The Watermelon War

hi on the history I have a degree in history and I love history and if you love history too this is the channel for you the human penchant for violence is fairly obvious when you understand that there are actual historical events called the War of the bucket and the War of the straight dog that were actually wars that were precipitated by a fight over a bucket and a fight over a stray dog and when you look in the annals of war started for trivial things you really do have to consider the 1856 watermelon war and even though war is really not an appropriate title it was really more of a riot the fact that a riot that size could be spurred over a five cent piece of watermelon really gives a good illustration of how small things can precipitate large events and not only that but the 1856 watermelon war is a great illustration of an important piece of the history of American intervention in Central and South America in the 19th century and it deserves to be remembered to understand the watermelon war you have to start by understanding the importance of the Isthmus of Panama to American history America acquired the territory of Alta California from Mexico in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo after the end of the Mexican war in 1848 and that seemed to fulfill America's dreams of manifest destiny we were truly a bicoastal nation but there was a problem and that is that there was no simple way to get from the population centers on the east coast to the new territories on the west coast and the best way to do that was not actually to try to cross the vast American Center which was still wild and had very little route of transportation but instead to take a steamer from the east coast to Panama crossed Panama at its narrowest point and then take another steamer from Panama to California and thus the Isthmus of Panama which was at the time part of the country of New Granada was strategically and economically important to the United States because it saved the freight and passengers from having to take the difficult and dangerous route all the way around South America to get to California and to secure that interest in 1846 the United States signed a treaty with New Granada which was called the Bidlack Moreno treaty New Granada which included at the time both the modern-day countries of Colombia and Panama interest in signing this treaty was to protect their claims to the area that's called Panama it was a restive little republic there were frequent rebellions and the government was afraid that some European power would realize the economic importance of the territory of Panama and so it would involve themselves in one of these rebellions in order to take Panama away US interests were represented by the US Minister to Panama man named Benjamin Bidlack and essentially what the treaty did is it granted America transit rights across the Isthmus and in exchange we recognize new Grenada's claim to the territory of Panama and we promise to use US military force to guarantee the neutrality of the Isthmus of Panama what this was really intending to do was to use the threat of US military force to prevent European powers from involving themselves in the internal affairs of New Granada but in practice what it ended up doing was giving the United States and excuse to use the threat of US military force to involve ourselves in the internal affairs of New Granada and in 1847 Congress first voted to subsidize a mail steamer route which would carry u.s. mail from the east coast to the Atlantic coast of Panama and pick up that mail on the Pacific coast with a different steamer and carry that to San Francisco but a crossing across Panama at the time was not exactly easy the Panamanian rainforest receives an average of a hundred 30 inches of rain a year and so traveling across the Isthmus of Panama even at its narrowest point included a dangerous and risky ride in a navy of dugout canoe up the unpredictable chakra's River and then a long ride on a mule train through disease-infested jungles often on washed out roads and the entire path was frequented by bandits who would rob the travelers and this tear off into the rain forest the obvious answer was to build a railroad across Panama and as early as the 1820s engineering studies were done to see if that was possible and it really seemed like it wasn't that terrain jungles and forests and mountains was simply not conducive to trying to build railways but the economic potential was so vast that an American company between 18-49 and 1855 managed to build the transoceanic Panama railway at the at the time astronomical cost of three million dollars it was a marvel of engineering to build across all that terrain but it was extremely dangerous and it was fraught with disease and as many as 10,000 workers died billing the Panama railway in those bandits we talked about who were called the dairy any plagued the construction of the railway they were constantly robbing the railway workers and so finally the railway company hired a former Texas Rangers name was Randolph Runnels and with the tacit approval of both the New Granada and the American government he took a bunch of railway agents and he tracked down captured and publicly hung the bandits and thus he earned the terrifying nickname el Verdugo the hangman with the new railway you could cross Panama by train in just about five hours and on April 15th 1856 a group of about a thousand passengers most of them Americans were taking that route they were dropped off on the Atlantic coast by the mail steamer USS Illinois and they were going to take the train across to the Pacific coast where they would be picked up by the mail steamer John L Stevens but trouble started at the very beginning because when they got off the boat in Panama apparently the passengers bought copious amounts of alcohol and a five hour train ride later they were all well and niibori ated and then when they got to Panama City they had a wait see Panama City wasn't a deepwater port and the ships could not anchor in Panama City they had to anchor out at islands in the bay and he had to take a ferry across to those islands but the ferry could only operate at high tide so the train arrived around 7:00 but the passengers who were all drunk in Panama City could not their ferry until around 11:00 the trouble was all started by a drunk American named Jack Oliver Oliver took a slice of watermelon from a street vendor and refused to pay the price of five cents the vendor grew angry and eventually drew a knife on Oliver and so Oliver drew a revolver and someone in the crowd tried to tackle Oliver to take away his revolver and it went off and struck someone else in the crowd and that sparked a riot where essentially the Native Panamanians ran all over town destroying foreign businesses and attacking anyone who didn't look like a local the police were called and at first it looked like they might be able to get control of the crowd but in all the fighting a shot rang out from the train station which was American owned and struck one of the police officers and so the police joined in the riot so you've got a mob attacking the station and the station that's packed full of Americans that are seeking shelter but who are also mostly armed and so it looks like it's going to be a bloodbath within the middle of all of this a train pulls up the station manager had used the Telegraph to call the railway for help and out of the Train with a bunch of armed railway agents stepped el Verdugo and Runnels stood up to the crowd and said put down your weapons and his reputation was so powerful that essentially the mob just ran away and the riot ended in the end 15 Americans were killed and two native Panamanians were killed and the government of New Granada eventually made a settlement of around $400,000 to pay to the families of the dead and the damage to the stores and to the train station all over a slice of watermelon that cost just five cents but the real question is why the population was willing to riot so easily and the answer is that there was a lot of tension because of the economy when the railroad was being built there was lots of work but as soon as the railroad was completed all that work building the railroad went away and the employees that were left with the railroad operating the railroad and its stations were mostly Americans and all those people who made their living supporting the crossing across pano Matta people that wrote those dugout canoes the people that led those mill trains the people that operate the many hotels and restaurants along the way all were out of work unemployment was high in the population blamed America and that's why the riot occurred but the strategic importance of Panama to America had introduced and because of the riot and justified by the Bidlack Moreno treaty America demanded military concessions which included the right to build military bases on the islands off of Panama City and the US would continue to occupy military bases in Panama clear until 1999 and justified by the treaty America would engage in a number of military interventions in Panama until eventually America supported a revolt against New Granada to create an independent Panamanian state because we thought that that would be easier for us to get permission to dig the Panama Canal and of course that revolutions exactly what the Bidlack Moreno treaty was signed in order to prevent and so that slice of watermelon would continue to impact affairs in the region for more than a hundred years and it deserves to be remembered I'm the history guy and I hope you enjoyed this edition of my series five minutes of history short snippets have forgotten history 5 to 10 minutes long and if you did enjoy please go ahead and click that thumbs up button which is there on your left if you have any questions or comments or would like to suggest another topic for the history guide feel free to write that in the comment section and I will be happy to respond and if you'd like another five minutes of forgotten history all you need to do is click the subscribe button which is there on your right [Music]

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 426,481

Rating: 4.9621363 out of 5

Keywords: history, the history guy, us history, watermelon war, panama city, republic of new granada, history guy

Id: GM4sLx5DhcA

Length: 10min 35sec (635 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 10 2017