Title: History of Panama
Content: oceans, and by 1534, the Chagres River was dredged, facilitating traffic for two-thirds of the way. From 1882, Ferdinand de Lesseps started work on a canal. By 1889, with engineering challenges caused by frequent landslides, slippage of equipment and mud, plus disease, the effort failed in bankruptcy. A new company was formed in 1894 to recoup some of the losses of the original canal company. US President Theodore Roosevelt convinced US Congress to take on the abandoned works in 1902, while Colombia was in the midst of the Thousand Days' War. During the war, there were at least three attempts

Title: Panama Canal Zone
Content: of the Erie Canal in the United States and the collapse of the Spanish Empire in Latin America led to a surge of American interest in building an interoceanic canal. Beginning in 1826, US officials began negotiations with Gran Colombia (present-day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Panama), hoping to gain a concession for the building of a canal. Jealous of their newly obtained independence and fearing that they would be dominated by an American presence, the president Simón Bolívar and New Granadan officials declined American offers. The new nation was politically unstable, and Panama rebelled several times during the 19th century.

Title: Panama Canal
Content: was abandoned in April 1700. Numerous canals were built in other countries in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The success of the Erie Canal in the United States in the 1820s and the collapse of the Spanish Empire in Latin America led to a surge of American interest in building an inter-oceanic canal. Beginning in 1826, US officials began negotiations with Gran Colombia (present-day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panama), hoping to gain a concession for the building of a canal. Jealous of their newly obtained independence and fearing that they would be dominated by an American presence, the

Title: Philippe Bunau-Varilla
Content: New Panama Canal Company soon abandoned efforts to build the canal. It sold the land in Panama to the United States, in hopes that the company would not fail entirely. U.S. President Grover Cleveland, an anti-imperialist, avoided the canal issue. When the more supportive Theodore Roosevelt became president (succeeding William McKinley), canal planning resumed in the United States. Bunau-Varilla vociferously promoted construction of the canal. With aid from the New Panama Canal Company's New York attorney, William Nelson Cromwell, he persuaded the government to select Panama as the canal site, as opposed to the popular alternative, Nicaragua. When opponents voiced

Title: History of Panama (1821–1903)
Content: from Colombia's annuity and benefited from transient trade and some inflow of capital. Throughout the nineteenth century, governments and private investors in the United States, Britain, and France intermittently displayed interest in building a canal across the Western Hemisphere. Several sites were considered, but from the start the ones in Nicaragua and Panama received the most serious attention. President Andrew Jackson sent Charles A. Biddle as his emissary in the 1830s to investigate both routes, but the project was aborted when Biddle abandoned his government mission and negotiated instead with Colombian capitalists for a private concession. Nevertheless, Colombia continued to

Question: Which country first tried unsuccessfully to build the Panama Canal?
Answer: France