Essay: Making America's Empire At The Panama Canal

Section 1: Identification and Evaluation of Sources

The investigation of this text is to attempt to answer this question: to what extent did the construction of the Panama Canal influence the foreign policy of the United States? This evaluation will be investigating two sources that have helped with this investigation of foreign policy of the United States in correlation with the construction of the Panama Canal. The two sources will be a book written by Julie Greene called: The Canal Builders: Making America's Empire at the Panama Canal. The second source to be evaluated would be an article from PBS interviewing different historians on their perspective of the construction of the canal.

The origin of The Canal Builders: Making America's Empire

The greatest influence in the construction of the waterway was the United States (Van Wagtendonk). A passageway that would run through Central America could cut the time to travel from one ocean to another drastically (Van Wagtendonk). As the US was emerging as a global power, it was important to distinguish themselves from the old powers of Europe, which they saw as more crassly seeking power and control and colonialism” (Glass). Attempts of a canal being built through Panama and Nicaragua had already been attempted by the French and the British, but had failed due to disease, torrential mudslides, and eventually the attempt went bankrupt (Milestones). “In 1901, the United States negotiated with Britain for the support of an American-controlled canal that would be constructed either in Nicaragua or through a strip of land—Panama—owned by Colombia.” (Milkis). The canal is built in the early part of the 20th century, right after the US-Spanish war (Glass). “The United States, for the first time, was going to gain control of both oceans- which was critical in time of war” (Van Wagtendonk). There was no air power in early 20th century, so enemies fought mostly by land and sea (Van