BANANAS: a history of colonialism and monopoly

MATERIAL: BANANAS

History

Colonialism And Monopoly

Bananas are originally from South-East Asia and entered the New World with European settlers – who, by the 19th Century, were growing them on vast plantations in the Caribbean. Labor conditions on banana plantations were often atrocious and remained, in many cases, so till our days. The mass production of bananas in the Americas (mainly Central America) started in 1834 and exploded in the late 1880s. From 1898 till 1934 and beyond, the control of bananas production, distribution, and commercialization was enforced by the US to ensure the American companies’ monopoly — mainly United Fruits, afterward renamed “Chiquita” — of the nation’s banana exports in a series of military occupations and interventions in Central America and the Caribbean during the so-called “Banana wars”. These wars settled the antecedent for subsequent US foreign policies regarding armed interventions during the 20th and 21st Centuries.