The Panama Canal: A history and description of the enterprise — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
The Panama Canal: A history and description of the enterprise
John Stuart Mill · en
The rivalry between England and the United States along the Nicaraguan
route became so acute and dangerous that a very important treaty was
concluded between the two countries in 1850, when we may say that the
Panama Canal question entered the domain of modern politics. The
Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, so-called from Mr. John M. Clayton, the American
Secretary of State, and Sir Henry Bulwer, British Minister at
Washington, who negotiated it, held the field for fifty years, and
became the subject of endless discussion between England and the United
States.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Herodotus tells a story how the people of Knidos were forbidden by
the Delphic oracle to make a canal through the isthmus, along which
their Persian enemies could advance by land to attack them. The oracle
said that if Zeus had wished the place to be an island he would have
made it one. There is a curious resemblance between this story and that
related in the text.
CHAPTER III.
THE CLAYTON-BULWER TREATY AND THE SUEZ CANAL.
The treaty of 1850 was concerned primarily with a canal along the
Nicaraguan route--that is, as the preamble expresses it, a canal
"between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans by way of the river San Juan de
Nicaragua and either or both of the lakes of Nicaragua or Managua to any
port or place on the Pacific Ocean." But as Article VIII. says, it
established "a general principle" relating to any waterway across the
isthmus between North and South America. The two contracting parties
undertook in the treaty that neither should "obtain or maintain for
itself any exclusive control over the said canal," or "maintain any
fortifications commanding the same, or in the vicinity thereof," or
"occupy, or fortify, or colonize, or assume, or exercise any dominion
over Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito Coast, or any part of Central
America." This agreement, as I said, subsisted for fifty years, but it
was scarcely concluded when it was found inconsistent with the growing
importance and ambition of the United States, where a demand quickly
arose for an American-owned canal.