Panama Canal Imperialism Analysis

USA - Panama Canal Imperialism In president Rosevelt's plan to build the Panama Canal he utilizes the idea that Americans knew they needed this to move ships from east to west quickly; the US for the first time was going to be able to gain control of both oceans. Theodore Roosevelt became the nation's youngest president. Roosevelt assumed the office with the same vigor with which he charged up Kettle Hill. A long believer in Captain Mahan's theory of sea power, Roosevelt began to revitalize the navy. Now that America's empire stretched from the Caribbean across the Pacific, the old idea of a canal between the two oceans took on new urgency. Mahan had predicted that "the canal will become a strategic center of the most vital importance,"