The Panama Canal
For centurys man has used water as way to get from one place to another very quickly. The Panama Canal is no exception. From around the start of the 16th century people have been trying to find a way to cut a canal across the Isthmus of Panama. Many misfortunes and deaths have been sacrificed to obtain this goal. Finally in 1914 the American had completed one of the greatest feats of all time the Panama Canal, cutting a many months journey to nine hours.
The Panama Canal;
The Shorter Trade Route.
Europeans had wanted of Central American canal as early as the 16thy century; President Ulysses S. Grant sent seven expeditions to study the feasibility of digging the cannel. As travel and trade in the Western Hemisphere increased the need for a canal grew increasingly more important. To sail from the Atlantic to the pacific, ships navigated around the Cape Horn. This was a long and very dangerous trip especially around the tip of South America. A New York to San Francisco journey measured more than 13000 miles and took months to complete. The canals construction was badly needed.
History Of Canals
A canal is an artificial waterway built for navigation, crop irrigation, water supply and drainage. Canals are usually connected with natural bodies of water or other canal. Canals have been used for thousands of years. They started out in early civilization in the middle east as a way to bring water to the city and to water their crops. In the 3rd century the Chinese began building canals, the longest of these early canals was more than 1000 miles long. Making it the longest artificial waterway in the world. (Britannica(no date))
Romans built huge canals mainly for military transport. By th...
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...f rain replenishes the 52 million gallons of water used in each crossing.(The Panama Canal(199)) Though we can't ignore how many people died, and worked hard to complete the project. We can only thank them for increasing or economic prosperity that they gave us by shortening the trade route.
References
Britanica.com. (no date) Panama Canal[online]. Available:
www.britanica.com/bcom/eb/article/5 4/4/00.
Britanica.com. (no date) Canals[online]. Available:
www.britanica.com/bcom/eb/article/5 4/4/00.
Unknown. (1999) The panama Canal[Online]. Available:
www.eclipse.co.uk/ 4/4/00.
Unknown.(1998) U.S. Intervention in Latin America [Online].
Available: www.smplanet.com/imperialism/teddy.html 4/4/00.
Unknown. (no date) TR's Legacy -- The Panama Canal [Online]
Available: www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/tr/panama.html 4/4/00.
The Erie Canal was a man made water way that stretched to be three hundred sixty three miles long. The canal started construction in1817, and took nine years to completely finish the building process. People during this time had many positive, and negative opinions about the fact that this expensive canal was being built. The idea of the Erie Canal originates with Jesse Hawley, the idea was to connect the great lakes to the Atlantic ocean making an easy path to the west from the east without having to pass Niagara Falls. The canal was mostly built by Irish immigrants who were hated, or disliked, by most people. People had ideas and predictions about what would come of this canal. Let's just see which of the predictions were more accurate to
During the Jacksonian Era, in America, there were many changes happening, one of which was western expansion. During this time, Louis and Clark had already explored the west, but people were dying to be able to trade, and live there. With the grueling journey that would effect anyone trying to reach the west, came a new notion, of a canal that reached from Lake Erie on towards the east. This canal could transport people, as well as goods back and forth from the newly explored territory. Eventually this dream successfully became a reality.
Next, he built the Panama Canal to protect both seas of America.
The plans to build the Illinois & Michigan canal began in the newly started Illinois legislature in 1818. It was driven forward by the new construction on the Erie Canal in New York. Once the Erie Canal was complete only a canal between the Des Plaines and Chicago rivers would be necessary to complete the chain of waterways connecting New York to New Orleans.
...dered the construction of the Panama Canal which connected the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean.
In conclusion, the Panama Canal and the Great Wall of China are extensively different and served different purposes. They are set in separate parts of the world and used in a variety of different ways. Despite their differences they have many similarities including, their fatality rate and their military involvement. But by far, the greatest similarity of all is that both the Panama Canal and The Great Wall of China still remain as one of the greatest marvels of the
Over the course of the Spanish-American war , the obvious need for a canal came apparent.The canal would stregthen the navy, and it would make easier defense of the islands in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The problem of where to build the canal came into play. Congress rejected Nicaragua and Panama was an unwilling part of this project. The course of the building was shifted to Colu...
The completion of the canal in 1825 led to a two way trade system. Boats would travel East with supplies from the Great Lakes and the surrounding territory and return with settlers and passengers travelling West, which became an extensive business (Johnson 375). The economic success and prosperity of the Canal also provided motivation for the construction of railroads West, including the transcontinental railroad (Seelye 264). The Erie Canal determined the flow of commerce in the United States for over a century (Seelye 252).
Building a canal to connect the seas together wasn?t originally Roosevelt?s idea. The idea had been around since Spanish colonial times, but the United States took interest in the subject too as they expanded westward. In 1846 a treaty was signed granting the United States transit rights across the Isthmus of Panama, as long as they guaranteed neutrality in Panama and Columbia. In 1848, Great Britain and the United States had great interest in building the Nicaragua Canal, a route other than across the Isthmus of Panama. The Clayton-Buwler Treaty of 1850, in which Great Britain and the United States promised that any canal in Central America would be politically neutral, ended the rivalry between the two countries. Credit of the idea for building a canal can be given to Cornelius Vanderbilt. H realized he could make quite a profit from the canal. The United States found it imperative that they had control over a canal in Latin America, but did not know whether to build one in Nicaragua or Panama. Later, in 1878, a French company under Ferdinand de Lesseps, who was an ambitious man who built the Suez Canal, was grant...
The Panama Canal has been called the big ditch, the bridge between two continents, and the greatest shortcut in the world. When it was finally finished in 1914, the 51-mile waterway cut off over 7,900 miles of the distance between New York and San Francisco, and changed the face of the industrialized world ("Panama Canal"). This Canal is not the longest, the widest, the deepest, or the oldest canal in the world, but it is the only canal to connect two oceans, and still today is the greatest man-made waterway in the world ("Panama Canal Connects).
Farmers, who had moved out west looked for a way to send their produce back east. However, roads were far too expensive and inefficient for this. Thus, canals and steamboats were used to link the country commercially and allow for the transport of goods across the nation. The Erie Canal was one of the greatest technological achievements of its time. At 363 miles long it connects New York to the Great Lakes by water (Sheriff 251). The canal provided easy passage halfway across the country for people and goods and sparked a push for westward movement. To travel on these new canals steambo...
The development of canal, steam boats and railroads provided a transportation network that linked different regions of the nation together. When farmers began migrating westward and acquiring land for crops, cheaper forms of transportation provided the means to transfer their goods to other regions for s...
In The Artificial River, Carol Sheriff describes how when the digging of the Erie Canal began on July 4, 1817, no one would have been able to predict that the canal would even be considered a paradox of progress. One of the major contradictions of progress was whether or not triumphing art over nature was even considered progress. People were not sure during the nineteenth century if changing the environment for industrialization was necessarily a good thing. Another contradiction to progress that resulted from the Erie Canal was when people started holding the state government responsible for all their financial misfortunes. An additional contradiction to progress that the Erie Canal displayed was how many of its workers were either children, or men that lived lives that were intemperate and disrespectful to women. As American history students look back at the Erie Canal today, they generally only imagine how the canal was extraordinary for the residents of New York, but not all the issues and problems it also produced.
The Erie Canal created what was the first reliable transportation system, connecting the eastern seaboard (New York) and the western interior (Great Lakes) of the United States that did not require on land travel. Along with making water routes faster then travel on land it also cut costs of travel by 95 percent. The canal started a population surge in western New York, and opened regions farther west to settlement. This was the start of New York City becoming the chief U.S. port.
The river that connected the West with the East allowed the quick and cheap exportation of natural resources from the fertile middle region of the nation to the industrialized East, in which they would be manufactured into finished goods and shipped to other countries. For example, the costs of the shipment of goodsfrom Additionally, the Erie Canal provided a trade route extending to the Atlantic ocean, which allowed the and thus making New York the “Atlantic port of choice” for many merchants. Had the Erie Canal not been constructed, trade today would solely go south down the Mississippi River, through the ports of New