The History Of Panama

Chronicles significant events in the political, cultural, philosophical, and religious history of Panama, and includes a time line, biographical sketches, and a glossary.

Chronicles significant events in the political, cultural, philosophical, and religious history of Panama, and includes a time line, biographical sketches, and a glossary.

The untold history of the Panama Canal--from Panama's point of view. Sleuth and scholar, Marixa Lasso has uncovered a long-overlooked story: to build their Canal, Americans displaced 40,000 Panamanians and erased entire cities, only to convince the world they had brought modernity to the tropics.--

Geographically, Panama is the connecting link between South and Central America. This book originally published under the title "Panama: past and present"; tells the history of Panama and its development. "A hundred thousand years ago, when the Gulf of Mexico extended up the Mississippi Valley to the mouth of the Ohio, and the ice-sheet covered New York, there was no need of digging a Panama Canal, for there was no Isthmus of Panama. Instead, a broad strait separated South and Central America, and connected the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. This was the strait that the early European navigators were to hunt for in vain, for long before their time it had been filled up, mainly by the lava and ashes poured into it by the volcanoes on its banks...."

This book discusses in depth the importance and history behind the Panama Canal. To the uninitiated, the Panama Canal is an artificial 82 km (51 mi) waterway in Panama that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean and divides North and South America. Colombia, France, and later the United States controlled the territory surrounding the canal during construction. France began work on the canal in 1881, but stopped because of lack of investors' confidence due to engineering problems and a high worker mortality rate. The United States took over the project on May 4, 1904, and opened the canal on August 15, 1914. The US continued to control the canal and surrounding Panama Canal Zone until the 1977 Torrijos–Carter Treaties provided for handover to Panama. After a period of joint American–Panamanian control, the canal was taken over by the Panamanian government in 1999. It is now managed and operated by the government-owned Panama Canal Authority.