The "Taking" of the Panama Canal Zone: Myth and Reality

Abstract

On the morning of 23 March 1911, a crowd of more than 8,000 persons welcomed ex-President Theodore Roosevelt in the Hearst Greek Theatre at the campus of the University of California. Roosevelt's untitled address ran approximately 4,500 words and was one of the highlights of the festivities commemorating the university's 51st annual Charter Day. He eagerly developed a theme in which he stressed that there should be an intense public commitment to the celebrated achievements in the applied sciences as well as to those in the American arts. Throughout his speech, Roosevelt sang the praises of higher education, endorsed the westward course of civilization, and prematurely proclaimed the uncompleted Panama Canal the greatest engineering triumph in history. Thereupon followed his famous boast: “I took the Canal Zone.” The variety of adjectives and adverbs that have been used to characterize the declaration—“frank,” “unfortunate,” “reckless,” “truthfull,” “tactless,” “irresponsible,” “extravagant”—indicate not only how synonymous this widely quoted phrase and the equally vaunted “Big Stick” have become but also how convenient a substitute it provides for summarizing (however imperfectly) the whole of Roosevelt's extensive writings on this admittedly controversial subject. In fact, at least two students of Roosevelt's foreign policies have turned the boast into titles, even though the direct quotation appears nowhere in the course of their narrative.1