A banana republic is a colony in all but name

Evidence

In popular usage (clothing company aside), the term nowadays mostly calls to mind buffoonlike Third World despots in the mold of Woody Allen’s comedy Bananas. We tend to forget its original meaning. After living in Honduras, the writer O. Henry coined the phrase to refer to weak, marginally independent countries facing overwhelming foreign economic and political domination. In other words, a banana republic is a colony in all but name. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 279

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Restores the forgotten, precise meaning of ‘banana republic’ as a specific type of externally dominated state.

Related

• A banana republic is a colony controlled through economic domination (similarity 0.94)

Broader Connections

• Colonialism can be internally duplicated within a colonized country #corroborates (0.55)