Panama Canal

Panama Canal, a fifty‐one‐mile ship canal through the Isthmus of Panama that connects the Caribbean Sea with the Pacific Ocean.The Spanish recognized the importance of such a canal as early as the sixteenth century. From 1879 to 1881, the French engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps attempted to build a canal at Panama, but the project failed because of disease, poor planning, and lack of funding. Late nineteenth‐century commercial and military interests prompted the U.S. government to undertake the project. After actively promoting Panama's independence, the Theodore Roosevelt administration completed the Hay‐Bunau‐Varilla Treaty in 1903, negotiated by Secretary of State John Hay, by which Panama granted the United States the right to construct, maintain, operate, and defend the canal.

Between 1907 and 1914, after a major public‐health program to eradicate the mosquitos that transmitted yellow fever, the U.S. army colonel George W. Goethals (1858–1928) directed nearly 35,000 workers who completed the greatest construction project the world had seen to that time. Seven sets of locks raise and lower approximately fifty ships every twenty‐four hours en route between the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. To pass through the canal takes approximately eight hours. For ships traveling between the East and West coasts of the United States, the canal route is some 8,000 nautical miles shorter than the route around the tip of South America. On voyages between the East coast of North America and the West coast of South America and Asia, the savings is some 3,500 miles.

Almost immediately after the signing of the Hay‐Bunau‐Varilla Treaty, the Panamanian government protested its provisions that granted the United States titular sovereignty and economic control over the ten‐mile‐wide Canal Zone. As a result of the Hull‐Alfaro Treaty (1936) and the Eisenhower‐Remón Treaty (1955), the Republic of Panama's share of administrative responsibilities in the Canal Zone was increased, and Panamanians gained greater economic opportunities in the Canal Zone.

A rising wave of Panamanian nationalism after World War II demanded more. After violent demonstrations in Panama in 1958 and 1964, new treaty negotiations began. Finally, the 1977 New Panama Canal Treaties provided for a joint U.S.‐Panamanian Commission that administered the canal's operations until the year 2000, when the canal was turned over to the Panamanian government. The treaties included safeguards for U.S. security interests. While Panamanians readily approved the treaties in a plebiscite, the U.S. Senate ratified them only after a bitter debate over the “abandonment” of a prized U.S. possession.
See also Expansionism; Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Latin America; Maritime Transport.

Bibliography

Thomas M. Leonard , Panama, the Canal and the United States: A Guide to Issues and References, 1993.
John L. Major , Prize Possession: The United States and the Panama Canal, 1903–1977, 1993.

Thomas M. Leonard