Interesting History Break

I'll take "Interesting Brazilian History for 200 please, Jack".

A short break from my musings on Brazil to hear from a few others. I came across two interesting articles today I thought I'd share.

1) Apparently, in the 1930's, Henry Ford started a rubber plantation in the Amazon in an effort to offset rising rubber costs. Due to a combination of rubber tree blight and cultural ineptitude, it was a miserable failure, to the tune of $200 million (in today's dollars).

Henry Ford in the Amazon

2) After the closing battles of the US Civil War, the then Emperor of Brazil sent recruiters to the Confederate states to seek out skilled cotton farmers. Some 10,000 confederates took him up on the offer, and emigrated to Brazil to seek what they considered they had lost at Appomattox. They settled in the town of "Americana", and managed to bring prosperity to the region. Although most of the heritage has now been lost, there are still celebrations reminiscent of the Old South.

Americana

We had talked many times about visiting Americana while we were in Brazil; I believe it was only about 3 hours from our house. I guess we probably should have made more of an effort. It would have been interesting to meet a Stonewall Santos or Paulo Longstreet.