Progressive Empire
Progressive Empire
Race and Tropicality in United Fruit’s Central America
This chapter reviews Frederick Upham Adams' Conquest of the Tropics, a triumphalist account of the United Fruit Company (UFC), where he commended the pioneers of the company for bringing order and progress to Central America. Embedded in this imperial narrative was recognition of the company's black labor force. Although UFC boasted of wages higher than “ever before offered” in the region, it had proven “almost impossible to tempt the average native of Central America to work, and many of them are physically incapable of sustained manual labor.” As a result, UFC, like the U.S. government's canal construction in Panama, had come to rely on British West Indians.
Keywords: Frederick Upham Adams, United Fruit Company, Central America, black labor force, British West Indians
NYU Press Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
