Amazon frontier - John Hemming

'Amazon Frontier must stand unequalled in its field. It is at once scholarly, readable and deeply humane' Colin Thubron, Sunday Telegraph

Amazon Frontier covers the 150 years when the first European scientists expolred the natural riches of Amazonia and became fascinated by its tribal peoples.

Exciting and murderous encounters with new tribes continued throughout the nineteenth century, particularly when the Amazon's rubber monopoly made Manaus a frontier boom town. However, the Indian population, once so feared by the Europeans, began to decline and they became little more than objects of anthropological study or romantic literature. John Hemming ends his account in 1910 with the creation of Brazil's famous Indian Protection Service, a subject he resumes in Die If You Must

'Amazon Frontier will be the classic work on the destruction of the Brazilian tribes' The Times

'This is a powerful, indeed harrowing, account of the tragic encounter by which modern Brazil, with all its suffering and all its brilliant promise, was conceived.' Independent