United Fruit Company (Paperback)

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. The United Fruit Company was a United States corporation that traded in tropical fruit (primarily bananas) grown on third world plantations and sold in the United States and Europe. The company was formed in 1899 from the merger of Minor C. Keith's banana-trading concerns with Andrew W. Preston's Boston Fruit Company. It flourished in the early and mid-20th century and came to control vast territories and transportation networks in Central America, the Caribbean coast of Colombia, Ecuador, and the West Indies. Though it competed with the Standard Fruit Company for dominance in the international banana trade, it maintained a virtual monopoly in certain regions, some of which came to be called Banana Republics.