David McCulloch, a former Director of the Smithsonian Institute, is well known as an author and as both producer and narrator of
significant television documentaries. “The Path Between the Seas’ is a vivid
history of the building of the Panama Canal, one of the world’s great
engineering achievements. It covers the entire historical scope of the construction, from the germination of the concept in the 1870’s, though the energetic but unsuccessful attempt of the French to build it, to its successful completion by the Americans, through the presidencies of Teddy Roosevelt and William Taft. The canal was opened to shipping in the summer of 1914, at the very time that European powers were marching to war.
The project was a formidable undertaking, and the principle enemies of those who undertook it were not human. Nature itself provided the major opponents, and geographical factors were no more important than disease. The French were forced to abandon their attempt not principally because they could not solve the engineering challenges, but because they could not overcome the great danger posed by one variety of Nature’s humblest creatures -- the mosquitoes that carry the
yellow fever virus and malaria. McCulloch devotes space to a discussion of these two tropical diseases and tells some vivid stories, such as the time when one French official was visited by members of his family for Christmas, only to lose all of them from yellow fever by New Year’s.
Through the course of the long drama, many people became involved, and McCulloch’s work is as much a collection of min-biographies as it is an account of events. The French, led by Ferdinand de Lesseps, are portrayed as valiant but as vanquished. Yet when the Americans took over, in the 1890’s, they built upon what the French had been able to do, and upon their failures. Visionary engineers, such as John Stevens, emerge as giants in McCulloch’s account, but so also do the medical men, like William Gorgas.
One of the great geographical difficulties posed by Panama is the rise of land in the middle of the peninsula, because Panama, although not truly mountainous, is geographically part of the Western Cordillera. The Americans overcame the engineering difficulties partly by damming off a stream, the Chagres River, and creating an inland lake, but they also had to build locks over the changes in elevation, and gouge out the Culebra Cut, a massive excavation project. A vaccine for yellow fever was not developed during the construction, but the cause of both yellow fever and malaria became known, and the problem posed by the mosquitoes was drastically reduced by vigilant control of their numbers, using such techniques as spreading oil over stagnant pools and diligent use of screening in buildings. Dealing with disease was as significant an undertaking as executing the engineering projects.
Politics also played a part. The French had no significant political opposition, but the work began in a territory that was still part of Colombia. The Americans firmed up their control of the building by supporting a revolution against Colombia, effecting the creation of the Republic of Panama in return for a long lease on the Canal Zone itself. The Americans then made the canal available to the world, for toll fees of course, and the canal revolutionized shipping between the west coast of North America and the rest of the world, and, broader still, between the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans.
It takes not only a high degree of scholarship, but considerable writing talent to write a history that is fascinating to the layperson. David McCulloch is one such writer in his award-winning book on the Panama Canal.