Product Description

This book tells a previously untold story of decades of financial speculation, fraud, and international conspiracy that led to the creation of the Panama Canal. The author meticulously details the dark alliance among a French company; Teddy Roosevelt with his gunboat diplomacy; and a secretive syndicate of Wall Street financiers that masterminded a coup in Colombia and the secession of Panama in 1903. Panama then welcomed the canal building, and the U. S. foreign policy precedent was set for the 20th century. How Wall Street Created a Nation includes historical photographs and is a fascinating telling of this scandalous true story.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1558384 in Books
• Published on: 2001-06-26
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 325 pages

Customer Reviews

"We stole it fair and square"
Ovidio Diaz Espino book on the secession of Panama from Colombia in 1903 is a fascinating look at the machinations of Wall Street and the US government aided and abetted by the insanely arrogant Phillipe Bunau-Varilla as they created the State of Panama in the interests of Wall Street, the US investors who bought the shares in the failed French attempt at digging a canal across the isthmus of Panama, the French investors who still owned shares in that effort, and the strategic interests of the United States. In short, everyone benefits except the population of Panama - with the unsurprising exception of the Panamanian elites who done quite nicely out of it.

The book could be better written, but the ins and outs of the conspiracy are sufficiently complicated so it is hardly surprising that a few passages need read over twice or thrice to work out exactly what happened. There is no excuse for the cliches which occasionally pepper the text. Otherwise it documents extensively the miserable nature of US imperialism and how a variety of interests benefited substantially in the formation of the state of Panama. The one sided Canal treaty and how it was negotiated practically beggers belief - Bunau-Varilla hoodwinks the newly born Panamanian State into making him special representative in the US on the basis that there will be no US support for their "revolution" without his influence and re-writes the Canal Treaty to make it more favourable to the US than the original treaty that the US government submitted to him to sign! All this is done in a week so that the representatives of the Panamanian State are presented with a fait-acompli when they arrive in Washington.

An interesting book, that is well worth reading.