Sublime

In 1885, Boston entrepreneur Andrew Preston* and a partner formed the Boston Fruit Company, with the idea of using fast steamships, rather than sail, to get bananas to market before they spoiled. It was a success: Inexpensive, delicious bananas took the country by storm. By the turn of the century Boston Fruit, which was later merged into the

A lo largo de sus viajes, Zemurray había descubierto el banano en las selvas de Centroamérica y, con una intuición feliz del provecho comercial que podía sacar de aquella fruta, comenzó a llevarla en lanchas a Nueva Orleans y otras ciudades norteamericanas. Desde el principio tuvo mucha aceptación. Tanta que la creciente demanda lo llevó a

Así había comenzado la relación entre estos dos hombres disímiles, el refinado publicista que se creía un académico y un intelectual, y el rudo Sam Zemurray, hombre que se había hecho a sí mismo, empresario aventurero que, empezando con unos ahorros de ciento cincuenta dólares, había levantado una compañía que —aunque su apariencia no lo delatara—

By 1905, the banana trade was United Fruit. The company owned the most ships, planted the most fields, had the most money, and controlled both supply and demand: supply by planting more or less rhizomes, demand by increasing the market. Beginning around this time, U.F. stationed an agent at South Ferry terminal in New York, where the Ellis Island

Most of what the United States got from its colonies was sugar, grown on plantations in Hawai‘i, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Philippines. Yet even in sugar, the United States wasn’t dependent. Sugarcane grew in the subtropical South, in Louisiana and Florida. It could also be made from beets, and in the interwar years the United

The company solidified its control by amassing the Great White Fleet, the ships that ruled the Caribbean. Within a decade, the fleet—each vessel painted white to reflect the tropical sun—was carrying not just bananas but also the mail and cargo of Central America. In the case of a strike or disagreement, the company could simply shut down the

The logo-map silhouette accurately captured the borders of the United States for only three years. Because in 1857, not long after the Gadsden Purchase was ratified (1854), the United States began annexing small islands throughout the Caribbean and the Pacific. By the end of the century, it would claim almost a hundred of them. The islands had no