Publisher Description

The iconic American banana man of the early twentieth century--the white "banana cowboy" pushing the edges of a tropical frontier--was the product of the corporate colonialism embodied by the United Fruit Company. This study of the United Fruit Company shows how the business depended on these complicated employees, especially on acclimatizing them to life as tropical Americans.

Author Biography

James W. Martin is an associate professor of Latin American studies at Montana State University in Bozeman.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction. Ways of Living, Ways of Knowing
• Chapter One. From Scramblers for Fruit to Banana Empire, 1870-1930
• Chapter Two. Tropical Vexations
• Chapter Three. Corporate Welfarism Meets the Tropics
• Chapter Four. Wandering Foci of Infection
• Chapter Five. Becoming Banana Cowboys
• Chapter Six. Serving Science on the Side
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

Review

"Martin's readable and well-documented study reveals that the United Fruit Company was a major actor in the process of internationalization a century ago. . . . A special variant of cowboy mythology and the reassertion of the frontier mentality are prominent in the author's explanation of this crucial phase in United States expansion in Central America and the Caribbean."--John Britton, author of Cables, Crises, and the Press: The Geopolitics of the New International Information System in the Americas, 1866-1903

Review Quote

"Martin's readable and well-documented study reveals that the United Fruit Company was a major actor in the process of internationalization a century ago. . . . A special variant of cowboy mythology and the reassertion of the frontier mentality are prominent in the author's explanation of this crucial phase in United States expansion in Central America and the Caribbean."--John Britton, author of Cables, Crises, and the Press: The Geopolitics of the New International Information System in the Americas, 1866-1903

Details