Construction of Panama Canal (1 gen 1903 anni – 1 gen 1914 anni)

Descrizione:

A canal across the Isthmus of Panama connecting trade between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and opened in 1914, the canal gave U.S. naval vessels quick access to the Pacific and provided the United States with a commanding position in the Western Hemisphere.

Roosevelt famously argued that the United States should “speak softly and carry a big stick” in its relations with other countries. By “big stick,” he meant naval power, and rapid access to two oceans required a canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans across the Isthmus of Panama. As European powers pursued their interests in Africa, Asia, and other parts of the world, they conceded the United States’s claim to control the Caribbean. Britain surrendered its Central American canal-building rights to the United States in the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty (1901). Roosevelt then persuaded Congress to authorize $10 million, plus future payments of $250,000 per year, to purchase from Colombia a six-mile strip of land across Panama, a Colombian province.
Furious when Colombia rejected this proposal, Roosevelt contemplated outright seizure of Panama but settled on a more roundabout solution. Panamanians, long separated from Colombia by remote jungle, chafed under Colombian rule. The United States lent covert assistance to an independence movement, triggering a bloodless revolution. On November 6, 1903, the United States recognized the new nation of Panama; two weeks later, it obtained a perpetually renewable lease on a canal zone. Roosevelt never regretted the venture, though in 1922 the United States paid Colombia $25 million as a kind of conscience money. (The United States returned the canal zone to Panama through a process that began in the 1970s and ended in 2000.)

The 51-mile-long Panama Canal includes seven sets of locks that can raise and lower fifty large ships in a twenty-four-hour period. Building the canal took eight years and required tens of thousands of workers, including immigrants from Spain and Italy and many West Indians, such as these men, who accomplished some of the worst-paid, most dangerous labor. Workers endured the horrors of rockslides, explosions, and a yellow fever epidemic that almost halted the project. But American observers hailed the canal as a triumph of modern science and engineering — especially in medical efforts to eradicate the yellow fever and malaria that had stymied earlier canal-building efforts. Theodore Roosevelt insisted on making a personal visit in November 1906. “He made the men that were building there feel like they were special people,” recalled the descendant of one canal worker. “Give them pride of what they were doing for the United States.”

To build the canal, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers hired 60,000 laborers, who came from many countries to clear vast swamps, excavate 240 million cubic yards of earth, and construct a series of immense locks. The project, a major engineering feat, took eight years and cost thousands of lives among the workers who built it. Opened in 1914, the Panama Canal gave the United States a commanding position in the Western Hemisphere.

Aggiunto al nastro di tempo:

Data: