Panama 1903: How America Invented an Entire Country — Just to Steal a Canal

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 02:11:31 +0200

The country of Panama didn't exist until the United States needed it to. In nineteen-oh-three, when Colombia refused to hand over its land for a canal, the most powerful nation on Earth backed a revolution, recognized the new country within seventy-two hours, and had a French lobbyist who hadn't set foot in Panama for seventeen years sign away its sovereignty. No Panamanians were present at the signing. This is the full story of how Wall Street lawyers, a desperate French engineer, and a president who openly bragged "I took the isthmus" conspired to manufacture a nation, build one of the greatest engineering feats in history on the graves of twenty-five-thousand workers, and create a geopolitical flashpoint that is still making headlines today.
From the catastrophic French failure that killed twenty-two-thousand laborers and bankrupted eight-hundred-thousand investors, to the volcanic postage stamps that swung a Senate vote, to the gunboat diplomacy that made it all possible — this is the story behind the shortcut between two oceans.
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