History of the Panama Canal
During World War II, the canal proved a vital part of the U.S. military strategy, allowing ships to transfer easily between the Atlantic and Pacific. Politically, the Canal remained a territory of the United States until 1977, when the Torrijos–Carter Treaties began the process of transferring territorial control of the Panama Canal Zone to Panama, a process completed on 31 December 1999.
History of Panama
According to the treaty, the US was to pay $40,000,000 to the stockholders of the French company that had tried to build the canal across Panama. Colombia's rejection of the treaty confronted these French investors with the prospect of losing everything. At this point, the French company's chief lobbyist (and a major stockholder), Philippe Bunau-Varilla went into action. Justly confident that the Roosevelt administration would support his initiative, he met with Manuel Amador, the leader of the Panamanian Independence movement, in a suite in the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York where he wrote him a $100,000 check to fund a renewed Panamanian revolt. In return, Bunau-Varilla would become Panama's representative in Washington.