The business of empire : United Fruit, race, and U.S. expansion in Central America / Jason M. Colby.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Colby, Jason M. (Jason Michael), 1974-

Series:

United States in the world.

The United States in the world

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Industrial relations--Central America--History.

Industrial relations.

Central America--Foreign relations--United States.

Central America.

United States--Foreign relations--Central America.

United States.

Central America--Commerce--United States--History.

United States--Commerce--Central America--History.

Central America--Race relations--History.

United Fruit Company--History.

United Fruit Company.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (285 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The link between private corporations and U.S. world power has a much longer history than most people realize. Transnational firms such as the United Fruit Company represent an earlier stage of the economic and cultural globalization now taking place throughout the world. Drawing on a wide range of archival sources in the United States, Great Britain, Costa Rica, and Guatemala, Colby combines "top-down" and "bottom-up" approaches to provide new insight into the role of transnational capital, labor migration, and racial nationalism in shaping U.S. expansion into Central America and the greater Caribbean. The Business of Empire places corporate power and local context at the heart of U.S. imperial history. In the early twentieth century, U.S. influence in Central America came primarily in the form of private enterprise, above all United Fruit. Founded amid the U.S. leap into overseas empire, the company initially depended upon British West Indian laborers. When its black workforce resisted white American authority, the firm adopted a strategy of labor division by recruiting Hispanic migrants. This labor system drew the company into increased conflict with its host nations, as Central American nationalists denounced not only U.S. military interventions in the region but also American employment of black immigrants. By the 1930's, just as Washington renounced military intervention in Latin America, United Fruit pursued its own Good Neighbor Policy, which brought a reduction in its corporate colonial power and a ban on the hiring of black immigrants. The end of the company's system of labor division in turn pointed the way to the transformation of United Fruit as well as the broader U.S. empire.

Contents:

Enterprise and expansion, 1848-1885

Joining the imperial world, 1885-1904

Corporate colonialism, 1904-1912

Divided workers, 1912-1921

The rise of Hispanic nationalism, 1921-1929

Reframing the empire, 1929-1940.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (Site, viewed 12/09/2020).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780801478994

0801478995

9780801462726

080146272X

9780801462719

0801462711

OCLC:

763161312