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Laith Michael

13 March 2020

Panama Canal Assignment

A) In 1901, Theodore Roosevelt was elected president of the United States. He believed that

building a canal, connecting the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans, was in America’s best interest.

For a long time, ships had to take the much longer route of going around the southern tip of

South American, this would change that. So he would make it one of his presidencies goals. It

would launch America into the major power role, and would also protect and increase its

commercial value. The canal would begin construction in 1904, in the small and young country

of Panama. The U.S. would claim a part of its land to build the canal in that region. It would take

nine years until they finished building the canal in 1913.

B) Although the idea has been in the minds of many for hundreds of years, it was the French who

first attempted to build the canal through the Isthmus of Panama. The national hero of France,

Ferdinand de Lesseps, was looking to build another great canal. They called him “Le Grand

Francais” as he would tour the country and pull huge crowds where people wanted to see him

and his family. He was renowned for building the Suez Canal, an artificial sea-level waterway in

Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez (1). The

Isthmus of Panama was significantly different than that of the Suez, which de Lesseps did not

account for. Not only was the weather different, but the terrain was too. The Suez was a clear

dessert, while Panama was filled with jungles and mountains. He began construction in 1880, he

directed his engineers to carve a canal through the Isthmus. Over the next 8 years, they would

only encounter problems and diseases, causing them to fail. They went through floods,

earthquakes, yellowfever, and corruption. By 1888, one billion Francs, about $287 million, had
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been spent on a failing project which claimed 20,000 lives due to accidents and disease. De

Lesseps was then bankrupt and narrowly escaped prison. In the last years of his life he sat

looking out the window with a three-year old newspaper by his side.

C) The Americans knew that they couldn’t dig through the mountainous region of the Canal

Zone at sea level (like the French attempted), so they had to come up with a way around that.

This gave them the idea of raising ships into a man-made lake and then lowering them out. Then

came the problem of who to hire, many American men were recruited to work at Panama, but

after seeing how dangerous it was, bailed out. So the officials hired mostly West Indies workers

for the unskilled jobs, but still needed American workers for the skilled jobs. So they would

build recreational buildings and homes outside the construction zone, to convince more

Americans to come and stay. The government built YMCA clubhouses with card rooms, pool

tables, and libraries. They created events like dances and baseball games. Not only did white

American men arrive in large numbers and stayed, but their families did too. One of the

dangerous they previously fled from were the diseases, which were also solved by Colonel

William Gorgas. Who ended yellow fever deaths by ridding the Canal Zone of any mosquitos. At

one point Theodore Roosevelt was facing a Public Relations problem, so he visited the Canal and

actively watched and participated in it’s construction. This increased the morale of the workers.

The first person to be put in charge of it, John Findley Wallace, had grown tired of his job and

resigned. This angered Roosevelt, so he hired a military man who knew he couldn’t resign his

way out of it. George Washington Geothals, an expert in hydraulics, and a fine engineer in the

army Corps was hired.

D) At first, Panama was a part of the South American country of Colombia. The United States

attempted to negotiate with Colombia, on how it could seize a small portion of its land and
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express strong control over it, but the Colombian constitution expressly forbid giving

sovereignty to foreign nations. The Colombians rejected the treaty unanimously. Roosevelt had

to find another way to gain control over the Isthmus, so he supported Panamanian elites and their

bid for independence. On November 3rd, 1903 the rebels seized the Isthmus, and an American

gunboat arrived at the harbor at Colón to support. It blocked any Colombian attempts to cross

and crush the rebellion, they also paid off the Colombian soldiers to return to Colombia. No

major casualties were taken on either side, only a foreign-born shopkeeper and a “luckless

donkey” had died. Three days later on November 6th, the United States formally recognized the

new Republic of Panama. These actions were done in a very arrogant way, but that was how

major powers emerged, through arrogance. The Americans then signed a treaty with the

Panamanians which granted themselves sovereignty over a 500-square-mile swath of land that

stretched across the Isthmus (cutting the nation into two). Many believed the United States was

becoming gradually more like the other major powers, and that some of the ideals that made it

better than the rest were lost due to the use of force.

E) The Panama canal was a very significant project for man-kind to work on, resulting in great

success that would help to globalize the world in trade. But many people did lose their lives

while working on the project. When the French tried their hand at building the canal they quit

after 8 years of harsh problems. 20,000 workers had lost their lives working to make something

that failed in the end. The French government also lost ₣1 billion francs (about $287 million) to

the construction which resulted in no success. The leader of the French effort attempt also lost

his wealth, fame, and sanity during these long 8 years. The American attempt also faced many

problems, but not as many as the French. The Americans learned from the mistakes made by the

French and lowered their casualties. The Americans would spend 9 years building the canal at
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the cost of 5,609 lives, and $350 million (5). Finally, it came at the cost of the natural land.

When they built the dam, they flooded a large area with villages, railways, and forests. During

the Culebra cut, they excavated through 13 kilometres of mountainous terrain (5). They moved

100 million cubic metres of dirt and used more than 27 million kilograms of dynamite (6). The

Panama canal not only helped boost the United States in global power, it also increased and

made trade easier around the region. Today, between 12,000 and 15,000 ships cross the Panama

Canal every year, 815,000 ships throughout its existence.

F) Many of the workers that were being recruited came from the West Indies island of Barbados.

Recruiters would send a West Indies man wearing a white suit, looking very wealthy, and he

would convince men to go and work making the canal. They would live in shacks with three

layers of bunk beds on each wall. In the Canal Zone, your job comes down to how you get paid.

Skilled workers would get paid in gold, unskilled workers would receive their payment in silver.

Employees that were paid in gold received privileges such as paid sick leave, holidays off, and a

laundry service. This would create a system of segregation where things were marked gold or

silver. Bathrooms, offices, and water fountains were marked segregating the types of workers.

What made the situation worse, was that, most of the skilled workers were white, and the

unskilled were of much darker skin tones. In the United States the segregation was between

blacks and white, in the Canal Zone they gave it a new name, gold and silver. Silver workers

would endure harsh working environments for long periods of time for 10 cents an hour. Which

to the workers from Barbados, still a good pay, more than what they would receive in Barbado.

G) During the French effort and the early American effort to build the canal, one major problem

was always prevalent among the workers, that being disease. There was malaria, dysentery,

pneumonia, and yellow fever. Every year, epidemics swept through the Isthmus killing hundreds
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of workers, so it was clear that they were in need of a medical officer. For centuries, yellow fever

had been thought to be caused by filth, and efforts to combat the disease included sanitation. The

prime candidate for the job of medical officer was Colonel William Gorgas, who was an army

doctor. He had previously been posted to Havana, where they found out that yellow fever was

caused by infected mosquitoes transmitting the disease. During one of his postings, he contracted

the disease and survived making him immune to it, so he dedicated his work to helping fight it.

His efforts in the Canal Zone would be more difficult to achieve than that of Havana, as the

Canal Zone wasn’t a city. He submitted a $1 million dollar proposal to the Panama Canal

Commission, which only approved $50,000 dollars. They did not believe his mosquito theory,

and so they tried to fire him. On the day of his dismissal, president Roosevelt was met by his

personal physician, Dr. Alexander Lambert, who told him to support Gorgas. Roosevelt then did

support Gorgas, and Gorgas got to work cleaning up the whole Canal Zone in military style

discipline. He first spent $90,000 on screening workers so that they can’t get the disease, then he

would try to eradicate all mosquito larvae in water sources. He found out that if you pour oil on

top of the water, it destroys mosquito larvae. So he would pour oil in every water tank, puddle,

and water source. Gorgas even passed a law making people $5 dollar fines if they had larvae in

their homes. On November 11th, he called his staff into an autopsy room and told them to take a

good look at a corpse on the table. It was, what he accurately predicted, the last yellow fever

victim they would ever see in the Canal Zone.

H) When the Suez Canal was built, it was much simpler than that of Panama. It was dug at sea

level so that water and ships may just cross. But in the Panama Canal Zone, the area was

mountainous and it would take lots of digging for the canal to be at sea level. So engineers came

up with a better way to get ships from one side to the other, without the need to dig more than
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necessary. They first built a dam on the Gatun, creating an artificial lake which the ships would

be raised and lowered into. The locks were 3 football fields long and hold tens of millions of

gallons of water. They are the mechanism that will lift the ships up and down, hydraulically, and

get them to go over land. They would have to create locks 3 times as large as the largest lock

ever built.

I) In 1977, president Jimmy Carter signed a treaty with Panamanian general Omar Torrijos

which called for the transfer of Canal Control back to Panama (2). It was officially returned in

1999, by president Bill Clinton and gave the United States the right to defend its neutrality. The

bill was signed largely due to 20 years of Panamanian protest (2).

J) In 2007, the Panama Canal Authority announced an expansion project for the canal to allow

newer much larger cargo ships (3). The project cost $5.25 billion dollars, and had four main

tasks; constructing new locks, constructing a new Pacific access channel, dredging the

waterways, and raising the operational level of Gatun Lake (4). It was predicted to finish

construction in 2014 to coincide with the 100th year anniversary of the canal, but due to some

setbacks it finished in 2016 (3). It has created 30,000 new jobs, and now can compete with the

Suez Canal. Some concerns came from the the bigger ships the project was designed for, their

sheer size can cause traffic in the narrow canal. Also, they may raise the water levels inside the

lake Gatun, pressuring the Panama Canal Authority to enforce weight restrictions (4).

1) French Panama Canal Failure (1881-1889)

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http://www.kumc.edu/school-of-medicine/history-and-philosophy-of-medicine/panama-
canal/french-panama-canal-failure.html

2) Panama Canal turned over to Panama

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/panama-canal-turned-over-to-panama

3) Third set of locks

https://www.gupc.com.pa/en/the-project/third-set-of-locks

4) PANAMA CANAL EXPANSION - THE THIRD SET OF LOCKS PROJECT

https://www.soilmec.com/en/news/third_set_of_lock_panama_canal_expansion_project

5) The Panama Canal’s forgotten casualties

http://theconversation.com/the-panama-canals-forgotten-casualties-93536

6) Ten Facts about the Panama Canal

https://www.worldwildlife.org/blogs/good-nature-travel/posts/ten-facts-about-the-
panama-canal