Product Description

In this powerful and gripping book, Peter Chapman shows how the pioneering example of the importer United Fruit set the precedent for the institutionalized greed of today's multinational companies. The story has its source in United Fruit's 19th Century beginnings in the jungles of Costa Rica. It moves via the mass-marketing of the banana as the original fast food, United Fruit's involvement in an invasion of Honduras, a massacre in columbia and a bloody coup in Guatemala, and the very public suicide on Park Avenue of the company's chairman, Eli Black, in the 1970s. From its bullying business practices to its covert links to the US government, United Fruit blazed the trail of global capitalism through the 20th Century. Chapman weaves a dramatic tale of big business, lies and power to show how one company pioneered the growth of globalization.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #549560 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-26
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Customer Reviews

An intriguing insight into a pioneering multinational corporation
`Jungle Capitalists - a Story of Globalisation, Greed and Revolution' is the extraordinary story of the United Fruit company and their dealings in Central America. It tracks their rise and fall through the creation of new markets to 'el pulpo', the octopus-like company with tentacles everywhere, to eventual political scandal and collapse.

As well as being an engaging story in itself, at times galloping along like a spy thriller, Jungle Capitalists is a fascinating insight into the early development of the multinational corporation. United Fruit pioneered all kinds of business practices, from early experiments in public relations to political lobbying, and even calling on the CIA to aid in regime change when things turned against their favour in the 'banana republics'.

It would have benefitted from a little more on the current state of the fruit industry just to bring the story up to date, but this is a fascinating history all the same. As well as the political intrigue, there's plenty on the banana itself as a plant with serious genetic weaknesses, and the banana as a cultural icon. This is a fruit that has at times stood for the exotic, been a conundrum of Victorian etiquette for its vaguely phallic possibilities, been co-opted by the hippy movement, and of course remains a symbol of the healthy eating campaigns.

I'd recommend Jungle Capitalists to anyone with an interest in social history, but also to those with an eye on corporate responsibility. There are so many parallels between United Fruit and the oil companies of today you wonder if we've learned anything in the last hundred years.

A Multinational Case History
Peter Chapman follows his excellent Goalkeepers History of Britain with Jungle Capitalists, a fascinating history of the United Fruit Company, one of the world's first true "multi-nationals". He brings his experiences as a long-time Central America reporter for the BBC and The Guardian to bear in a revealing exposé of power and greed gone wild. Chapman takes us from the early days of the development of the banana from a tropical oddity, to its spread throughout the Caribbean into Central America. Along the way, we meet a variety of characters, who expanded United Fruit Company and economically conquered Central America. Over the past 130 years or so, UFC pioneered business and corporate models that became the basis for multinationals and our present festering globalization.
I can remember teachers and professors trumpeting against the United Fruit Company and mocking "banana republics" back in the 1960 and 70s. Chapman details the long and tawdry road of corruption and malfeasance that UFC used to bully its opponents, both in the business and political worlds. Among the cast of characters are Boston Brahmins like the Cabots and the Lodges, the "upstart" Russian Jewish immigrant Sam Zemurray, both Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, and even Carmen Miranda and her animated descendant, Chiquita Banana. Along the way, we watch how UFC influenced US policy toward Latin America, from Gunboat Diplomacy, to the Good Neighbor Policy to Jimmy Carter's Human Rights to Ronald Reagan's Iran-Contra shenanigans. It is a story that mirrors the bigger flow of American foreign policy over the past century.
Of special interest in light of the War in Iraq is Chapman's reporting of the CIA/UFC manipulated coup d'etat in Guatemala in 1954. Managed with certitude by an uneducated, anti-communist, boob of a diplomat--Ambassador Jack Peurifoy--it featured contrived incidents, faked battle scenes, and propaganda aimed at both a Commie-fearing America and a pre-industrial Mayan populace. Of course, this putsch went the way United Fruit and the anti-communist Eisenhower administration hoped for. Many of the same simplistic machinations that worked so well in a less complicated setting, now seem to have caught up with us in the Middle East. The world has adapted to disingenuous and ham-fisted American tactics, but sadly the Bush administration is still using them.
I look forward to this book's arrival in the American marketplace and highly recommend it to those interested in history, or contemporary politics and economics.

The most gripping and accessible book on United Fruit yet
As a comparative American studies student, the history of the Americas particularly appeals to me. Currently writing an essay on the tragedy of United Fruit, I turned to Peter's Chapman's "Jungle Capitalists" for an intelligent and at the same time, accessible read. Chapman's fluid account of the dirty dealings of "La Compania" was informative and filled with fascinating detail. All in all a great read for anyone interested in academics or simply the troubled history of an overwhelmingly powerful company which played a huge role in the lives of many. I can safely say that it will not take long for Chapman's book to make its way onto the reading lists of any University specialising in Latin American history.