The Banana Wars: United States Intervention in the Caribbean, 1898-1934

The Banana Wars: United States Intervention in the Caribbean, 1898-1934 offers a sweeping panorama of America’s tropical empire in the age spanned by the two Roosevelts and a detailed narrative of U.S. military intervention in the Caribbean and Mexico. In this new edition, Professor Lester D. Langley provides an updated introduction, placing the scholarship in current historical context. From the perspective of the Americans involved, the empire carved out by the banana warriors was a domain of bickering Latin American politicians, warring tropical countries, and lawiess societies that the American military had been dispatched to police and tutor. Beginning with the Cuban experience. Langley examines the motives and consequences of two military occupations and the impact of those interventions on a professedly antimilitaristic American government and on its colonial agents in the Caribbean, the American military. The result of the Cuban experience, Langley argues, was reinforcement of the view that the American people did not readlly accept prolonged military occupation of Caribbean countries. Langley not only narrates the history of America’s tropical empire, but fleshes out the personalities of this imperial era. The author speaks to current debates about unrest and conflict in the Caribbean with some disturbing reminders about earlier American experiences.