User:Panders2025/Firestone Natural Rubber Company/Bibliography

You will be compiling your bibliography and creating an outline of the changes you will make in this sandbox.

Bibliography

Edit this section to compile the bibliography for your Wikipedia assignment. Add the name and/or notes about what each source covers, then use the "Cite" button to generate the citation for that source

• Mitman, Gregg (2021). Empire of rubber: Firestone's scramble for land and power in Liberia. New York: The New Press
  • This is a book published quite recently by a well-known and well-respected environmental historian. Mitman is specifically a historian of science and medicine so the source might be particularly useful to understand health implications of the development of the rubber industry. There are also many reviews of the book available
• Finlay, Mark R. Growing American Rubber Strategic Plants and the Politics of National Security. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 2009.
  • This book was published by Rugers UP, so it should be a reliable source. It provides the American argumentation for developing rubber plantations from geopolitical perspective
• Siegel, Sarita, Gregg Mitman, and Miatta Fahnbulleh. The Land beneath Our Feet. Warren, New Jersey: Passion River, 2017.
  • While this movie may end up being useful, I imagine it's value will mostly come from its inclusion of documentary film from the 1926 Harvard Expedition, which will represent a primary source on American attitudes towards Liberian rubber production.
• Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868-1963. Letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, October 26, 1925. W. E. B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries
  • This is a primary source, a letter from W.E.B. Du Bois to Firestone. It is just one of many letters that Du Bois wrote during the time, and many of the letters could possibly serve as useful sources. From what I gather, Du Bois argues that Liberian rubber should not work as just another plantation. One issue is that Mitman seems to rely on this source as well.
• CHURCH, R. J. HARRISON. “The Firestone Rubber Plantations in Liberia.” Geography 54, no. 4 (1969): 430–37. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40567142.
  • This article was published in a long-running journal called Geography, the academic journal of the Geographical Association. it provides more scientific and geographical information but is limited by the fact that it was published in in1969.
• Mitman, Gregg, and Paul Erickson. “Latex and Blood: Science, Markets, and American Empire.” Radical history review 2010, no. 107 (2010): 45–73.
  • Radical history review is a University Press published by Duke University. It is left-leaning. This is another piece by Gregg Mitman and Paul Erickson, who appears to have studied under Mitman. The piece was published 10 years before the book, implying that there may be some different conclusions. Importantly, I imagine that this short form as well as the scholarly audience means Mitman can focus on implications about the weaponizing of science rather than drafting a narrative.
• Ghoshal, Animesh. “MULTINATIONAL INVESTMENT AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN EXPORT INDUSTRY: RUBBER IN LIBERIA.” Transafrican Journal of History 11 (1982): 92–111. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24328535.
  • This source seems particularly valuable because the Transafrican Journal of History is a publication produced by at least 5 African Universities. As such, even though the author Animesh Ghoshal is educated in America, this could arguably represent one of my only African sources. Also provides an economic perspective and has interesting table on the development of firestone versus Liberian-owned plantations
• McCoskey, Suzanne Kathleen. “The Firestone Tire & Rubber Company and Liberia’s Civil War: Evaluating Firestone’s Intent to Operate During Chaos.” Business & Professional Ethics Journal 33, no. 2/3 (2014): 253–80. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44074816.
  • Takes a business ethics approach to Firestone’s continued operations during Liberia’s civil war. May take a different approach to environment (as it is discussing wartime environment)

Outline of proposed changes

Additions:

The largest and most important change I would like to make is a section on the impact of Firestone and the Harbel Plantation on Liberia's environment. There are very few mentions of environmental destruction. An important exception is at the end in the section about the 2020 Center for International Policy report, which reads, "Firestone's contamination of local watersheds resulting in elimination of fish and natural wildlife."

I plan on making another section, likely the third section on the page, just about environmental controversies. As such, I will move this sentence from the labor controversies section. The bulk of the information in this section will likely come from Mitman's book, Empire of Rubber. I hope to supplement this with Church's article in order to have more of a biological/geographical grounding. I want to take a relatively broad understanding of the environmental and include disease, health outcomes, birthrates, etc. Mitman's emphasis on the history of science and medicine might be useful in this regard.

I will have to see how broad/specific my claims about environmental destruction will go. For example, will I only discuss total amounts of trees cut down, acres appropriated etc, or will I be able to discuss certain areas, townships, neighborhoods etc. and how Firestone affected them over the years? This will come from close study of Mitman's book.

The entire history of the Harvard Expedition is absent from the article. I plan to add this in according to Mitman's book, his article, as well as the primary source footage present in the documentary. I hope to gather historical/descriptive information from Mitman's texts moreso than how the Expedition fits into his argument, as this seems to be excessively argumentative. Depending on the amount of content I can derive, I would either place this explanation under the Creation and Early History section or, more likely, create another section just about the Harvard Expedition before the Journey Without Maps section. I think this would better fit with the structure of the article already in place.

Based on how fruitful the W.E.B. Du Bois letters end up being, I would like to add in his thoughts on Firestone's development. Similar to above, this could be in the early history section or, more likely, its own section. Du Bois' page itself mentions a few times his trips to and interest in Liberia. If I end up taking this approach, I would like to research if any other Pan-Africanists published their thoughts about Firestone.

Currently, there is only one photo on the entire page. I can easily add small images, even from the Firestone company website itself (after researching how the citations for that works). I would use the wikipedia page of a similarly sized and similarly historic company looks in order to produce this. More importantly, I will be coming across many more photos during my research and will have an eye out for which ones might be pertinent to include.

I would like to add more links to the See Also section. As of now, the See Also only links to pages that have to do with corporations and economic exploitation. This seems in line with the focus of the article at this point. Going off of my additions, I want to add to the See Also section with articles about development in Liberia, the environment of Liberia, etc. I would also like to connect this with larger themes of environmental African history such as the mineral industry in Africa.

Changes:

There are two sentences (beginning with "According to the report") that are repeated twice, once while discussing labor controversies generally and second time while specifically discussing the content of the United Nations Mission in Liberia report. I plan to delete one of these and possibly offer more of a summary of the report in the general section.

The little text box to the right of the page seems quite lackluster. I can easily add information such as when it was founded, acquired etc.