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The Panama Canal made it possible for ships to move between North and South America. Before the canal, ships had to go around South America or North America to get to the other side.

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Home Geography & Travel Physical Geography of Water Rivers & Canals
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Spanish: Canal de Panamá ...(Show more)

What is the Panama Canal?

Why is the Panama Canal important?

How was the Panama Canal made?

Why does the Panama Canal need locks?

Who built the Panama Canal?

Panama Canal, Spanish Canal de Panamá, lock-type canal, owned and administered by the Republic of Panama, that connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the narrow Isthmus of Panama. The length of the Panama Canal from shoreline to shoreline is about 40 miles (65 km) and from deep water in the Atlantic (more specifically, the Caribbean Sea) to deep water in the Pacific about 50 miles (82 km). The canal, which was completed in August 1914, is one of the two most strategic artificial waterways in the world, the other being the Suez Canal. Ships sailing between the east and west coasts of the United States, which otherwise would be obliged to round Cape Horn in South America, shorten their voyage by about 8,000 nautical miles (15,000 km) by using the canal. Savings of up to 3,500 nautical miles (6,500 km) are also made on voyages between one coast of North America and ports on the other side of South America. Ships sailing between Europe and East Asia or Australia can save as much as 2,000 nautical miles (3,700 km) by using the canal.

From its opening in 1914 until 1979, the Panama Canal was controlled solely by the United States, which built it. In 1979, however, control of the canal passed to the Panama Canal Commission, a joint agency of the United States and the Republic of Panama, and complete control passed to Panama at noon on December 31, 1999. Administration of the canal is the responsibility of the Panama Canal Authority (Spanish: Autoridad del Canal de Panamá [ACP]), which answers solely to the government of Panama.

Physical features

The canal

The Panama Canal lies at a latitude of 9° N, at a point where the North American Continental Divide dips to one of its lowest points. The canal does not, as is generally supposed, cross the isthmus from east to west. It runs due south from its entrance at Colón on the Atlantic side through the Gatún Locks to a point in the widest portion of Gatún Lake; it then turns sharply toward the east and follows a course generally to the southeast until it reaches the Bay of Panama, on the Pacific side. Its terminus near Balboa is some 25 miles (40 km) east of its terminus near Colón. Parallel to the canal are the Panama Canal Railway and the Boyd-Roosevelt Highway.

In passing from the Atlantic to the Pacific, vessels enter the approach channel in Limón Bay, which extends a distance of about 7 miles (11 km) to the Gatún Locks. At Gatún a series of three locks lifts vessels 85 feet (26 metres) to Gatún Lake. The lake, formed by Gatún Dam on the Chagres River and supplemented by waters from Alajuela Lake (Lake Madden; formed by the Madden Dam), covers an area of 166 square miles (430 square km). The channel through the lake varies in depth from 46 to 85 feet (14 to 26 metres) and extends for about 23 miles (37 km) to Gamboa. Gaillard (Culebra) Cut begins at Gamboa and passes through the Continental Divide. The channel through the cut has an average depth of about 43 feet (13 metres) and extends some 8 miles (13 km) to the Pedro Miguel Locks. The locks lower vessels 30 feet (9 metres) to Miraflores Lake, at an elevation of 52 feet (16 metres) above sea level. Vessels then pass through a channel almost 1.2 miles (2 km) long to the two-stepped locks at Miraflores, where they are lowered to sea level. The final segment of the canal is a dredged approach passage 7 miles long through which ships pass into the Pacific. Throughout its length the canal has a minimum bottom width of 500 feet (150 metres); in Gatún Lake the width of the channel varies between 500 and 1,000 feet (150 and 300 metres), and in Miraflores Lake the width is 740 feet (225 metres).

Canals, Straits, and More Quiz

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Panama Canal | Definition, History, Treaty, Map, Locks, & Facts

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Panama Canal, the lock-type canal that connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the narrow Isthmus of Panama. The length of the Panama Canal from shoreline to shoreline is about 40 miles (65 km). It was completed in 1914 and is one of the two most strategic artificial waterways in the world.

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The Sepoy Rebellion was a rebellion against British rule in India, it was unsuccessful. It happened in Delhi, Agra, Kanpur, and Lucknow.

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Indian Mutiny, also called Sepoy Mutiny, widespread but unsuccessful rebellion against British rule in India in 1857-58. Begun in Meerut by Indian troops (sepoys) in the service of the British East India Company, it spread to Delhi, Agra, Kanpur, and Lucknow. In India it is often called the First War of Independence and other similar names.

India: The mutiny and great revolt of 1857-59

When soldiers of the Bengal army mutinied in Meerut on May 10, 1857, tension had been growing for some time. The immediate cause of military disaffection was the deployment of the new breech-loading Enfield rifle, the cartridge of which...
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Background

To regard the rebellion merely as a sepoy mutiny is to underestimate the root causes leading to it. British paramountcy-i.e., the belief in British dominance in Indian political, economic, and cultural life-had been introduced in India about 1820. The British increasingly used a variety of tactics to usurp control of the Hindu princely states that were under what were called subsidiary alliances with the British. Everywhere the old Indian aristocracy was being replaced by British officials. One notable British technique was called the doctrine of lapse, first perpetrated by Lord Dalhousie in the late 1840s. It involved the British prohibiting a Hindu ruler without a natural heir from adopting a successor and, after the ruler died or abdicated, annexing his land. To those problems may be added the growing discontent of the Brahmans, many of whom had been dispossessed of their revenues or had lost lucrative positions.

Another serious concern was the increasing pace of Westernization, by which Hindu society was being affected by the introduction of Western ideas. Missionaries were challenging the religious beliefs of the Hindus. The humanitarian movement led to reforms that went deeper than the political superstructure. During his tenure as governor-general of India (1848-56), Lord Dalhousie made efforts toward emancipating women and had introduced a bill to remove all legal obstacles to the remarriage of Hindu widows. Converts to Christianity were to share with their Hindu relatives in the property of the family estate. There was a widespread belief that the British aimed at breaking down the caste system. The introduction of Western methods of education was a direct challenge to orthodoxy, both Hindu and Muslim.

The mutiny broke out in the Bengal army because it was only in the military sphere that Indians were organized. The pretext for revolt was the introduction of the new Enfield rifle. To load it, the sepoys had to bite off the ends of lubricated cartridges. A rumour spread among the sepoys that the grease used to lubricate the cartridges was a mixture of pigs' and cows' lard; thus, to have oral contact with it was an insult to both Muslims and Hindus. There is no conclusive evidence that either of these materials was actually used on any of the cartridges in question. However, the perception that the cartridges were tainted added to the larger suspicion that the British were trying to undermine Indian traditional society. For their part, the British did not pay enough attention to the growing level of sepoy discontent.

The rebellion

In late March 1857 a sepoy named Mangal Pandey attacked British officers at the military garrison in Barrackpore. He was arrested and then executed by the British in early April. Later in April sepoy troopers at Meerut refused the Enfield cartridges, and, as punishment, they were given long prison terms, fettered, and put in jail. This punishment incensed their comrades, who rose on May 10, shot their British officers, and marched to Delhi, where there were no European troops. There the local sepoy garrison joined the Meerut men, and by nightfall the aged pensionary Mughal emperor Bahādur Shah II had been nominally restored to power by a tumultuous soldiery. The seizure of Delhi provided a focus and set the pattern for the whole mutiny, which then spread throughout northern India. With the exception of the Mughal emperor and his sons and Nana Sahib, the adopted son of the deposed Maratha peshwa, none of the important Indian princes joined the mutineers.

From the time of the mutineers' seizure of Delhi, the British operations to suppress the mutiny were divided into three parts. First came the desperate struggles at Delhi, Kanpur, and Lucknow during the summer; then the operations around Lucknow in the winter of 1857-58, directed by Sir Colin Campbell; and finally the "mopping up" campaigns of Sir Hugh Rose in early 1858. Peace was officially declared on July 8, 1858.

A grim feature of the mutiny was the ferocity that accompanied it. The mutineers commonly shot their British officers on rising and were responsible for massacres at Delhi, Kanpur, and elsewhere. The murder of women and children enraged the British, but in fact some British officers began to take severe measures before they knew that any such murders had occurred. In the end the reprisals far outweighed the original excesses. Hundreds of sepoys were bayoneted or fired from cannons in a frenzy of British vengeance (though some British officers did protest the bloodshed).

Aftermath

The immediate result of the mutiny was a general housecleaning of the Indian administration. The East India Company was abolished in favour of the direct rule of India by the British government. In concrete terms, this did not mean much, but it introduced a more personal note into the government and removed the unimaginative commercialism that had lingered in the Court of Directors. The financial crisis caused by the mutiny led to a reorganization of the Indian administration's finances on a modern basis. The Indian army was also extensively reorganized.

Another significant result of the mutiny was the beginning of the policy of consultation with Indians. The Legislative Council of 1853 had contained only Europeans and had arrogantly behaved as if it were a full-fledged parliament. It was widely felt that a lack of communication with Indian opinion had helped to precipitate the crisis. Accordingly, the new council of 1861 was given an Indian-nominated element. The educational and public works programs (roads, railways, telegraphs, and irrigation) continued with little interruption; in fact, some were stimulated by the thought of their value for the transport of troops in a crisis. But insensitive British-imposed social measures that affected Hindu society came to an abrupt end.

Finally, there was the effect of the mutiny on the people of India themselves. Traditional society had made its protest against the incoming alien influences, and it had failed. The princes and other natural leaders had either held aloof from the mutiny or had proved, for the most part, incompetent. From this time all serious hope of a revival of the past or an exclusion of the West diminished. The traditional structure of Indian society began to break down and was eventually superseded by a Westernized class system, from which emerged a strong middle class with a heightened sense of Indian nationalism.

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Indian Mutiny | Causes, Summary, & Facts

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Indian Mutiny, also called Sepoy Mutiny, widespread but unsuccessful rebellion against British rule in India in 1857-58. Begun in Meerut by Indian troops (sepoys) in the service of the British East India Company, it spread to Delhi, Agra, Kanpur, and Lucknow. In India it is often called the First War of Independence and other similar names.

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The Salt March was a protest, led by Mohandas Gandhi, against British rule in India.

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The Salt March, which took place from March to April 1930 in India, was an act of civil disobedience led by Mohandas Gandhi to protest British rule in India. During the march, thousands of Indians followed Gandhi from his religious retreat near Ahmedabad to the Arabian Sea coast, a distance of some 240 miles. The nonviolent march and other, similar marches resulted in the arrest of nearly 60,000 people, including Gandhi himself. India finally was granted its independence from Great Britain in 1947.

Salt Tax

Britain's Salt Act of 1882 prohibited Indians from collecting or selling salt, a staple in their diet.

Indian citizens were forced to buy the vital mineral from their British rulers, who, in addition to exercising a monopoly over the manufacture and sale of salt, also charged a heavy salt tax. Although India's poor suffered most under the tax, all Indians required salt.

Satyagraha

After living for two decades in South Africa, where Mohandas Gandhi fought for the civil rights of Indians residing there, Gandhi returned to his native country in 1915 and soon began working for India's independence from Great Britain.

Defying the Salt Act, Gandhi reasoned, would be an ingeniously simple way for many Indians to break a British law nonviolently. Gandhi declared resistance to British salt policies to be the unifying theme for his new campaign of "satyagraha," or mass civil disobedience.
WATCH: Yohuru Williams on Mohandas Gandhi
Gandhi Begins Salt March

First, Gandhi sent a letter on March 2, 1930, to inform the Viceroy Lord Irwin that he and the others would begin breaking the Salt Laws in 10 days. Then, on March 12, 1930, Gandhi set out from his ashram, or religious retreat, at Sabermanti near Ahmedabad, with several dozen followers on a trek of some 240 miles to the coastal town of Dandi on the Arabian Sea.

There, Gandhi and his supporters were to defy British policy by making salt from seawater. All along the way, Gandhi addressed large crowds, and with each passing day an increasing number of people joined the salt satyagraha.

By the time they reached Dandi on April 5, Gandhi was at the head of a crowd of tens of thousands of protestors. He spoke and led prayers and early the next morning walked down to the sea to make salt.

He had planned to work the salt flats on the beach, encrusted with crystallized sea salt at every high tide, but the police had forestalled him by crushing the salt deposits into the mud. Undaunted, Gandhi reached down and picked up a small lump of natural salt out of the mud-and British law had been defied.

At Dandi, thousands more followed his lead, and in the coastal cities of Bombay (now called Mumbai) and Karachi, Indian nationalists led crowds of citizens in making salt.

Gandhi Arrested

Civil disobedience broke out all across India, soon involving millions of Indians, and British authorities arrested more than 60,000 people. Gandhi himself was arrested on May 5, but the satyagraha continued without him.

On May 21, the poet Sarojini Naidu led 2,500 marchers on the Dharasana Salt Works, some 150 miles north of Bombay. Several hundred British-led Indian policemen met them and viciously beat the peaceful demonstrators.

The incident, recorded by American journalist Webb Miller, prompted an international outcry against British policy in India.

Did you know? Gandhi's followers called him "Mahatma, " which in Sanskrit means "great soul."

Aftermath of the Salt March

In January 1931, Gandhi was released from prison. He later met with Lord Irwin, the viceroy of India, and agreed to call off the satyagraha in exchange for an equal negotiating role at a London conference on India's future.

In August of that year, Gandhi traveled to the conference as the sole representative of the nationalist Indian National Congress. The meeting was a disappointment, but British leaders had acknowledged Gandhi as a force they could not suppress or ignore.

India won its independence in August 1947. The 78-year-old Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu extremist less than six months later, on January 30, 1948.
READ MORE: When Gandhi's Salt March Rattled British Colonial Rule
Sources

Gandhi's Salt March to Dandi. Emory University: Postcolonial Studies.
The Salt March: Gandhi & his companions cut 348 kilometers to resist British occupation. Egypt Today.
How Did Gandhi Win? Lessons from the Salt March. Dissent Magazine.

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Salt March: Definition, Date & Gandhi | HISTORY

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The Salt March of 1930 was a bold act of nonviolent civil disobedience led by Mohandas Gandhi to protest and put an end to British rule and taxation in India.

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The Spanish-American War made it so that instead of being a colony of Spain, Puerto Rico was a territory of the US.

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After the Spanish-American War, Cuba gained independence.

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The Spanish-American War was an 1898 conflict between the United States and Spain that ended Spanish colonial rule in the Americas and resulted in U.S. acquisition of territories in the western Pacific and Latin America.

Causes: Remember the Maine!

The war originated in the Cuban struggle for independence from Spain, which began in February 1895.

Spain's brutally repressive measures to halt the rebellion were graphically portrayed for the U.S. public by several sensational newspapers engaging in yellow journalism, and American sympathy for the Cuban rebels rose.

Did you know? The term yellow journalism was coined in the 19th century to describe journalism that relies on eye-catching headlines, exaggeration and sensationalism to increase sales.

The growing popular demand for U.S. intervention became an insistent chorus after the still-unexplained sinking in Havana harbor of the American battleship USS Maine, which had been sent to protect U.S. citizens and property after anti-Spanish rioting in Havana.

War Is Declared

Spain announced an armistice on April 9 and speeded up its new program to grant Cuba limited powers of self-government.

But the U.S. Congress soon afterward issued resolutions that declared Cuba's right to independence, demanded the withdrawal of Spain's armed forces from the island, and authorized the use of force by President William McKinley to secure that withdrawal while renouncing any U.S. design for annexing Cuba.

Spain declared war on the United States on April 24, followed by a U.S. declaration of war on the 25th, which was made retroactive to April 21.

Spanish American War Begins

The ensuing war was pathetically one-sided, since Spain had readied neither its army nor its navy for a distant war with the formidable power of the United States.

In the early morning hours of May 1, 1898, Commodore George Dewey led a U.S. naval squadron into Manila Bay in the Philippines. He destroyed the anchored Spanish fleet in two hours before pausing the Battle of Manila Bay to order his crew a second breakfast. In total, fewer than 10 American seamen were lost, while Spanish losses were estimated at over 370. Manila itself was occupied by U.S. troops by August.

The elusive Spanish Caribbean fleet under Adm. Pascual Cervera was located in Santiago harbor in Cuba by U.S. reconnaissance. An army of regular troops and volunteers under Gen. William Shafter (including then-former assistant secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt and his 1st Volunteer Cavalry, the "Rough Riders") landed on the coast east of Santiago and slowly advanced on the city in an effort to force Cervera's fleet out of the harbor.

Cervera led his squadron out of Santiago on July 3 and tried to escape westward along the coast. In the ensuing battle all of his ships came under heavy fire from U.S. guns and were beached in a burning or sinking condition.

Santiago surrendered to Shafter on July 17, thus effectively ending the brief but momentous war.

Treaty of Paris

The Treaty of Paris ending the Spanish American War was signed on December 10, 1898. In it, Spain renounced all claim to Cuba, ceded Guam and Puerto Rico to the United States and transferred sovereignty over the Philippines to the United States for $20 million.

Philippine insurgents who had fought against Spanish rule soon turned their guns against their new occupiers. The Philippine-American War began in February of 1899 and lasted until 1902. Ten times more U.S. troops died suppressing revolts in the Philippines than in defeating Spain.

Impact of the Spanish-American War

The Spanish American War was an important turning point in the history of both antagonists. Spain's defeat decisively turned the nation's attention away from its overseas colonial adventures and inward upon its domestic needs, a process that led to both a cultural and a literary renaissance and two decades of much-needed economic development in Spain.

The victorious United States, on the other hand, emerged from the war a world power with far-flung overseas possessions and a new stake in international politics that would soon lead it to play a determining role in the affairs of Europe and the rest of the globe.

Fact Check

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Spanish-American War: Causes, Battles & Timeline | HISTORY

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The Spanish-American War was an 1898 conflict between the United States and Spain that ended Spanish colonial rule in the Americas.

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On October 3rd, 1935, Italy invaded Ethiopia from their colony in Somalia.

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Italo-Ethiopian War, (1935-36), an armed conflict that resulted in Ethiopia's subjection to Italian rule. Often seen as one of the episodes that prepared the way for World War II, the war demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations when League decisions were not supported by the great powers.

Ethiopia (Abyssinia), which Italy had unsuccessfully tried to conquer in the 1890s, was in 1934 one of the few independent states in a European-dominated Africa. A border incident between Ethiopia and Italian Somaliland that December gave Benito Mussolini an excuse to intervene. Rejecting all arbitration offers, the Italians invaded Ethiopia on October 3, 1935.

Under Generals Rodolfo Graziani and Pietro Badoglio, the invading forces steadily pushed back the ill-armed and poorly trained Ethiopian army, winning a major victory near Lake Ascianghi (Ashangi) on April 9, 1936, and taking the capital, Addis Ababa, on May 5. The nation's leader, Emperor Haile Selassie, went into exile. In Rome, Mussolini proclaimed Italy's king Victor Emmanuel III emperor of Ethiopia and appointed Badoglio to rule as viceroy.

In response to Ethiopian appeals, the League of Nations condemned the Italian invasion in 1935 and voted to impose economic sanctions on the aggressor. The sanctions remained ineffective because of general lack of support. Although Mussolini's aggression was viewed with disfavour by the British, who had a stake in East Africa, the other major powers had no real interest in opposing him. The war, by giving substance to Italian imperialist claims, contributed to international tensions between the fascist states and the Western democracies. It also served as a rallying point, especially after World War II, for developing African nationalist movements.

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Italo-Ethiopian War | Causes, Summary, & Facts

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Italo-Ethiopian War, an armed conflict in 1935-36 that resulted in Ethiopia's subjection to Italian rule. Often seen as one of the episodes that prepared the way for World War II, the war demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations when League decisions were not supported by the great powers.

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A small part of ancient Ethiopia was colonized by Italy in the 1930s.

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South Africa was colonized by The Netherlands from 1652-1795 and then 1803-1806. It was colonized by Great Britain from 1795-1803 and then 1806-1961.

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The Congo was colonized by Belgium in 1885.

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Egypt was colonized by Great Britain in 1882.

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Vietnam was part of a French colony called French Indochina from 1877 - 1954.

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Guam was colonized by Spain in 1668.
It was the colonized by the US in 1898.

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Hawaii was colonized by the US in 1893.

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New Zealand was colonized by Great Britain in 1840.

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The Philippines were colonized by Spain in 1521.

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India was colonized by Great Britain in 1858.

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Mexico was colonized by Spain in 1521.

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Puerto Rico was colonized by Spain in 1508.
PR was then colonized by the US in 1898.

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Panama was colonized by Spain in 1492.

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Cuba was a colony.
It was colonized by Spain in 1511.