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

A “compelling and elegantly written” history of the fight for the Amazon basin and the work of a brilliant but overlooked Brazilian intellectual ( Times Literary Supplement , UK). The fortunes of the late nineteenth century’s imperial powers depended on a single raw material—rubber—with only one source: the Amazon basin. This scenario ignited 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 f