In August of 1914, the United States of America completed a man-made waterway through the Panamanian isthmus, linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans for the first time in history. But that engineering triumph was the culmination of decades of toil, conflict and death. In this first episode of a multi-part series on the Panama Canal, we trace the origins of its construction, beginning with the doomed French attempt and its tragic protagonist, Ferdinand de Lesseps. 

SOURCES:

Burton, Anthony. The Canal Pioneers: Canal Construction from 2500 BC to the Early 20th Century. Barnsley, UK: Pen & Sword Maritime, 2018.

Charles River Editors. The Panama Canal: The Construction and History of the Waterway Between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. CreateSpace Independent Publishing, 2013.

Diaz Espino, Ovidio. How Wall Street Created a Nation: J.P. Morgan, Teddy Roosevelt, and the Panama Canal. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003.

Greene, Julie. The Canal Builders: Making America’s Empire at the Panama Canal. New York: Penguin Press, 2009.

Karabell, Zachary. Parting the Desert: The Creation of the Suez Canal. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003.

Keller, Ulrich. The Building of the Panama Canal in Historic Photographs. New York: Dover Publications, 1983.

Lasso, Marixa. Erased: The Untold Story of the Panama Canal. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019.

Lindsay, John. Emperors in the Jungle: The Hidden History of the U.S. in Panama. 2003.

Lopez, Sean J. Chokepoint: The Epic History of the Suez Canal. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2024.

Marlowe, Elias. A History of Panama: Canal, Conquest, and Independence. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2012.

McCullough, David. The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1977.

Morton, Levi P. “No. 105. Mr. Morton to Mr. Frelinghuysen.” Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Transmitted to Congress, With the Annual Message of the President, December 1, 1884, U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian, 5 July 1884,https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1884/d105

Parker, Matthew. Panama Fever: The Epic Story of the Building of the Panama Canal. New York: Doubleday, 2007.

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