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Mallarino-Bidlack Treaty
The Mallarino-Bidlack Treaty (aloso known as the Bidlack Treaty and Treaty of New Granada) was a treaty signed between New Granada (today Colombia and Panama) and the United States, on December 12, 1846. U.S. minister Benjamin Alden Bidlack negotiated the pact with New Granada's commissioner Manuel Maria Mallarino.
Officially, it was entitled Tratado de Paz, Amistad, Navegacion y Comercio , and was meant to represent an agreement of mutual cooperation. It granted the U.S. significant transit rights over the Panamanian isthmus, as well as military powers to suppress social conflicts and independence struggles targeted against Colombia. Under the Bidlack-Mallarino Treaty, the U.S. intervened militarily many times on the isthmus, usually against civilians, peasant guerrillas, or Liberal Party independence struggles. After the beginning of the California Gold Rush of 1848, the U.S. spent seven years constructing a trans-isthmian Panama Railway. The end result of the treaty, however, was to give the United States a legal opening in politically and economically influencing the Panama isthmus, which was part of New Granada at the time, but was later to become the independent country of Panama in accordance with the wishes of the United States. In 1903, however, the United States failed to gain access to a strip on the isthmus for the construction of a canal, and reversed its position on Panamanian secession from the Republic of Colombia.
See also
Panama Canal
Latin America United States relations
List of United States treaties
Further reading
Bevans, Charles I. (ed.), Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States of America 17761949, vol. 6 (1971), pp. 865881.
Findling, John E., Dictionary of American Diplomatic History, 2d ed. (1989).
McCullough, David, The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 18701914, Simon & Schuster New York 1977 Octavo, pp. 698, ISBN 0-671-22563-4, ISBN 0-671-24409-4 (Pbk.)
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Mallarino-Bidlack Treaty
