| Official Opening of the Panama Canal, 1914,
The Panama Canal was the most extensive intervention into the southern hemisphere
in terms of the economic and physical restructuring of a foreign nation.
While the immensity of the canal, as seen here, shows what a massive undertaking
this project had entailed, American leaders believed that the passageway
was of utmost importance to the nation's imperial power and economy. Source:
David McCullough, The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama
Canal, 1870-1914 (1977). |
