The Panama Canal is an artificial waterway that runs across the Isthmus of Panama in Central America, thus enabling marine traffic between the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean without having the travel all the way south around South America, and vice-versa. The idea of cutting a canal across the narrow neck of land that attaches Central America to South America had been considered for as long as Spain had been active in the New World. The Holy Roman Emperor and ruler of the Spanish Empire, Charles V (1516–1556), had even ordered a canal to be cut back in the first half of the sixteenth century. However, projects to do so were only really entered into in earnest from the middle of the nineteenth century and even then disease outbreaks in the tropical jungles here and other issues meant that the project was delayed repeatedly. Work on the canal was only completed when the United States government took the project over from a French consortium in 1904. The canal opened for traffic in August 1914. For centuries it had been theorized that such a canal would facilitate European settlement of the Pacific coastal regions of the Americas, but by the time it was opened in 1914 this had already been broadly achieved by different routes and mechanisms. Nonetheless, the Panama Canal facilitated different types of migration during the twentieth century such as the movement of Filipinos from the Philippines to East Coast states like New York, Virginia and Florida.[1]
Panama Canal chronology of eventsPanama Canal chronology of events
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In the sixteenth century, if a Spanish explorer or colonist wanted to travel from somewhere around the Lesser Antilles in the eastern Caribbean to the Pacific coast of Central America they had only two options: they could make landfall on the Gulf of Mexico and trek by land across Central America, a slow and disease-ridden land route, or they could sail for thousands of kilometers south to Cape Horn, navigate through the treacherous waters around the Straits of Magellan and then come all the way back north. Unsurprisingly, given that the Isthmus of Panama that connects Central America to South America is under fifty miles wide in places, Spanish explorers of the New World quickly began writing about the possibility of cutting a canal or artificial waterway of some kind through the Isthmus in the sixteenth century. This would allow for ships to cross from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean without circumnavigating the entirety of South America.[2]
While plans to cut such a Panama Canal through the region were initiated as early as the reign of Charles V, they were not practical at this time. The region presented many difficulties. For one, the topography here is rocky and mountainous and in an age prior to the Industrial Revolution it was nearly impossible for men relying on sheer manpower and basic tools to make progress. To compound the problem, part of the region, known as the Darien Gap, is swampy and full of tropical diseases that made trying to work here a quasi-death sentence for Europeans who had no resistance to things like malaria and yellow fever.[3] By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, plans were being considered to try and cut a canal much further north through Nicaragua. Although this would require a considerably longer canal, the shorter route in Panama was deemed to be virtually impossible to work through because of the issues with disease and the topography.[4]
Attitudes changed once again in the middle of the nineteenth century. By then new machines were available to exploit steam power to do things that men with pick-axes could never have accomplished. Moreover, with the completion of the Suez Canal in Egypt in 1869 there was renewed confidence that a canal could be cut through the Isthmus of Panama. This again proved to be overly optimistic. Although Ferdinand de Lesseps, the mastermind behind the Suez Canal, was brought in to oversee a French-led project, the issues around malaria and yellow fever outbreaks continued to bedevil the project. Progress was slow and eventually the US government bought out the French and took the project over in 1904. They had figured out how to tackle yellow fever outbreaks in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War of 1898 after a huge outbreak of the disease amongst American marines on Cuba.[5] They put this new knowledge to work in Panama, actions which transformed work on the canal. They then pushed ahead and completed the project in 1914. It opened in August that year, bringing to completion a project that was first theorized 400 years earlier.[6]
Extent of migration through the Panama CanalExtent of migration through the Panama Canal
Ever since the sixteenth century writers had noted that a canal across Central America would greatly facilitate traffic between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific. The main sea route, south around Cape Horn, was long and dangerous, meaning that a canal would have encouraged mass movement from the Atlantic shores of the Americas to the Pacific. In fact, even in the absence of a canal, tens of thousands of people mass migrated to the West Coast of the United States in the late 1840s and 1850s at the time of the California Gold Rush by sailing south to around Panama and Nicaragua, travelling the short distance overland and then taking ship again north to California.[7] All the same, by the time the canal was opened in August 1914 the need for it to facilitate mass movement to the West Coast of the US, Canada or Mexico had largely disappeared. These parts of the western hemisphere had already been substantially settled by then. Moreover, the opening of the canal just as the First World War was breaking out meant that the age of European mass migration to the Americas was coming to an end. In 1924 the Immigration Act was passed by the US government, further impeding migration through the canal.[8]
Despite these issues, the canal did become an avenue for considerable migration in the half century or so after it opened. For instance, the Philippines had become a US colony at the end of the Spanish-American War of 1898. Therefore Filipinos were not prevented from migrating to the US in the same way that nearly all others national groups were in the aftermath of the 1924 Immigration Act. While most Filipino migrants to the US settled in West Coast states like California, Oregon and Washington State, some took ship through the Panama Canal and settled on the East Coast, particularly in New York, Virginia and Florida.[9]
There were myriad additional kinds of migration through the canal. For instance, some of this was simply internal migration. Before the advent of mass airplane travel after the Second World War, many people wishing to move from the East Coast of America to the West did so on ships that transited through the canal. Equally, the canal facilitated migration between the Caribbean and different parts of Latin America like Ecuador and Chile. It also fueled certain kinds of migration between Asia and Europe. Thus, while the Panama Canal was a very late addition to the marine travel routes of the world before air travel became paramount, it was a significant factor in the story of modern mass migration all the same.[10]
Demographic impact of the Panama CanalDemographic impact of the Panama Canal
It is difficult with a project like the Panama Canal, the implications of which were so far-reaching, to precisely identify the demographic impact of it over the last century and more. A sense of it can be better obtained via case studies. Take the example of Filipino migration to the United States and the development of the Filipino American community. There are more than four million Filipino Americans in the United States today, a large number of whom are descended from people who easily gained access to the US when their country was essentially an American colony between 1898 and 1946. While the majority of these migrants settled in Pacific coastal regions like California, Hawaii and Washington State, many settled in New York, Illinois, Florida, Virginia and Texas. A large proportion of these Filipino migrants would have travelled via the Panama Canal to ports like Houston and New York. Today there are roughly 200,000 Filipino Americans in Texas, 160,000 or so in Illinois, 150,000 each in New York and Florida, and over 100,000 each in Virginia and New Jersey.[11]
This is just one example of how the Panama Canal has impacted on migration patterns since 1914 and shaped the demography of various parts of the western hemisphere. The demographic impact has also been keenly felt in Panama itself. The construction of the canal led to tens of thousands of workers arriving to the Isthmus from the Caribbean, China and India. A substantial number of these migrants remained in Panama after the project ended. On top of this, the sheer mercantile importance of the canal zone made Panama a hub of cosmopolitan migration and it has become a country with a strongly diversified ethnic makeup as a result. Owing to these multiple processes, Panama has considerable Chinese Panamanian, Indian Panamanian and Afro-Panamanian communities today.[12]
See alsoSee also
- Panama historical records
- Panama birth records index
- Panama marriage records index
- Panama death records index
- Philippines historical records
- Philippines birth records index
- Philippines marriage records index
- Philippines death records index
- Ecuador historical records
- Ecuador birth records index
- Ecuador marriage records index
- Ecuador death records index
- Central American migrant caravans
Explore more about the Panama CanalExplore more about the Panama Canal
- 1920 United States Federal Census records collection on MyHeritage
- 1930 United States Federal Census records collection on MyHeritage
- 1940 United States Federal Census records collection on MyHeritage
- 1950 United States Federal Census records collection on MyHeritage
- Panama, Baptisms, 1750-1938 records collection on MyHeritage
- Panama, Marriages, 1800-1950 records collection on MyHeritage
- Panama, Deaths, 1840-1930 records collection on MyHeritage
- Philippines, Births and Baptisms, 1642-1994 records collection on MyHeritage
- Philippines, Marriages, 1723-1957 records collection on MyHeritage
- Philippines Deaths and Burials, 1726-1957 records collection on MyHeritage
- Ecuador, Baptisms, 1680-1930 records collection on MyHeritage
- Ecuador, Marriages, 1680-1930 records collection on MyHeritage
- Ecuador, Deaths, 1800-1920 records collection on MyHeritage
References
- ↑ Matthew Parker, Panama Fever: The Epic Story of the Building of the Panama Canal (London, 2009).
- ↑ Ethelbert D. Warfield, ‘Historical Account of Isthmian Projects’, in Proceedings of the American Society of International Law at Its Annual, Vol. 7, International Use of Straits and Canals, with Especial Reference to the Panama Canal (April, 1913), pp. 53–60.
- ↑ https://americasquarterly.org/article/the-darien-gaps-fearsome-reputation-has-been-centuries-in-the-making/
- ↑ Lawrence A. Clayton, ‘The Nicaragua canal in the nineteenth century: prelude to American empire in the Caribbean’, in Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2 (1987), pp. 323–352.
- ↑ Mark A. Youngren, ‘A Sickly Little War: Epidemic Disease, Military Campaigns, and the Spanish-American War’ (PhD thesis, Michigan State University, 2016).
- ↑ Parker, Panama Fever.
- ↑ https://www.loc.gov/collections/california-first-person-narratives/articles-and-essays/early-california-history/forty-niners/
- ↑ https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/immigration-act
- ↑ Rick Baldoz, Empire and Migration in Filipino America, 1898–1946 (Quezon City, 2015).
- ↑ Claudia Milian and Ifeoma Kiddoe Nwankwo, ‘Introduction: Interoceanic Diasporas and The Panama Canal’s Centennial’, in The Global South, Vol. 6, No. 2, Interoceanic Diasporas and The Panama Canal's Centennial (Fall, 2012), pp. 1–14.
- ↑ https://usa.inquirer.net/15493/new-census-data-4-million-filipinos-us
- ↑ https://minorityrights.org/communities/chinese-panamanians/