Banana Cowboys
264 pages, 6 x 9
3 drawings, 13 halftones, 1 map
Paperback
Release Date:15 May 2022
ISBN:9780826363909
Hardcover
Release Date:15 May 2018
ISBN:9780826359421
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Banana Cowboys

The United Fruit Company and the Culture of Corporate Colonialism

University of New Mexico Press

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.

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

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

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

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