Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Although bananas have been planted for thousands of years, the development of an intercontinental trade in bananas had to wait for the convergence of three things: modern rapid shipping, refrigeration, and railroads. These three factors converged in the Caribbean in the 1870s, and would lead to the development of large scale banana plantations, usually owned and operated by highly integrated large corporations such as Dole and Chiquita Brands International.