Paradise’ of Euclides da Cunha is a truly remarkable book, destined to be a classic.” (Greg Grandin, author of Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City)

“Every so often a book comes along that forces all of us to shift perspectives, embrace new paradigms, deny much of what we have learned in order to relish in the wonder of the new. Susana B. Hecht as a scholar and author has always been a catalyst of fresh dreams, a fountain of new and raw intellectual insights. Her latest book is a work of wonder, a fusion of literary history, poetic reflections, and unshackled anger. I cannot say enough in praise of her scholastic audacity, integrity, and devotion.” (Wade Davis, National Geographic Society)

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0226322815
• ISBN 13: 9780226322810
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 612