Prize Possession: The United States and the Panama Canal. 1903–1979 by John Major (review)

180 Canadian Review of Amerimn Studies fantasy. We relinquish those fantasies with reluctance. They fully engage the attention of an urbanized readership whose wildest moment may come in a threatened fist fight with a heavy-thumbed butcher. They engage us still, glutted as we are with nightly spectacles of crazed violence, historical and imaginative. Perhaps, in 1995, we understand these feudal killings all too well. Modernity, they tell us, is not a seamless garment. Barbarism never lacks a historical explanation. Dennis Duffy University of Toronto John Major. Prize Possession: The United States and the Panama Canal. 1903-1979. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. John Major has written a comprehensive, detailed analysis of U.S.-Panamanian relations from the initial takeover of the Canal Zone in 1903 to implementation of the Carter-Torrijos Treaties in 1979. Others have wntten about part of the story, but none has covered as many years with such exhaustive research. In addition to most of the relevant archival materials located in or near Washington, D. C., Major has consulted a wide range of secondary materials, including books and collections by such Panamanians as diplomat Ricardo Alfaro and dissident Thelma King. He even consulted my own 1969 thesis from the University of Toronto. Presidential Directives from Truman to Clinton, published by the National Security Archive, did not appear until 1994, too late for this book, but Major is nevertheless very well informed. Major takes a liberal approach. Critical of George Bush's Operation Just Cause against Manuel Noriega (2), he accuses the administration of Theodore Roosevelt of violating the 1846 Treaty of Bogota (53) and says that the 1903 Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty reduced Panama to "little more than vassalage" (50). Most academics would agree. However, Major challenges the conventional wisdom of such illustrious predecessors as William McCain, Walter LaFeber, and Charles Ameringer with evidence that they exaggerated the contribution of Philippe Bunau-Varilla to the 1903 treaty (46). He also implies that the U. S. government had good reason to fear that Arnulfo Book Reviews 181 Arias, president of Panama in 1940-41, was sympathetic to the Axis powers and not merely a Panamanian nationalist (265), and he does not reprimand those American officials who helped end the Arias presidency. Then, like other liberals, Major supports the Carter-Torrijos Treaties, because (a) they corrected an injustice; (b) they did little harm to the United States as by that time the Panama Canal had become little more than a white elephant. Major makes some highly interesting analogies. Theodore Roosevelt's role as midwife in the birth of Panama was comparable to that of Anthony Eden in orchestrating the 1956 invasion of Egypt, suggests Major (41). Theodore Roosevelt's editing of documents and suppression of evidence over the U. S. government's role in the creation of Panama was comparable to Richard Nixon's production of the Watergate transcripts and suppression of other evidence (58-59). Readers and researchers will find Major's book easy to use, despite a less than complete index. There are lists of Canal administrators, garrison commanders, and heads of U. S. diplomatic missions in Panama City. Footnotes at the bottom of each page are much more convenient than the now popular endnotes. There is a list of acronyms, especially helpful as "ICC" refers to the Isthmian Canal Commissions of 1904-14, not the better known International Control Commission on Vietnam. Given the extensive detail on Panamanian politics, however, a second edition should include a list of Panamanian presidents and foreign ministers. Major has written extensively on a wide range of topics: relations between the Canal Zone and Washington; bilateral U. S.-Panamanian relations; labour problems and race relations in the Canal Zone; defence and espionage; morality problems, usually related to booze and women in those parts of Panama immediately adjacent to the Canal Zone. It is on this subject that Major's wit shines most brightly. At one point, he reports, President Theodore Roosevelt thought the solution might lie in a military intervention. (The Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty allowed U. S. intervention to maintain standards of health if the Panamanians failed to do what they should.) Major comments: "Laying drains, piping in clean...