William Crawford Gorgas and the Panama Canal

2021 ◽  
pp. 198-212
Author(s):  
Robert N. Wiedenmann ◽  
J. Ray Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Yellow Fever ◽  
Panama Canal ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Theodore Roosevelt ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
Control Plan ◽  
Breeding Sites ◽  
Successful Strategy ◽  
The Us ◽  
Mosquito Breeding

This chapter relates how yellow fever continued to cause casualties during the US occupation after the Spanish-American War ended and how Major William Crawford Gorgas created a successful strategy to eliminate the disease from Cuba by attacking mosquito breeding sites. It goes on to tell the story of the plan to link the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, proposed earlier that century, with the Panama Railroad transporting military goods and soldiers, plus those seeking gold in California. A canal was proposed, but the first, French effort to build it cost hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of workers’ lives lost before capitulating to yellow fever in 1889. Subsequent US construction, begun in 1904, was soon threatened by disease. When Colonel Gorgas brought his yellow fever control plan to Panama he faced criticism from his superiors but gained the support of President Theodore Roosevelt. The chapter relates how his plan, though seemingly improbable, worked, defeating yellow fever, saving countless lives, and allowing the completion of the canal.

The Ambivalences of Power: Launching the American Journal of International Law in an Era of Empire and Globalization

2007 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 325-358 ◽  
Author(s):  
CARL LANDAUER
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Peace Movement ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Theodore Roosevelt ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Us ◽  
International Identity ◽  
American Society ◽  
Secretary Of War

This article uses the first issue of the American Journal of International Law, one hundred years after its creation in 1907, to analyse the state of American international legal thought following the acquisition of Pacific and Caribbean island territories in the Spanish–American War and the creation of a new international identity. Traditionally, the American Society of International Law (of which the journal was the organ) has been placed in the context of the US peace movement. However, both the society and the journal were led by individuals occupying major positions in the administration of Theodore Roosevelt and earlier administrations, including the sitting and a former secretary of war. The society and its journal were vehicles of the US foreign policy establishment. Despite a mixture of imperialists and anti-imperialists, a cultural coherence is discernable in the journal's pages. In essence, the journal can be placed within what the article calls the genteel tradition of US international law, involving an effort at educating the public away from over-excitement, adopting science in the newly professionalized administrative state, and advocating an arbitrational model of legal ordering to promote international peace.

The Story of Defeat Havana

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Czyżewska
Keyword(s):  
Sugar Cane ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Christopher Columbus ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The Us ◽  
African Slaves ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The 19Th Century

Pleasure Island - Cuba is an intriguing island which, since the day it was discovered by Christopher Columbus, has been fighting for independence and freedom and has never quite succeeded in achieving this aim to this day. Almost all of the native Cubans whom Columbus would have encountered in 1492 were either killed by Spanish colonialists or passed away infected with European diseases such as measles and smallpox, to which their bodies were not immune. People who today call themselves Cuban are, in most cases, decedents of Hispanic colonialists or of African slaves brought across the Atlantic on Spanish galleons to cultivate sugar cane farms. A series of rebellions throughout the 19th century failed to end the Spanish rule. However, in 1898 the Spanish – American War resulted in Spain withdrawing from the island and, following three-and-a-half years of subsequent US military rule, Cuba gained formal independence in 1902. The US helped to revive the ravaged island’s infrastructure and economy, though not without considerable self-interest (Perur, 2015). For many decades the Cuban economy depended heavily on sugar cane which was exported first to Spain and later to the US. Together with the socio-cultural changes of the twentieth century, another industry started playing a key role; this was tourism. Thanks to a relaxed approach to alcohol, gambling and other leisure pursuits, Cuba turned into a convenient backyard playground for US tourists, especially during the prohibition of the 1920s, carrying this reputation well into the 1950s.

The Caribbean, Carlos Finlay, Walter Reed, and Serendipity

2021 ◽  
pp. 182-197
Author(s):  
Robert N. Wiedenmann ◽  
J. Ray Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Aedes Aegypti ◽  
Yellow Fever ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
Spanish Colonies ◽  
Series Of Experiments ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Post War

This chapter reviews the role of expanding sugarcane plantations throughout the Caribbean in the movement of slaves, mosquitoes and disease, as world empires jockeyed for dominance in world sugar markets. It relates how increased sugarcane production and exports to Europe led to increased importation of slaves to work the fields. As the African embarkation point of slaves moved north to the Slave Coast, yellow fever and the mosquito Aedes aegypti came into play, though when England banned slaveholding, sugar production shifted to the Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico and Cuba. The brief Spanish-American War of 1898, over control of Cuba, cemented the fame of Colonel Theodore Roosevelt but resulted in more deaths from yellow fever than combat, with the outbreak continuing during the post-war occupation of Cuba. Serendipity played a significant role in the subsequent discovery of the cause of the disease, connecting the Yellow Fever Commission, led by Major Walter Reed, with Cuban physician, Dr. Carlos Finlay, whose early experiments pointed to mosquitos and others while a series of experiments by Reed's team showed Aedes aegypti was the vector.

An American Tropical Laboratory

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Raby
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Panama Canal ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
World War ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
Living Things ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Colonial Science

During the lead-up to the Spanish-American War, U.S. botanists looked with envy at the progress of European scientists, who had access to tropical colonies. They pushed for the creation of their own “American tropical laboratory.” Chapter 1 traces the origins of the U.S. tropical laboratory movement; the resulting rental of the station at Cinchona, Jamaica; and the first decade of research there by members of the founding generation of U.S. ecologists. This history reveals their range of motivations for engaging in tropical research, from the 1890s through the outbreak of World War I and the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914. The study of tropical organisms—with their diversity of forms and adaptations so foreign to those familiar with temperate flora and fauna—seemed to offer a path to a truly general understanding of living things. At the same time, U.S. botanists saw tropical research as the key to a place on the international scientific stage. U.S. botanists did not wait for state­sponsored colonial science. Driven by a distinct set of intellectual, cultural, and professional concerns, they were ready to filibuster for science to acquire an outpost for research in the Caribbean.

Prohibition against American Imperialism

2021 ◽  
pp. 418-449
Author(s):  
Mark Lawrence Schrad
Keyword(s):  
The Philippines ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
American Imperialism ◽  
Woman's Christian Temperance Union ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Government ◽  
William Jennings Bryan ◽  
Community Protection ◽  
The Relationship

As temperance has largely been synonymous with anti-imperialism the world over, Chapter 15 examines it during America’s imperial era: specifically the Spanish-American War and the conquest of the Philippines. It begins by charting the relationship between Christian anarchist Leo Tolstoy and William Jennings Bryan, who became America’s most outspoken foe of both American imperialism and the exploitative liquor traffic. The anti-canteen movement arose in response to the increasing drunkenness and exploitation of American soldiers—as well as native Cuban and Filipino populations—by the liquor traffic backed by the US military. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the emerging Anti-Saloon League helped secure an anti-canteen law in 1901, effectively getting the US government to restrain its own predatory excesses. The chapter concludes with Bryan’s evangelical, social gospel progressivism, highlighting the shared community protection logic of prohibitionism and anti-imperialism.

scholarly journals Polacy w armii amerykańskiej podczas konfliktu zbrojnego na Kubie w 1898 r. (szkic problemu)

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 218-237
Author(s):  
Daniel Kiper
Keyword(s):  
Pastoral Care ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
Us Army ◽  
Current State ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Subject ◽  
State Of Research

The article deals with the problems associated with Polish immigrants who served in the US Army during the armed conflict in Cuba in 1898. Due to the current state of research, we can only roughly estimate the number of Poles involved in the Spanish-American war. A variety of articles concerning the subject appeared in the contemporary Polish press, based on which attempts were made to outline the general circumstances behind Polish recruitment into the US Army as well as other issues related to, inter alia, military careers, military pastoral care and collective memory of the war.

Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart White
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
Guerrilla War ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Us ◽  
Santiago De Cuba

The Spanish-American War is best understood as a series of linked conflicts. Those conflicts punctuated Madrid’s decline to a third-rank European state and marked the United States’ transition from a regional to an imperial power. The central conflict was a brief conventional war fought in the Caribbean and the Pacific between Madrid and Washington. Those hostilities were preceded and followed by protracted and costly guerrilla wars in Cuba and the Philippines. The Spanish-American War was the consequence of the protracted stalemate in the Spanish-Cuban War. The economic and humanitarian distress which accompanied the fighting made it increasingly difficult for the United States to remain neutral until a series of Spanish missteps and bad fortune in early 1898 hastened the American entry to the war. The US Navy quickly moved to eliminate or blockade the strongest Spanish squadrons in the Philippines and Cuba; Spain’s inability to contest American control of the sea in either theater was decisive and permitted successful American attacks on outnumbered Spanish garrisons in Santiago de Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Manila. The transfer of the Philippines, along with Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Guam, to the United States in the Treaty of Paris confirmed American imperialist appetites for the Filipino nationalists, led by Emilio Aguinaldo, and contributed to tensions between the Filipino and American armies around and in Manila. Fighting broke out in February 1899, but the Filipino conventional forces were soon driven back from Manila and were utterly defeated by the end of the year. The Filipino forces that evaded capture re-emerged as guerrillas in early 1900, and for the next two and a half years the United States waged an increasingly severe anti-guerrilla war against Filipino irregulars. Despite Aguinaldo’s capture in early 1901, fighting continued in a handful of provinces until the spring of 1902, when the last organized resistance to American governance ended in Samar and Batangas provinces.

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