Jungle capitalism

In this book, Peter Chapman shows how the pioneering example of the importer United Fruit set the precedent for the institutionalised greed of today’s multinational companies. The story has its source in the importer 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 globalisation.