Multinational Investment and the Development of an Export Industry: Rubber in Liberia

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Periodical article

Title:	Multinational Investment and the Development of an Export Industry: Rubber in Liberia
Author:	Ghoshal, Animesh
Year:	1982
Periodical:	Transafrican Journal of History
Volume:	11
Pages:	92-111
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Liberia
Subjects:	foreign enterprises rubber international relations Economics and Trade Development and Technology History and Exploration
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/24328535
Abstract:	The effects of direct investment by large foreign corporations on small countries have received a good deal of attention, both in the international business literature and in the field of economic development. The experience of Liberia provides a particularly fruitful field for this type of investigation. The author examines the circumstances and consequences of the massive investment by Firestone Tyre and Rubber Company in an rubber plantation in Liberia which became the world's largest, and almost totally dominated the economy for three decades. The period covered in detail is 1922 to 1971, from the Stevenson Scheme to the end of the Tubman administration. After providing a brief historical background, the motivations of the parties involved in the investment (Firestone, the Liberian government, and the US government) are analyzed in some detail. The subsequent development of a wage labour force out of a virtually subsistence economy, and the emergence of a Liberian-owned rubber sector due to backward linkages, are also traced. Map, notes, ref., tab.