Banana republic
In political science, the term banana republic describes a politically unstable country with an economy dependent upon the exportation of a limited-resource product, such as bananas or minerals. In 1901, the American author O. Henry coined the term to describe Honduras and neighbouring countries under economic exploitation by U.S. corporations. A banana republic has a society of extremely stratified social classes, usually a large impoverished working class and a ruling class plutocracy.
About Banana republic in brief
In political science, the term banana republic describes a politically unstable country with an economy dependent upon the exportation of a limited-resource product, such as bananas or minerals. In 1901, the American author O. Henry coined the term to describe Honduras and neighbouring countries under economic exploitation by U.S. corporations. A banana republic has a society of extremely stratified social classes, usually a large impoverished working class and a ruling class plutocracy, composed of the business, political, and military elites of that society. The ruling class controls the primary sector of the economy by way of the exploitation of labor. Such an imbalanced economy remains limited by the uneven economic development of town and country, and usually reduces the national currency into devalued banknotes. Such exploitation is enabled by collusion between the state and favored economic monopolies, in which the profit, derived from the private exploitation of public lands, is private property, while the debts incurred thereby are the financial responsibility of the public treasury. In the early 20th century, the United Fruit Company, a multinational American corporation, was instrumental to the creation of the banana republic phenomenon.
Together with other American corporations, and with occasional support from the United States government, the corporations created the political, economic, and social circumstances that established banana republics in Central American countries such as Honduras and Guatemala. By the 1930s, the international political and economic tensions created by the United fruit company enabled the corporation to control 80–90% of the bananas business in the U. S. The banana proved popular with Americans, as a nutritious tropical fruit that was less expensive than locally grown fruit. In 1913, 25 cents bought a dozen bananas, but only two apples. In 1873, to produce food for their railroad workers,. the American railroad tycoons Henry Meiggs and his nephew, Minor C. Keith, established banana plantations along the railroads they built in Costa Rica; recognizing the profitability of exporting bananas, they began exporting them in Boston at a 1,000% profit. In the mid-1870s, to manage the new industrial-agriculture business enterprise in the countries of Central America, Keith founded the Tropical Trading and Transport Company. In 1924, the Vaccaro Brothers established the Standard Fruit Company.
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This page is based on the article Banana republic published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 07, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
