THE BIG DITCH
The Panama Canal and the Age of American Empire, 1903-1914By Dorothy Louise Stanhope
Length5h 59m
About this audiobook
August 15, 1914. A small steamer named the Ancon eased into a chamber of gray concrete the size of a city block — and the two great oceans of the world were joined for the first time in history.
The journey to that moment had taken sixty-four years, two failed European empires, a French bankruptcy that ruined a generation of investors, a U.S.-sponsored revolution, and the lives of more than twenty-five thousand workers buried in the mud of the isthmus. By the time the Ancon cleared the final lock, the canal had cost more than any project in American history, transformed the geography of global trade, and announced to the world that a new imperial power had arrived.
But the story most Americans inherited — of plucky engineers, of Theodore Roosevelt's swagger, of yellow fever conquered and a continent split — has always been only half the story. The other half belongs to the Barbadian and Jamaican workers paid in silver while Americans were paid in gold, to a Colombian province annexed by gunboat diplomacy, to a Panamanian nation that spent the next ninety years trying to claw back what was taken from it, and to a small French lobbyist whose theatrical use of a postage stamp may have rerouted the canal itself.
The Big Ditch tells the definitive story of the Panama Canal — the engineering, the empire, the disease, the diplomacy, and the cost. Drawing on archives in Washington, Panama City, Bridgetown, and Kingston, Dorothy Louise Stanhope reconstructs the canal's full arc, from de Lesseps' doomed dream in 1880 to the handover at noon on December 31, 1999. This is history as it actually happened — ambitious, brutal, brilliant, and impossible to put down.
Perfect for readers of David McCullough's The Path Between the Seas, Stephen Ambrose's narrative histories, and Erik Larson's deeply researched true-life epics.
Audiobook details
GenrePoetry, Historical Fiction, Mystery and Thriller
Length5 hrs 59 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Introduction
2Author’s Note
3Prologue: The Dreams of De Lesseps
4PART ONE: THE ROAD TO PANAMA (1850-1903)
5Chapter 1: The French Failure — De Lesseps, Yellow Fever, and the Collapse of the First Canal
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6Chapter 2: Nicaragua vs. Panama — The Route Debate and the Lobbyist's Stamp
7Chapter 3: The Hay-Herran Treaty — Colombia's Refusal and Roosevelt's Fury
8Chapter 4: The Panama Revolution — American Warships and Instant Recognition
9PART TWO: BUILDING THE CANAL (1904-1914)
10Chapter 5: The Medical Miracle — Gorgas, Yellow Fever, and the Eradication of Disease
11Chapter 6: Goethals Takes Command — The Army Engineer Who Made the Canal
12Chapter 7: The Culebra Cut — Digging Through the Continental Divide
13Chapter 8: The Locks — Engineering the Water Staircase
14PART THREE: THE WORKERS' CANAL
15Chapter 9: The Silver and Gold Rolls — Racial Segregation on the Canal Zone
16Chapter 10: West Indian Workers — Barbadians, Jamaicans, and the Caribbean Labor Force
17Chapter 11: American Workers — The Silver and Gold Wage System
18Chapter 12: Accidents, Disease, and the Human Cost of Construction
19PART FOUR: THE CANAL ZONE
20Chapter 13: American Empire in Panama — The Canal Zone as Colonial Possession
21Chapter 14: Panamanian Resentment — Sovereignty, Humiliation, and the Growing Conflict
22Chapter 15: The Canal Zone Society — American Life in a Tropical Colony
23Chapter 16: Strategic Value — The Canal and American Naval Power
24PART FIVE: THE OPENING AND EARLY OPERATION
25Chapter 17: The Opening — August 1914 and the War That Overshadowed the Triumph
26Chapter 18: The Canal in World War I and World War II — Strategic Military Value
27Chapter 19: The 1964 Flag Riots — Panamanian Nationalism and the First Crisis
28Chapter 20: The Torrijos-Carter Treaties — Returning the Canal
29PART SIX: LEGACIES
30Chapter 21: Handover — December 31, 1999, and Panamanian Control
31Chapter 22: The Expanded Canal — The Panama Canal Today and the Third Set of Locks
32Chapter 23: American Empire — What the Canal Represents in the History of U.S. Foreign Policy
33Chapter 24: Engineering Legacy — The Canal's Place in the History of Infrastructure
34Epilogue: The Canal at One Hundred
35Acknowledgments
36Selected Bibliography
37About the Author
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