The blanket name for the long series of Marine interventions in the Caribbean and Central America between the war with Spain and the Good Neighbor policy of the 1930s.
Driven by a mix of strategic, commercial, and political motives, the protection of the Panama Canal, the Monroe Doctrine and its Roosevelt Corollary, and the safeguarding of American business and order, the Marines intervened repeatedly in Cuba, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Panama, and Honduras across more than three decades. Out of this constant small-war service the Corps drew hard experience that it distilled into its influential Small Wars Manual, and produced a generation of famous Marines, Butler and Daly with their double Medals of Honor, Lejeune, Neville, Puller, Schilt, and Edson among them. The Banana Wars were the Corps' defining work of the early twentieth century, the schooling in expeditionary and counter-guerrilla warfare that shaped it for what came after.
Engagements in this conflict (22) Podcast episodes on Banana Wars
Record no. 492