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The Banana Men: American Mercenaries & Entrepreneurs in Central America, 1880-1930. By Lester D. Langley and Thomas Schoonover. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995. 219 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliographical note, and index. Cloth, $29.95, ISBN 0-8131-1891-3; paper, $17.95, ISBN 0-81310836-5.
Reviewed by David McCreery
The Banana Men divides rather clearly into two parts, reflecting the different interests and talents of its two authors. Thomas Schoonover's introductory chapter provides an overview of theories of "social imperialism." Countries of the industrial "core" expanded overseas in the late nineteenth century, he suggests, in part to reduce domestic tensions. They exported unemployment in periods of domestic crisis. By exploiting cheap foreign labor, employers in "core" countries were able to improve the situation of their domestic workers while at the same time keeping up profit rates. But, as Schoonover implicitly realizes, this argument does not fit the Central American case particularly well, and he supplements it with a second set of determinants more appropriate to the region: U.S. capital began to expand into Central America in the 1890s to find new markets and sources of...