Panama Canal

[ edit ] Ferdinand de Lesseps , the French originator of the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal The French diplomat and entrepreneur Ferdinand de Lesseps and engineer Philippe Bunau-Varilla were the driving forces behind the French attempts to construct the Panama Canal (1881–1889). De Lesseps had made his reputation by successfully constructing the Suez Canal (1859–1869), a route that had soon proved its value in international commerce. After this success, he actively sought new projects. In 1875, de Lesseps was approached by the Société Civile Internationale du Canal Interocéanique par l'isthme du Darien (also known as the "Türr Syndicate"), a syndicate formed to promote the building of an interoceanic canal across Panama . Its directors were Hungarian freedom fighter István Türr , financier Jacques de Reinach and Türr's brother-in-law Lt. Lucien Bonaparte-Wyse . Between 1876 and 1878, Bonaparte-Wyse and Armand Reclus investigated several potential routes across the isthmus of Panama. Bonaparte-Wyse rode by horseback to Bogotá , where he obtained a concession from the Colombian government to build a canal across Panama (20 March 1878). The agreement, known as the Wyse Concession, was valid for 99 years and allowed the company to dig a canal and exploit it. Part de Fondateur of the Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interocéanique de Panama, issued 29 November 1880 In May 1879, de Lesseps convened an international congress in Paris at the Société de Géographie to examine the possibilities of a ship canal across Central America. Among the 136 delegates of 26 countries, only 42 were engineers, with the remainder being speculators, politicians, and friends of de Lesseps, who used the congress to promote fundraising for his preferred scheme, which was to build a sea-level canal across Panama, similar in manner to the Suez Canal. At the conference, the chief engineer of the French Department of Bridges and Highways, Baron Godin de Lépinay proposed a canal plan consisting of locks, the flooding and use of lakes (at Gatun) and a cut through the hilly terrain at Culebra . However, Lépinay's plan was dismissed in favour of Lessep's proposal for a sea level canal, although the

[ edit ] This section may be unbalanced towards certain viewpoints . Please improve the article or discuss the issue on the talk page . ( March 2025 ) The US formally took control of the canal property on 4 May 1904, inheriting from the French a depleted workforce and a vast jumble of buildings, infrastructure, and equipment, much of it in poor condition. A US government commission, the Isthmian Canal Commission (ICC), was established to oversee construction; it was given control of the Panama Canal Zone, over which the United States exercised sovereignty. The commission reported directly to Secretary of War William Howard Taft and was directed to avoid the inefficiency and corruption that had plagued the French 15 years earlier. On 6 May 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed John Findley Wallace , formerly chief engineer and finally general manager of the Illinois Central Railroad , as chief engineer of the Panama Canal Project. Overwhelmed by the disease-plagued country and forced to use often dilapidated French infrastructure and equipment, as well as being frustrated by the overly bureaucratic ICC, Wallace resigned abruptly in June 1905. The ICC brought on a new chairman, Theodore P. Shonts , and a new chief engineer was appointed, John Frank Stevens , a self-educated engineer who had built the Great Northern Railroad who would remain in the position a mere two years. Stevens was not a member of the ICC; he increasingly viewed its bureaucracy as a serious hindrance, bypassing the commission and sending requests and demands directly to the Roosevelt administration in Washington, DC. One of Stevens' first achievements in Panama was in building and rebuilding the housing, cafeterias, hotels, water systems, repair shops, warehouses, and other infrastructure needed by the thousands of incoming workers. Stevens began the recruitment effort to entice thousands of workers from the United States and other areas to come to the Canal Zone to work. Workers from the Caribbean – called " Afro-Panamanians " – came in large numbers and many settled permanently. Stevens tried to provide accommodation in which the workers could work and live in reasonable safety and co

[ edit ] Brodhead, Michael J. 2012. "The Panama Canal: Writings of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers Officers Who Conceived and Built It" . US Army Corps of Engineers History Office, Alexandria, Virginia. Hoffman, Jon T.; Brodhead, Michael J; Byerly, Carol R.; Williams, Glenn F. (2009). The Panama Canal: An Army's Enterprise . Washington, D.C.: United States Army Center of Military History . 70–115–1. Archived from the original on 3 April 2015 . Retrieved 18 June 2010 . Jaen, Omar (2005). Las Negociaciones de los Tratados Torrijos–Carter, 1970–1979 (Tomos 1 y 2) . Panama: Autoridad del Canal de Panama. ISBN 9962-607-32-9 (Obra completa). Jorden, William J. (1984). Panama Odyssey . 746 pages, illustrated. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press . ISBN 0-292-76469-3 . Mills, J. Saxon (1913). The Panama Canal – A history and description of the enterprise . A Project Gutenberg free ebook. Parker, Matthew. (2007). Panama Fever: The Epic Story of One of the Greatest Human Achievements of All Time – The Building of the Panama Canal . New York: Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-51534-4 . Sherman, Gary. "Conquering the Landscape (Gary Sherman explores the life of the great American trailblazer, John Frank Stevens)", History Magazine . July 2008.

[ edit ] Gilboa, Eytan. "The Panama Invasion Revisited: Lessons for the Use of Force in the Post Cold War Era." Political Science Quarterly (1995): 539–562. JSTOR 2151883 . Greene, Julie, The Canal Builders: Making America's Empire at the Panama Canal (New York: Penguin Press, 2009). Hogan, J. Michael. "Theodore Roosevelt and the Heroes of Panama". Presidential Studies Quarterly 19 (1989): 79–94. JSTOR 40574566 . LaFeber, Walter. The Panama Canal: the crisis in historical perspective (Oxford University Press, 1978). Long, Tom. " Putting the canal on the map: Panamanian Agenda-setting and the 1973 Security Council Meetings [ dead link ] ," Diplomatic History , 38, No. 2 (2014): pp. 431–455. Major, John. Prize Possession: The United States and the Panama Canal, 1903–1979 (1993). Maurer, Noel, and Carlos Yu. The Big Ditch: How America Took, Ran, and Ultimately Gave Away the Panama Canal (Princeton University Press, 2010); 420 pp. ISBN 978-0-691-14738-3 . Econometric analysis of costs ($9 billion in 2009 dollars) and benefits to US and Panama. Mellander, Gustavo A., Mellander, Nelly, Charles Edward Magoon: The Panama Years. Río Piedras, Puerto Rico: Editorial Plaza Mayor. ISBN 978-1-56328-155-6 . OCLC 42970390. (1999). Mellander, Gustavo A., The United States in Panamanian Politics: The Intriguing Formative Years. Danville, Ill.: Interstate Publishers. OCLC 138568. (1971). Sánchez, Peter M. Panama Lost? U.S. Hegemony, Democracy and the Canal (University Press of Florida, 2007), 251 pp. Sánchez, Peter M. "The end of hegemony? Panama and the United States." International Journal on World Peace (2002): 57–89. JSTOR 20753364 .