April 11, 2025 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, if you think of the quintessential American fruit, it’s probably the apple. But apples aren’t our cheapest fruit—bananas are! Here’s the History Guy with the story of the banana.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. And our next
story comes to us from a man who's simply known
as the History Guy. His videos are watched by hundreds
of thousands of people of all ages over on YouTube,
and the History Guy is also heard as a regular
contributor here at our American Stories. If you think of
(00:30):
the quintessential American fruit, it would probably be the apple.
But apples are not our cheapest fruit. Bananas are. But
why here's the History Guy with the story of the banana.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Here's an interesting trivia question. Do you happen to know
what item is most sold at Walmart? I'll give you
a hint. It's a berry that grows from an herb,
or if you come from the United Kingdom, a herb.
Here's another hint. That the herb is in the family music.
And the most popular version of this berry is called
the Cavendish. And if you still don't know, does it
(01:06):
help to know that it was among the first fruits
to be domesticated by humans, that it is so historically important,
that empires have been built on it and governments overthrown
because of it, and that comedians have made entire careers
slipping on its peel. Some scientists estimate that the banana
was domesticated as early as eight thousand BC, and there's
(01:30):
written evidence that the cultivation of bananas had reached India
by six thousand BC. Thus, bananas were possibly domesticated approximately
the same time as rice and potatoes, predating the domestication
of apples by militia. The banana fruit is produced from
the ovary of a single flour, in which the outer
layer of the ovary wall develops into an edible, fleshy portion.
(01:51):
Thus bananas are, by the botanical definition, a berry. There
are more than a thousand species of white banana in
Southeast Asia, China, and the Indian subcontinent, producing a staggering
array of fruits. The Mussa valentina, for example, produces a bright, pink,
fuzzy banana, and the ghost sung Hang species is so
(02:14):
aromatic that its Chinese name literally translates as you can
smell it from the next mountain. While bananas were likely
first domesticated in Southeast Asia or Papuna, Ghani Arab traders
carried bananas back home and introduced the fruit to the
Middle East in the first or second millennium BC, and
then took the fruit to the East coast of Africa.
The fruit was then traded across the continent, eventually being
(02:37):
cultivated in Western Africa. In fact, there are two competing
stories for the etymology of the word banana. One posts
that it comes from the Arabic word bana for finger,
because early bananas would have been about the size of
your finger. The other posets that the word was derived
from a West African language. In three twenty seven BC,
Alexander and his armies discovered the banana during one of
(02:58):
their campaigns in India and use the delicious fruit to
the Western world, particularly to Mediterranean countries. In the sixth century,
the Portuguese discovered bananas on the Atlantic coast of Africa,
and then they then cultivated the fruit on the Canary Islands,
and from there it was introduced to the Americas by
Spanish missionaries. Early cultivated bananas would not have been like
what we buy at the supermarket today. Rather, wild bananas
(03:20):
are full of seeds hard enough to break your tooth
and would have been smashed and seeve to eat the
soft fruit. Over time, farmers would have selected those bananas
that had fewer seeds, but such bananas eventually would become
so seedless that they could not be grown from seeds,
and the plants had to be reproduced asexually. The banana
rich culture we have today the average American eats twenty
(03:40):
eight and a half pounds of bananas each year was
the product of the nineteenth century. While bananas were being
cultivated in plantations in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Those
are red or green bananas that included a lot of starch,
and today would be called plantains. For the most part,
they had to be cooked to be softened and eaten.
In unineteen thirty six, a farmer in Jamaica named Jean
(04:02):
Francois Pougeot discovered a banana plant on his plantation that
the result of random genetic mutation was producing yellow bananas.
The fruit was naturally sweet and soft enough to be
eaten without cooking. This banana grew in tightly packed bunches
and had a thick peel that resisted bruising, facilitating transport.
Hundreds of cultivars of this banana mutation have evolved to
(04:25):
give the world one of the greatest food breakthroughs in history,
supplying the world with the number one fruit grown to
feed Earth's population. The modern yellow banana, the banana originally
called the Martinique banana, was so popular that the variety
was cultivated all along the Caribbean coast. In Central America,
that type became known as the Gross Michelle, or the
(04:46):
big mic and it was a game changer. Americans had
seen bananas imported from Cuba early in the nineteenth century,
but those were seen as merely a novelty. Likewise, bananas
had been displayed in London in the s sixteen hundreds,
but again the fruit was little more than an oddity.
Economic and dietary changes, combined with the characteristics of the
(05:06):
gross Michelle, created a massive trade. Imports into the US
gradually increased, especially at the end of the Civil War,
but interest in imports really took off in the eighteen seventies.
In eighteen seventy one, banana exports to the United States
were valued at around two hundred fifty thousand dollars. By
the first year of the twentieth century, the banana trade
had exponentially ballooned to six million, four hundred thousand dollars.
(05:29):
Ten years later, it had effectively doubled again. So many
bananas were imported onto the docks at the tip of
Lower Manhattan that the old slit piers became known as
the Banana Docks. Fast sometimes refrigerated boats built especially to
carry bananas without spoiling were called banana boats. At one point,
the United Fruit Company now known as Chiquita Brands International,
(05:51):
had the world's largest private fleet. The Big mic facilitated
the worldwide banana market and created the American and European
love for the fruit. In nineteen oh four, a twenty
three year old apprentice pharmacist at Tassel Pharmacy in the Trobe,
Pennsylvania named David Evans Strickler invented the banana based triple
ice cream Sunday, better known as the Banana Split, one
(06:12):
of America's most popular desserts. The banana in that split
was a big mic and then a banana crisis. The
Gross Michelle become a classic example of a monocrop. Big
Mics were grown from thousands of genetically identical plants that
allowed a specialization that facilitated mass production and distribution, but
(06:33):
a reveal of vulnerability. If one tree was susceptible to
a past or blight, they all would be that blight
came in the form of Fusarium oxysporum, a fungus that
caused the banana plant to rot with what is commonly
called Panama disease. The blight was first identified in the
eighteen seventies and that Gross Michelle was particularly vulnerable to
the blight. By the nineteen fifties, it had spread all
(06:56):
over the banana producing world. As Suddenly it is, the
banana market crashed. Some claimed that the decline of the
Big Mike inspired the popular song Yes We Have No Bananas.
First recorded in nineteen twenty three. The song was the
single best selling piece of sheet music for many decades.
The solution to the problem came from an unexpected source, Derbyshire, England.
(07:20):
In eighteen thirty four, the Duke of Devonshire received a
shipment of bananas from the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius.
The Duke's friend and chief gardener, Sir Joseph Paxton, cultivated
the bananas in the greenhouse at Chatworth House, the Duke's
home in Derbyshire. Paxton named the variety Muse Cavendishy, named
after the Duke William Cavendish. The variety was then cultivated
(07:43):
in the Canary Islands and commercially cultivated by nineteen oh four.
But the Cavendish could not compete with the big mic
which had a better flavor and a thicker peel that
made it easier to ship. But the Cavendish turned out
to have one great advantage. It was resistant to fusarium
oxy sporum. Because it was not as hardy, that Cavendish
cannot be as easily shipped in the natural cluster like
(08:04):
the gross Michelle. The clusters had to be broken into
bunches and then bogs, making the cavetation more costly to ship. Still,
Cavendish bananas represent nearly half of the bananas produced in
the world today and nearly all of the export market.
If you buy a banana outside the tropics, it is
almost certainly a Cavendish. The banana trade is so lucrative
(08:25):
that is driven more than a century of politics, especially
in Central America and the Caribbean. American based companies corrupted
local governments in order to obtain exclusive production rights and
ran huge swaths of Central American countries as virtual corporate nations.
Economic exploitation gave rise to violent labor movements, which drew
the United States government into a series of conflicts throughout
the region. Although the wars were not exclusively driven by
(08:48):
the economic demands of the fruit companies, the series of
conflicts became known as the Banana Wars. In nineteen eleven,
a private army financed by the Cayamel Fruit Company orchestrated
a to taw in Honduras over a conflict with rival
United Fruit Company for an exclusive contract for Honduran bananas.
The unstable economies and governments caused by these interventions let
(09:10):
American writer O. Henry to coin the term banana Republic. Today,
the banana is the world's fourth major food, behind rice, wheat,
and milk. Americans alone eat more than three million tons
of bananas each year, more than apples and oranges combined.
But we all might again soon be singing, yes, we
have no bananas, as the Caven dish is proving vulnerable
(09:33):
to mutated strains Panama disease. Once again, the world's export
bananas are tied to a single species, and that supply
is under threat. The answer might come in the form
of genetically modified Caven dishes, or even the return of
the Big Mike, as scientists have been trying to breed
a fungus resistant version of the big mic ever since
the first bike took hold in the nineteen hundreds. Or
(09:56):
perhaps a new banana will rise to become king of
the export mo market and once again we'll have to
get used to a new banana.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
And a great job is always by Greg Hengler and
the production of special thanks to this great storytelling about
of all things, the banana. And by the way, you
can hear the History Guy on his own YouTube channel,
The History Guy. History deserves to be remembered. It's Walmart's
biggest selling item. Who knew twenty eight and a half
(10:25):
pounds each year is what each American consumes? Who knew that?
And my goodness, I know I play my part. I'm
way higher than twenty eight and a half pounds each year.
The story of the banana, the story of America's and
the world's most popular fruit. Here on our American Stories.
And we continue with our American stories. And our next
story comes to us from a man who's simply known
as the History Guy. His videos are watched by hundreds
of thousands of people of all ages over on YouTube,
and the History Guy is also heard as a regular
contributor here at our American Stories. If you think of
(00:30):
the quintessential American fruit, it would probably be the apple.
But apples are not our cheapest fruit. Bananas are. But
why here's the History Guy with the story of the banana.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Here's an interesting trivia question. Do you happen to know
what item is most sold at Walmart? I'll give you
a hint. It's a berry that grows from an herb,
or if you come from the United Kingdom, a herb.
Here's another hint. That the herb is in the family music.
And the most popular version of this berry is called
the Cavendish. And if you still don't know, does it
(01:06):
help to know that it was among the first fruits
to be domesticated by humans, that it is so historically important,
that empires have been built on it and governments overthrown
because of it, and that comedians have made entire careers
slipping on its peel. Some scientists estimate that the banana
was domesticated as early as eight thousand BC, and there's
(01:30):
written evidence that the cultivation of bananas had reached India
by six thousand BC. Thus, bananas were possibly domesticated approximately
the same time as rice and potatoes, predating the domestication
of apples by militia. The banana fruit is produced from
the ovary of a single flour, in which the outer
layer of the ovary wall develops into an edible, fleshy portion.
(01:51):
Thus bananas are, by the botanical definition, a berry. There
are more than a thousand species of white banana in
Southeast Asia, China, and the Indian subcontinent, producing a staggering
array of fruits. The Mussa valentina, for example, produces a bright, pink,
fuzzy banana, and the ghost sung Hang species is so
(02:14):
aromatic that its Chinese name literally translates as you can
smell it from the next mountain. While bananas were likely
first domesticated in Southeast Asia or Papuna, Ghani Arab traders
carried bananas back home and introduced the fruit to the
Middle East in the first or second millennium BC, and
then took the fruit to the East coast of Africa.
The fruit was then traded across the continent, eventually being
(02:37):
cultivated in Western Africa. In fact, there are two competing
stories for the etymology of the word banana. One posts
that it comes from the Arabic word bana for finger,
because early bananas would have been about the size of
your finger. The other posets that the word was derived
from a West African language. In three twenty seven BC,
Alexander and his armies discovered the banana during one of
(02:58):
their campaigns in India and use the delicious fruit to
the Western world, particularly to Mediterranean countries. In the sixth century,
the Portuguese discovered bananas on the Atlantic coast of Africa,
and then they then cultivated the fruit on the Canary Islands,
and from there it was introduced to the Americas by
Spanish missionaries. Early cultivated bananas would not have been like
what we buy at the supermarket today. Rather, wild bananas
(03:20):
are full of seeds hard enough to break your tooth
and would have been smashed and seeve to eat the
soft fruit. Over time, farmers would have selected those bananas
that had fewer seeds, but such bananas eventually would become
so seedless that they could not be grown from seeds,
and the plants had to be reproduced asexually. The banana
rich culture we have today the average American eats twenty
(03:40):
eight and a half pounds of bananas each year was
the product of the nineteenth century. While bananas were being
cultivated in plantations in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Those
are red or green bananas that included a lot of starch,
and today would be called plantains. For the most part,
they had to be cooked to be softened and eaten.
In unineteen thirty six, a farmer in Jamaica named Jean
(04:02):
Francois Pougeot discovered a banana plant on his plantation that
the result of random genetic mutation was producing yellow bananas.
The fruit was naturally sweet and soft enough to be
eaten without cooking. This banana grew in tightly packed bunches
and had a thick peel that resisted bruising, facilitating transport.
Hundreds of cultivars of this banana mutation have evolved to
(04:25):
give the world one of the greatest food breakthroughs in history,
supplying the world with the number one fruit grown to
feed Earth's population. The modern yellow banana, the banana originally
called the Martinique banana, was so popular that the variety
was cultivated all along the Caribbean coast. In Central America,
that type became known as the Gross Michelle, or the
(04:46):
big mic and it was a game changer. Americans had
seen bananas imported from Cuba early in the nineteenth century,
but those were seen as merely a novelty. Likewise, bananas
had been displayed in London in the s sixteen hundreds,
but again the fruit was little more than an oddity.
Economic and dietary changes, combined with the characteristics of the
(05:06):
gross Michelle, created a massive trade. Imports into the US
gradually increased, especially at the end of the Civil War,
but interest in imports really took off in the eighteen seventies.
In eighteen seventy one, banana exports to the United States
were valued at around two hundred fifty thousand dollars. By
the first year of the twentieth century, the banana trade
had exponentially ballooned to six million, four hundred thousand dollars.
(05:29):
Ten years later, it had effectively doubled again. So many
bananas were imported onto the docks at the tip of
Lower Manhattan that the old slit piers became known as
the Banana Docks. Fast sometimes refrigerated boats built especially to
carry bananas without spoiling were called banana boats. At one point,
the United Fruit Company now known as Chiquita Brands International,
(05:51):
had the world's largest private fleet. The Big mic facilitated
the worldwide banana market and created the American and European
love for the fruit. In nineteen oh four, a twenty
three year old apprentice pharmacist at Tassel Pharmacy in the Trobe,
Pennsylvania named David Evans Strickler invented the banana based triple
ice cream Sunday, better known as the Banana Split, one
(06:12):
of America's most popular desserts. The banana in that split
was a big mic and then a banana crisis. The
Gross Michelle become a classic example of a monocrop. Big
Mics were grown from thousands of genetically identical plants that
allowed a specialization that facilitated mass production and distribution, but
(06:33):
a reveal of vulnerability. If one tree was susceptible to
a past or blight, they all would be that blight
came in the form of Fusarium oxysporum, a fungus that
caused the banana plant to rot with what is commonly
called Panama disease. The blight was first identified in the
eighteen seventies and that Gross Michelle was particularly vulnerable to
the blight. By the nineteen fifties, it had spread all
(06:56):
over the banana producing world. As Suddenly it is, the
banana market crashed. Some claimed that the decline of the
Big Mike inspired the popular song Yes We Have No Bananas.
First recorded in nineteen twenty three. The song was the
single best selling piece of sheet music for many decades.
The solution to the problem came from an unexpected source, Derbyshire, England.
(07:20):
In eighteen thirty four, the Duke of Devonshire received a
shipment of bananas from the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius.
The Duke's friend and chief gardener, Sir Joseph Paxton, cultivated
the bananas in the greenhouse at Chatworth House, the Duke's
home in Derbyshire. Paxton named the variety Muse Cavendishy, named
after the Duke William Cavendish. The variety was then cultivated
(07:43):
in the Canary Islands and commercially cultivated by nineteen oh four.
But the Cavendish could not compete with the big mic
which had a better flavor and a thicker peel that
made it easier to ship. But the Cavendish turned out
to have one great advantage. It was resistant to fusarium
oxy sporum. Because it was not as hardy, that Cavendish
cannot be as easily shipped in the natural cluster like
(08:04):
the gross Michelle. The clusters had to be broken into
bunches and then bogs, making the cavetation more costly to ship. Still,
Cavendish bananas represent nearly half of the bananas produced in
the world today and nearly all of the export market.
If you buy a banana outside the tropics, it is
almost certainly a Cavendish. The banana trade is so lucrative
(08:25):
that is driven more than a century of politics, especially
in Central America and the Caribbean. American based companies corrupted
local governments in order to obtain exclusive production rights and
ran huge swaths of Central American countries as virtual corporate nations.
Economic exploitation gave rise to violent labor movements, which drew
the United States government into a series of conflicts throughout
the region. Although the wars were not exclusively driven by
(08:48):
the economic demands of the fruit companies, the series of
conflicts became known as the Banana Wars. In nineteen eleven,
a private army financed by the Cayamel Fruit Company orchestrated
a to taw in Honduras over a conflict with rival
United Fruit Company for an exclusive contract for Honduran bananas.
The unstable economies and governments caused by these interventions let
(09:10):
American writer O. Henry to coin the term banana Republic. Today,
the banana is the world's fourth major food, behind rice, wheat,
and milk. Americans alone eat more than three million tons
of bananas each year, more than apples and oranges combined.
But we all might again soon be singing, yes, we
have no bananas, as the Caven dish is proving vulnerable
(09:33):
to mutated strains Panama disease. Once again, the world's export
bananas are tied to a single species, and that supply
is under threat. The answer might come in the form
of genetically modified Caven dishes, or even the return of
the Big Mike, as scientists have been trying to breed
a fungus resistant version of the big mic ever since
the first bike took hold in the nineteen hundreds. Or
(09:56):
perhaps a new banana will rise to become king of
the export mo market and once again we'll have to
get used to a new banana.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
And a great job is always by Greg Hengler and
the production of special thanks to this great storytelling about
of all things, the banana. And by the way, you
can hear the History Guy on his own YouTube channel,
The History Guy. History deserves to be remembered. It's Walmart's
biggest selling item. Who knew twenty eight and a half
(10:25):
pounds each year is what each American consumes? Who knew that?
And my goodness, I know I play my part. I'm
way higher than twenty eight and a half pounds each year.
The story of the banana, the story of America's and
the world's most popular fruit. Here on our American Stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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