The Banana Wars offers a sweeping panorama of America's tropical empire in the age spanned by the two Roosevelt's and a detailed narrative of United States military intervention in the Caribbean and Mexico. 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 lawless societies that the American military-army, navy, and marines-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 anti militaristic 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 readily accept prolonged military

INCLUDES INDEX.

1: The Cuban experience -- Leonard Wood and the white man's burden -- TR and the use of force -- The second Cuban intervention, 1906 -- Cuba occupied -- 2: Teach them to elect good men -- Nicaraguan menace -- The Nicaraguan War, 1910-1912 -- The Mexican crisis -- Veracruz -- The rulers of Veracruz -- 3: Civilizing the tropics -- Turbulent Hispaniola -- The pacification of Hispaniola: 1 -- The pacification of Hispaniola: 2 -- 4: The last banana war -- Interregnum, 1921-1925 -- The second Nicaraguan Civil War, 1925-1927 -- The Sandino chase -- The last banana war.