The term has often been used pejoratively to describe small, poor, unstable developing countries.

Being called a Banana Republic is never a good thing.

However, that term has a very real origin, which involved actual bananas, mercenaries, corporate

money, and the American government.

Learn more about Banana Republics, where the name came from and the history behind it on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. To understand the origin of the phrase Banana Republic. We have to start not surprisingly with

bananas, literal bananas. Bananas are tropical fruit and as such they weren't

really part of the diets of most Americans

Americans probably never saw, let alone tasted a banana in their entire lives at that point.

In tropical areas, however, bananas grew in abundance, and they were really cheap to grow.

I'll do an entire episode about bananas at a later time, and they're far more interesting

of a subject than you probably realize.

However, for our purposes in this episode, Bananas became extremely popular in the US and very cheap.

In 1913, for example, you could buy a dozen bananas for only 25 cents, but the same amount

would only get you two apples.

Perhaps most importantly, bananas were insanely profitable.

Despite how cheaply they could be sold in the U.S.

The markup on bananas was many 100%.

This led to the creation of fruit companies run by American businessmen who began to

dominate the tropical fruit business.

The Boston Fruit Company initially dominated the business in the Caribbean.

It was founded by a junior assistant produce seller named Andrew Preston.

He got a loan of $18,000 and began importing bananas into the United States as well as developing markets for people to buy bananas.

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