Episode 6: Devil’s Paradise: The Problem with Rubber

In this episode, I tell the story of a photographer named Albert Frisch, a German photographer who was on assignment to photograph the landscape and people of the Upper Amazon. Coincidentally, another adventurer had followed his route only a few years before by the name of Henry Bates, who wrote a book about his adventures when he returned to England.

All images are from Albert Frisch’s portfolio, Résultat d’une expédition photographique sur le Solimões ou Alto Amazonas et Rio Negro, 1867-68, printed in 1869

Frontispiece illustration for Henry Walter Bates’ The Naturalist on the River Amazons: A Record of the Adventures, Habits of Animals, Sketches of Brazilian and Indian Life, and Aspects of Nature under the Equator, during Eleven Years of Travel (London, 1863)

I used Henry Bates’ journal as a way to understand what it was like to travel on the Amazon.

Albert Frisch, Résultat d’une expédition photographique sur le Solimões ou Alto Amazonas et Rio Negro, No. 68 – Alto Amazonas ou Solimões (Brésil). Fabrication de Caoutchouc, 1867-68, printed in 1869

A rubber shoe, 1830s, Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto, Ontario

I made a map of Bates and Frisch’s journey and it is shown below. Frisch’s trip is in blue, while Bates is in red. A the majority of prints that were sold by Frisch when he returned were to tourists, but it is not too far of a stretch to imagine that his photographs may have also been of interest to naturalists like Bates.

Unfortunately, the quest for rubber was a bloody pursuit, affecting not only the Brazilian rainforest but also the so-called Belgian Congo.

Photographs by Alice Seely Harris illuminated what was happening to the people being oppressed by this bloody system.

Sources used for this episode:

Henry Walter Bates, The Naturalist on the River Amazons: A Record of the Adventures, Habits of Animals, Sketches of Brazilian and Indian Life, and Aspects of Nature under the Equator, during Eleven Years of Travel (London, 1863)

Walter Hardenburg, The Putumayo, The Devil's Paradise: Travels in the Peruvian Amazon Region and an Account of the Atrocities Committed upon the Indians Therein (London, 1912)

T.J. Thompson, "Light on the Dark Continent: The Photography of Alice Seely Harris and the Congo Atrocities of the Early Twentieth Century,” International Bulletin of International Research, 1 October, 2002, Vol. 26, Issue 4, pp. 146-149

Manuela Fischer and Michael Kraus, eds.., Exploring the Archive: Historical Photograph[s] from Latin America, The Collection of the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin, 2015

Mark Meuwese, Brothers in Arms, Partners in Trade: Dutch-indigenous Alliances in the Atlantic World, 1595-1674 (Leiden, 2012)