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Throughline · January 15, 2024 · 52m
The Panama Canal: America's Big Dig
Throughline
How the United States built the Panama Canal — after engineering a revolution in Colombia to seize the territory, importing 75,000 workers under brutal conditions, and completing the most ambitious engineering project in history.
This summary was generated from show notes and public descriptions, not from a full transcript review. Details may contain inaccuracies.
Highlights
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The US created Panama to build the Canal — engineering a revolution to seize territory from Colombia
When Colombia refused to grant canal rights on American terms, the US supported (some say engineered) Panamanian independence, then immediately signed the canal treaty with the new government.•
The canal was built on the bodies of workers whose names and nationalities have been systematically erased
Approximately 5,600 workers died building the canal — most of them West Indian laborers who were paid a fraction of white American workers' wages and whose contributions are largely invisible in official histories.Was this useful?