A. Spanish Exploration--from its "discovery" by early European explorers, the desire to build a means of traversing this short distance was sought to speed commercial shipping.
B. Panama Railroad--constructed across the Isthmus between 1850 and 1855. The line only ran 47 miles, but had to be constructed through a jungle, at the cost of somewhere between 6000 and 12,000 workers lives, due to exhaustion and disease. Although this rail line carried the heaviest volume of freight per unit length of any railway in the world, having to unload shipments, place them in railcars, and then reload them onto other ships greatly added to shipping costs. The presence of the railway was a deciding factor in choosing Panama for the route of the canal, however, since it could carry heavy equipment and men to the interior of the country.
C. Suez Canal (1869)--with the successful completion of the Suez Canal by the, the French then turned toward building the long-dreamed about Panama Canal. The Suez Canal was built over fairly level land, and needed no locks--ocean water provides flotation for the ships. The French would find different conditions in Panama.
1. Financing the Suez project--was largely done by French stockholders; much of the rest of the world was skeptical, and the British were openly hostile to the project. When the French finished the project, it became a great source of national pride, and led directly to those involved in the Suez project to seek something new
II. The French Canal Attempt
A. La Société internationale du Canal interocéanique--was the French company formed in 1876 to finance the construction of the French canal. Two years later, the French were able to persuade the Colombian government to grant them permission to construct the canal.
1. Ferdinand de Lessups--the man credited with constructing the Suez Canal was entrusted with the responsibility of building the Panama Canal, as well. Lessups was able to persuade investors to come up with some $400 million. Lessups was a fund-raiser, however, and not an engineer. While it didn't take much engineering expertise to build a large ditch across level land, building a canal that could ascend more then 300 feet in just 47 miles required more engineering expertise that Lessups had.
2. Chargres River--cut across the proposed canal route, but was too unpredictable to be included in the plans for the canal, so it needed to be diverted.
3. Diseases--the greatest enemy to constructing the canal. People had no idea how these two diseases were contracted, so no idea of how to prevent them. They even put bed legs in tin cans of water, to prevent bugs from crawling up--and unknowingly providing the carrier of the two deadly diseases, mosquitoes, with the perfect breeding environment. When someone eventually figured out what was causing people to become infected with these diseases, they named a hospital after him--Walter Reed.
a. Malaria
b. Yellow fever
B. French failure--the French lacked the financing, and the engineering expertise on the project, to successfully carry this project off. By the early 1890s, Lessups is looking for someone to dump this albatross on.
III. The American Canal
A. The Dream of World Power--Roosevelt's advocacy of increased naval power by the United States was the driving force behind his desire to also acquire the rights to build the Panama Canal.
B. Buys out the French--for $40 million
C. Offer to Colombia--for $15 million. Colombia tried to hold out for more, but instead Roosevelt let it by known that he would not be upset if Panamanian "rebels" took control of the region--and when that occurred, he gave these rebels (landowners and businessmen along the canal's proposed route) the $15 million instead.
D. The Imperial Presidency--Roosevelt's usurption of Congress's war powers in his dealing with Colombia displeased many in that body--but their desire to have the canal tempered their displeasure. This action does call into question Roosevelt's influence in obtaining for the Office of the President greater powers than those granted to the office by the Constitution. By the second half of the 20th century, and the early years of the 21st century, similar actions by Roosevelt's successors led to the US involvement in Vietnam, and the present "War on Terror."
E. Continuation of the "White Man's Burden"
1. "Gold Workers"--skilled white workers, largely drawn from the United States. were paid in gold, and received other privileges while working in the canal zone like free housing and paid vacations.
2. "Silver Workers"--unskilled workers, drawn from the rest of the world--but largely from the Caribbean--did most of the actual work of digging the canal; the also lived within a segregated system that the US exported.
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