Suchergebnisse

"History of UFCO's Atlantic coast operations in Costa Rica from perspective of largely West Indian labor force. Examines formation of enclave economy, including role of West Indian labor, subsistence production, and health problems as occasion of worker-company misunderstandings. Also studies workers' cultural and political lives apart from, and sometimes in conflict with, company, and how West Indians and UFCO figured in Costa Rican nationalist thought and politics"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58

The United Fruit Company (UFC), an American corporation, monopolized the banana trade in the British colony of Jamaica for most of the 20th century, despite efforts by the British to establish a foothold (see Clegg 2002). While the British colonial government focused its efforts on challenging the UFC's domination in Jamaica; in 1923, a UFC subsidiary called Swift Banana Company began undertaking the commercial export of bananas in the then British colony of St. Lucia. Research on the St. Lucia banana industry, during the period 1923 to 1942, was very limited, and has largely dismissed the decline of the banana industry as the result of its inability to survive the Panama disease epidemic. This paper challenges this explanation; arguing that UFC subsidiaries contributed significantly to both the rise and decline of St. Lucia's banana industry from 1923 to 1942.

AbstractIn much historiography of the colonial Caribbean, British administrators are portrayed as mediators between domestic elites, foreign capital, and the working class. Such scholarship converges with popular belief in Belize, whose institutions are seen as a legacy of 'impartial' British rule. This article examines the relationship between the United Fruit Company and the colonial government of British Honduras. Contrary to claims of administrative impartiality, colonial officials facilitated the company's monopoly over the banana industry and acted as company advocates before the Colonial Office, actions that ultimately undermined the colony's independent banana producers.