Week 9: Commerce, Coercion, and America’s Empire

This chapter's focus on neocolonialism makes it possibly the most interesting yet. The new power dynamics of the American Quasi-Empire especially when contrasted to formal European Empires, are certainly a challenge for the nationalists of the various Latin American countries.

UFCO shows how powerful corporations backed by governments can be, UFCO operated in a way very similar to the British East India Company, near total control by (semi) private enterprise, a corporatocracy in effect.

How the United States subversively and covertly controlled Caribbean countries was much more like Britain dealing with protectorates than dealings between to sovereign nations, the added element of U.S. military involvement add an extra layer to this relationship and contrast it with European protectorates, where perhaps U.S. behaviour was more like a conventional empire than current Empires acted, at least in some cases.