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THE TRANS-ISTHMIAN CANAL:

A STUDY IN AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC HISTORY

(1825-1904)

BY

CHARLES HENRY HUBERICH, D. C. L.,

Adjunct Professor of Political Science and Law in the University of Texas

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THE TRANS-ISTHMIAN CANAL:

A STUDY IN AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC HISTORY (1825-1904).1

CHARLES HENRY HUBERICH, D. C. L.,

Adjunct Professor of Political Science and Law, The University of Texas.

The projected canal across the isthmus joining the two Americas, which has interested the governments of Europe since the discovery of the American continent, played no rôle in the foreign policy of the United States until after the Spanish-American colonies had achieved their independence. In 1825, Señor Antonio José Canaz, the representative of the Central American Republic at Washington, proposed to the United States that the two governments coöperate in the construction of the Nicaragua canal. Señor Canaz was assured of "the deep interest which is taken by the government of the United States in the execution of an undertaking which is so highly calculated to diffuse an extensive influence on the affair of mankind." In addition, Mr. Clay, then secretary of state, instructed the American chargé d'affaires in Central America to collect all data relative to the cost and practicability of the Nicaragua route. The subject aroused considerable interest in commercial circles, and a contract was actually entered into between the Central American Republic and some New York capitalists for the construction of the canal.2

The canal project was one of the topics to be discussed at the Panama congress in 1826. In the instructions to the American delegates to that congress the policy of the United States in reference to the canal is announced for the first time. "If the work should ever be executed," writes Secretary Clay, "so as to admit of the passage of sea vessels from ocean to ocean, the benefit of it ought not to be exclusively appropriated to any one nation, but

1The greater part of this article was published by the writer early in 1903, in the Revue du droit public et de la science politique, Vol. XIX, pp. 193-213. It was subsequently revised and published in the University of Texas Record, Vol. V, pp. 247-275, and in the Bulletins of the University of Texas, Humanistic Series, No. 1.

2 Keasbey, The Nicaragua Canal and the Monroe Doctrine, p. 143.

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