Panama Canal Essay

Essay by schwelly65High School, 11th gradeA+, November 2002

download word file, 3 pages 4.2

Panama Canal Essay

The Panama Canal was one of the greatest triumphs and tragedies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.The tragedy was that of the French, they were just simply too far ahead of technology, at that time, to complete or even get farther than the very beginning of the Panama Canal. The American's took over the project after President Theodore Roosevelt's pushing of the Panamanian Revolution. After the Revolution the Americans took control of the canal and continued the building of the canal.

The French attempt at the Panama Canal was started by the famous French engineer, Ferdanand, who built the one hundred fifty-mile Suez Canal through the sands of Egypt. The French began the Panama Canal with next to no technological advances. They relied on the manpower and nationalistic pride of the French people. Ferdinand wanted to design and build the canal the same way he had designed and built the Suez Canal.

All the workers on the site including Ferdanand believed that science would find a way to solve any problems that arise with the building of the canal. The French had no knowledge of the reasons of disease or of the malaria and yellow fever carrying mosquitoes of Panama. They had installed a hospital, staffed by twenty-four nurses, two of whom survived. A makeshift town and houses. During the building, the French people had volunteered for work in Panama. After the fiasco, Panama was an unmentionable word in France, it meant to spend money needlessly and to kill needlessly, just for nationalistic pride. France continued work in Panama for ten years, in the end they had lost twenty thousand people and a few million in lost equipment and workers wages.

The Panama Canal was a way for the American government to...