Mock ExamDBQ WoW Text - Withrow 2025
Question 1
Evaluate the extent to which nationalism was the chief motivation for supporting and opposing the construction of the Suez and Panama canals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Document 1 A canal at Suez will show that Egypt can still be a potent force in world affairs, and can add a brilliant page to the history of world civilization. The names of the Egyptian pharaohs who built the pyramids will be ignored... The name of the ruler who opens a grand canal through Egypt will be blessed century after century for securing the safe passage to Mecca and Medina for the faithful and place Egypt at the center of world trade between Europe, India and China.
Source: Ferdinand de Lesseps, chief developer of the Suez Canal project for France, to Muhammad Said Pasha, leader of Egypt, appointed by the Ottoman Empire. Conversation in front of witnesses, Libyan desert, 1854.
Document 2 For the last fifteen years Her Majesty's Government has used all its influence with the Ottoman Sultan and the Egyptian leaders to prevent this French scheme of [digging a canal] from being carried out. It is impractical, immensely expensive and unprofitable.
Even if it could be done, it would lead to a power shift between the Ottomans and Egypt that would damage British political and commercial interests.
Source: Lord Palmerston, prime minister of Great Britain, speech in Parliament, 1857.
Document 3 I oppose the use of abusive and exploitative corvée la system of government-sanctioned forced labor] imposed on sixty thousand of my country men' to build the canal. This system must be abolished because it is abusive and exploitive. It robs my people of their rights as human beings. However, I also believe this labor system is still essential for the grand work of building the canal and I pledge to push the project to its completion.
Source: Ismail Pasha, newly appointed leader of Egypt chosen by the Ottoman Empire, letter to European diplomats, 1863.
Document 4 All the objections to building a canal through the Americas have been submitted by scientific authorities, but their weight is nothing compared with the conviction that the canal project is so deeply rooted in the American nation, conceived by Americans, sustained by Americans, and if constructed, operated by Americans according to American ideas and American needs. In one word, it is a national enterprise.
Source: New York Herald newspaper editorial, 1902.
Document 5 Source: French newspaper cartoon depicting the completion of the Suez Canal, ca. 1870. De Lesseps is depicted as the biblical figure Samson, dividing Egypt from the rest of Africa.
Document 6 You are the United States, you are the future invader of the native America that has Indian blood.... You think that wherever you shoot, you hit the future. No! ... Be careful. Viva Spanish America! There are a thousand cubs loosed from the Spanish lion. Roosevelt— the rifleman and hunter— you would have to be God Himself to manage to grab us in your iron claws. And although you count on everything, you lack one thing: God!
Source: Ruben Dario, Nicaraguan poet, poem titled, "To Roosevelt," 1904.
Source: Dr. William Gorgas, U.S. Army colonel and chief medical officer at the Panama Canal construction site. Supply request to the U.S. government, 1904. The cost was $1,000,000.
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