Jungle Capitalists: A Story of Globalisation, Greed and Revolution [Hardcover]

`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.

When a critical mass of your friends urge you to read a book, then you just have to. Peter Chapman's Jungle Capitalists lived up to all expectations (a rare thing). With a wonderful turn-of-phrase and astute pacing, the book roams over US foreign policy from the times of the wild west to the Panama Canal, Bay of Pigs, Nixon, Reagan, Central American death squads and Afghanistan, along the way telling a gripping story of an international corporation - United Fruit - that set the tone for what would come later. The utopia of globalisation, pioneered through the bizarre banana industry, is shown to be 'anarchy', the invented idea of 'corporate responsibility' a sham, and the victims of 'globalisation'vividly portrayed. The banana itself is revealed as a key catalyst for world history, capitalist economics, public relations/advertising and globalisation, and at the same time, perhaps fittingly, a sterile clone doomed to extinction. The humble and faintly ridiculous banana was also the engine of the US's deliberate destabilisation and covert colonialism of its unfortunate and powerless southern neighbours. Jungle Capitalists is passionate, unputdownable, thoroughly recommended.

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.