"The First Mountain to Be Removed": Yellow Fever Control and the Construction of the Panama Canal

One of the most important achievements of the US era of canal building in Panama was the successful control of yellow fever, a disease that had plagued the region for centuries and had undone the French canal building effort two decades earlier. Indeed, many US commentators depicted the successful control of yellow fever as a form of tropical conquest. This essay argues, to the contrary, that yellow fever control was a process of reengineering urban Panama and of disciplining an urban Panamanian population that was largely immune to yellow fever.