Abstract
Intermittent cycles of boom and bust based on one product have long characterized the economic history of Brazil. In this respect, the immense tropical rainforest comprising the Amazon Basin has been no exception. Economic activity reached its peak in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when this region held a virtual monopoly position in the world rubber market. Manaus, strategically located at the confluence of the Negro and Solimões (Amazonas) Rivers, became the hub of the rubber industry and was transformed from an obscure river town of 3,000 inhabitants to a prosperous, cosmopolitan city of 50,000 in less than forty years. Due to an influx of Asian plantation-grown rubber, though, world prices started declining after 1910 and the Brazilian monopoly was broken—between 1910 and 1934, the Amazon's share of the world rubber market fell precipitously from 60 percent to 1 percent (Andrade, 1950: 23).
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