His efforts to get the French government to guarantee his bonds were blocked by the United States, on the grounds that such action would lead to government control in violation of the Monroe Doctrine.
They actually said out loud that the Monroe Doctrine was justification for interfering with Colombian and French efforts to build the canal.
I’m going of half forgotten memories here but I think Panama was part of Colombia until the US became the first to recognise it as an independent nation.
Basic timeline:
France tried to build a canal, failed. US tried to step in, Colombia refused their approach so the US supported the local industry led independence movement in return for canal rights. They then prevented Colombia from putting down the ensuing uprising/coup, recognised Panamanian ‘independence’ and concluded the deal for the canal.
Yes, part of Gran Colombia from 1821-1903.
What was the USA doing during the period right before 1903? Really starting with the modern imperialism. Took Cuba and The Philippines in the Spanish American War. Sending the Marines all over Latin America and the Caribbean. And this is not too long after taking more than half of Mexico.
The fact that some companies survived doesn’t really negate the fact that the German economy (and much of the rest of Europe) was devastated by WWII. Not sure how that’s debatable.
WWII was great for the American economy in a lot of ways, but we were in an anomalous situation that doesn’t apply to most conflicts. We spent most of the war selling arms to Europe and American cities/factories weren’t getting carpet bombed.
Post-war Western Europe was really a demonstration that an industrial base consists of a lot more than just buildings. West German GDP was higher than the UK’s by 1955.
I agree but I guess I’m making a different point because we were talking about “military contractors” and probably shouldn’t have used the word “industry” in that context. The broader economy was destroyed but the companies survived. Many of the people that were in power survived, and many of those were welcomed by the west. As always, the burden of a war started by elites was carried by regular people.
And yes, the destruction of Europe and the Soviet Union during WWII and the US’s role during that war (and position afterwards) is way more responsible for the US’s rise as the international power of modern times than any sort of American exceptionalism. I think that’s a little separate but is an important point, especially in the time of Make America Great Again.
Anything happen in this war today or is it history like this discussion?
As war is good for the entire economy, posting in the wrong threads is good for the mod economy.
I think the synthesis here is that “War somewhere else is good for business.”
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500 years so far.
In early 1850, high tensions with Latter-day Saint pioneers led Brigham Young to approve an order to kill any Native people who put up a fight. There’s now a call to acknowledge and rescind that order.
The order is still in effect.
You have to really cram a lot of square pegs into round holes to make the claim that war is good for business. At best it’s good for a narrow subset of defense industries that aren’t in the line of fire. Not sure if there has been a major modern war that turned out great for the belligerents, aside from maybe the US in WWI/WWII.
It goes beyond that, but yes I think this is the main point. For the people that lobby for increased defense spending, and the people in power that are subservient to that class, war is absolutely good for business. For them, the individuals, they experience all of the financial benefit and ~zero cost or risk of harm.
In that sense, almost all major wars we’ve been involved in have been successes. Iraq, an abominable destruction of a country for no reason, built on lies, destroying millions of lives, was a monumental success for the defense industry.
I think WWII was good for business because we shifted the industrialization and manufacturing we created after the war. Modern war is just us destroying our currency.
Maybe that’s one effect, but all of our cold war conflicts (and our opposition to communism more generally) happened because we could not stomach the possibility of a foreign country maintaining ownership of their resources in a way that was not exploitable by American corporations. And when you’ve got an endless lobby of defense contractors to make happy, might as well use the military to do it.
Ho Chi Minh’s plan included confiscation of the plantations. After WW2 he sought help for independence from the United Nations. At that point, the USA should not only have supported Ho Chi Minh and the return of plantations and large Vietnamese assets held by foreign powers and companies, it should have supported reparations.
Interrupting the harmonious peace enjoyed before European conquest.
As did the tribes, for centuries, before European arrival. They were just technologically limited or they would have made violence go brrrr just like the Spaniards.
That’s the problem, when one already knows everything and the world is going to end no matter what (and fast!), learning is just a waste of time.
Not really. The colonists were always interested in acquiring land because they were more adept at developing it than anyone else. This is mostly why the Tribes allied with the British Empire (!) during the Revolutionary War.