12 - Central America

Summary

There is an extensive bibliographical essay in R. L. Woodward, Jr., Central America: A Nation Divided, 2nd ed. (New York, 1985). There are also good bibliographies on each republic. See, for example, Charles Stansifer, Costa Rica (Oxford, 1991); Ralph Lee Woodward, Jr., El Salvador (Oxford, 1988); Pamela Howard–Reguindin, Honduras (Oxford, 1992); and for Nicaragua, Latin American Bibliographic Foundation, Nicaraguan National Bibliography, 1800–1978 (Redlands, Calif, 1986–7).

Three books provide a general view of the period 1870–1930: Mario Rodríguez, Central America (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1965), which is rather favourable to U.S. policies in the isthmus; Woodward, Central America; and Ciro Cardoso and Héctor Pérez Brignoli, Centroamérica y la economía occidental (1520–1930) (San José, C.R., 1977). See also the relevant chapters of Héctor Pérez Brignoli, Breve historia de Centroamérica (Madrid, 1985), Victor Bulmer–Thomas, The Political Economy of Central America since 1920 (Cambridge, Eng., 1987), and James Dunkerley, Power in the Isthmus. A Political History of Modern Central America (London, 1988). The best general book on an individual Central American state is David Browning, El Salvador: Landscape and Society (Oxford, 1971).

On the Central American coffee economies, see C. Cardoso, ‘Historia económica del café en Centroamérica (siglo XIX): Estudio comparativo’, ESC, 4/10 (1975), 9–55. On coffee in Guatemala in the second half of the nineteenth century, see Julio Castellanos Cambranes, Café y campesinos en 12. Central America 411 Guatemala, 1853–1897 (Guatemala City, 1985). On the banana plantations, general works are Stacy May and Galo Plaza, The United Fruit Company in Latin America (Washington, D.C., 1958), which is favourable to the company; Charles Kepner, Social Aspects of the Banana Industry (New York, 1936), and Kepner and Jay Soothill, The Banana Empire (New York, 1935), which are far more critical.