Background_Context

The Panama Canal

What is the Panama Canal?

Geographically, The Panama Canal severed the land connection between North and South America to unite the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and create a valuable trade route. The construction was first undertaken in 1880 by a French company and quickly abandoned chiefly due to lack of resources. In 1904, The United States began a successful, yet troubled, ten years of construction to create a canal through the Isthmus of Panama and a wonder of engineering.

An aerial view of the Panama Canal, Panama May 11, 2016.

REUTERS/Carlos Jasso/File Photo

Why the Canal was Created?

Isochronic distances of English Trade routes, Nov 30, 2015.

Daily Mail UK

Before the Panama Canal, trade routes arduously circumnavigated the dangerous Cape Horn making sea trade from east Asia expensive. The shortest alternative for Eastern-America to Asia was 16,746 miles. It took 13,841 miles for Western-America to reach Europe.

“I transmit herewith a report of the Isthmian Canal Commission upon the proposition of the New Panama Canal Company to sell and dispose of all its rights, property and unfinished work to the United States for $40,000,000, and which expresses the opinion of the Commission ‘that the most practicable and feasible route for an Isthmian Canal to be under the control, management and ownership of the United States is that known as the Panama route’.”

-Theodore Roosevelt to the United States Congress

For the United Kingdom, it took only weeks to reach West Asia and mere days to trade with Europe. Consequently, trade was incentivized to remain within the Eastern Hemisphere. Western countries, especially the U.S.A. sought to make the journey less dangerous, less time consuming, and most importantly, cheaper.

Routes before and after Canal, Jun 24, 2016. Ajot

Introduction

Physical Barriers