JAMES R. SCOBIE MEMORIAL AWARD REPORT
CHRISTOPHER L. MURCHISON

As the recipient of the 2001 Scobie Memorial Award, I would like to extend my sincerest thanks to the members of Selection Committee, the Conference on Latin American History, and the faculty and staff of the University of Miami's History Department and Center for Latin American Studies, whose generous support and efforts on my behalf allowed me to conduct ten weeks of pre-dissertation research in Brazil last summer.

The globalization of the Brazilian Amazon dates back to the colonial era, when explorers such as Friar Gaspar de Carvajal and Mons. de la Condamine drew European interest to the area's hardwood, spices, fish, and other natural resources. The commercial exploitation of the region increased significantly beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, as the industrial revolution produced a heavy demand for rubber. Through the early twentieth century, rubber barons flocked to the city of Manaus, where they built boulevards, plazas, a riverside market, public buildings, and an ornate opera house using an eclectic mixture of European architectural styles. Following the emergence of Asian rubber plantations, however, international prices declined sharply, sending the region into a prolonged depression. As part of a broader plan to initiate industrial-led economic growth by attracting foreign and domestic investment to the Amazonian region, the Brazilian government created the Zona Franca (Free Trade Zone) in Manaus in 1964. My Ph.D. dissertation will focus on the social and economic significance of this controversial plan for the city of Manaus and its contiguous rural areas.

Last summer, I applied funding from the Scobie Award towards a pre-dissertation research trip to Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro. In both cities, I spoke with university professors who provided me with valuable contacts and pointed me towards various institutions in Manaus and Belém do Para, where I might locate relevant primary sources. I also used my stay in both cities to read and photocopy government agency reports, census data, maps, newpapers, old photographs, and rare secondary sources.

Before traveling to Brazil this summer, I had planned to write a history of Manaus from 1915-1985, a period that spans from the concluding years of the rubber boom era to the democratization of the nation following twenty years of military rule. The Scobie Award has provided me the opportunity to not only to meet academic contacts and gather primary sources, but also to collect enough information to effectively narrow the focus of an exceedingly broad dissertation topic to four major questions within a shorter time period (1964-1985). First, why have periodic food shortage crises plagued Manaus since the conclusion of the rubber boom, and how has the Zona Franca affected this situation? Second, has outside investment contributed to sustainable economic growth in Manaus, or are workers and natural resources merely exploited? Third, how has the Zona Franca interacted with the existing architecture and physical structure of the city? Finally, to what extent and how has the Zona Franca contributed to the contemporary acceleration of Amazonian deforestation?

I believe that the answers to these questions will provide a useful source of information for students of other free trade zones, especially those - such as NAFTA - that involve the close interaction between developed and underdeveloped regions. I also hope that it might attract the attention of political and non-governmental organizations, which seek a better understanding of the social, political, and economic causes of both modern urban problems and rainforest destruction in other underdeveloped regions of the world.