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- [00:01]
William Duranpool
If you want access to bonus episodes, reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat, community discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast ad, free listening, and a weekly newsletter, sign up to empire club@www.empirepoduk.com.
- [00:29]
Anita Arnand
Hello and welcome to Empire with Anita.
- [00:33]
William Duranpool
Arnan and me, William Duranpool.
- [00:36]
Anita Arnand
So the last couple of episodes you will remember, we spoke to Mark Horton and we were talking about Panama. And the reason, just to remind you, in case you needed reminding, is that we're basically traveling down Donald Trump's shopping list and talking about the imperial histories of all the places that he's got on his to buy list and the Panama Canal being one of them. And one of the things that he has said is that of course the Panama Canal should be American again because it was blood, sweat, tears and toil of Americans that went into it. The, the Americans gave the Panama Canal to the world, so of course we should have it back. But it is a much more complicated history than that and an excellent, excellent book. And our special guest today is the author of that book, Hell's Gorge tells a very different story, the battle to build the Panama Canal.
- [01:19]
William Duranpool
Completely wonderful book and just beautifully written, amazingly researched.
- [01:23]
Anita Arnand
You just butted in before the big buildup of the author. Wait. It is a wonderful book.
- [01:27]
William Duranpool
Wait. We needed to pick it up at.
- [01:28]
Anita Arnand
All points possible, but let's pick it up with a name because that name is Matthew Parker's name and he's with us. Hello, Matthew. Hello. Can I just say, one of the things that comes across so strongly in your book, a lot is said about the Panama Canal and particularly these days about what a feat of engineering it is, because you have this, you know the isthmus we talked about with Mark Horton in the last episode, this finger of land that separates two oceans, that connects two continents. But it is such a mountainous area and to have the human chutzpah, if you like to think, actually, you know what? I will defeat those mountains, I will defeat those swamps, I will defeat those jungles and, and build a canal. It is indeed an extraordinary idea and feat of engineering. But the human cost that goes into defying nature in this way is astronomical, isn't it?
- [02:17]
Matthew Parker
Yes. I mean, you can say that it's a sort of two part story, which I think we'll sort of come to. But it's at one time the greatest engineering disaster in history in terms of the first attempt and then the second attempt. There's a lot of nuances I'm sure we'll discover, but it really was an extraordinary achievement by the American led project. I mean something up until the moon landings. It was the greatest engineering achievement in history. And if you go to the canal, I don't know whether you've been and seen the canal.
- [02:49]
Anita Arnand
No, I haven't been lucky enough yet. But I will be going now.
- [02:52]
Matthew Parker
It's sort of just very odd. You're sort of there and you see these huge locks with the Panamax ships with sort of inches either side of these huge locks which were buil over 100 years ago and still working fine. I mean that's an incredible achievement in itself. And then you sort of, you rise up through the locks and you go across this lake and you're going through a mountain on a bit of water. It's just very strange. But if you see the canal before it was filled with the water, it's even more spectacular. The photos you see little people like ants and you see all the work going on and it's almost like a sort of inverted Tower of Babel, if that makes sense. You know, this sort of steps going.
- [03:35]
William Duranpool
One of the things Matthew, you bring out so astonishingly in your book is the unbelievable cost in wrecked and shattered human lives. These trains just taking away corpses day after day of people that have died in the making of this thing.
- [03:52]
Matthew Parker
Yeah, well, if you go right back, you look at the map and you see this great big sort of wall of America standing in the way of travel between Europe and Asia. And this goes back to Columbus and Balboa, of course, and you see this tantalizingly nar isthmus. And it looked so easy. We'll just clear out this little blockage out of the way.
- [04:12]
Anita Arnand
On a flat map, it looks easy. On a flat map.
- [04:15]
Matthew Parker
On a flat map it looks easy. And this idea sort of gripped people for hundreds of years. Sort of poets, engineers, kings and emperors, they all became almost infected by this idea that this was the lure of the isthmus. It was called or canal itis. And it almost became like a disease, an obsession even to the extent of people losing their reason following this dream. It was the great unfulfilled engineering challenge of the hundred years. But it's probably the most difficult place in the world to build a canal for lots of reasons.
- [04:48]
Anita Arnand
Well, I mean, one of the quotes that made me laugh is, I mean, as you say, sort of hundreds of years ago, ever since there was imperial travel, people have dreamt or had this infection of canalitis. But when the first plans were presented to Spain, Philip of Spain said very grandly well, if God had meant there to be a canal in Panama, he would have put one down.
- [05:09]
William Duranpool
Lovely quote.
- [05:10]
Anita Arnand
If God would have wanted a canal, he would have put a canal there.
- [05:13]
Matthew Parker
Yeah. There was a sort of belief at that time that the Pacific and the Atlantic had different sea levels, so that if you built a canal, the Pacific would just pour through, which would obviously cause chaos. The other. The other sort of slightly more realistic concern was if you build a canal, then you're not only giving access to your ships, you're also giving access to your enemy's ships. And that meant that the French and the Portuguese and the English could come through and they could hazard your immense wealth in Peru. This occurs again when we look at the sort of Americans. It's better not to have a canal than a canal under the control of a hostile power.
- [05:51]
William Duranpool
Now, Matthew, in the first episode we talked about Balboa, who you just mentioned. In the second we talked about, indeed, the enemies, the English pirates such as Drake and Captain Morgan, who harassed the Spanish in Panama. Could you. Because I know Anita's particularly longing to hear more about Scotsman.
- [06:09]
Matthew Parker
Oh, God.
- [06:10]
William Duranpool
She has a great particular fondness for 18th century Scotsman. Could you just remind us, because we did a whole episode in this last year. But I just longing to hear more, as I'm sure is Anita, about the Darien scheme, which was the ill fated Scottish attempt to at least plant a colony, if not build a canal, which would be able to benefit from moving between the two oceans. Just a very quick outline before we move forward.
- [06:33]
Matthew Parker
Well, yes. William Paterson, who was a promoter and he'd been in the Caribbean and he had a sort of, what now may seem a slightly curious job share. He was part buccaneer, part missionary.
- [06:43]
William Duranpool
Those are two Venn diagrams that only rarely meet.
- [06:46]
Matthew Parker
Yes, but they did in those days, I guess. And he'd been told about a place on the isthmus which was pretty much free of Spaniards and there was a remarkable low depression. And he had this sort of vision and again, it became an obsession to establish a settlement which would be a trade entrepot. And again, there's this curious mixture of sort of idealism and pragmatism. He wanted to set up a community that would open to all creeds, all nations, all religions, free trade. And he told his potential investors, if we establish this, we will have the gates of the Pacific, the keys to the universe, which he kind of was right about.
- [07:24]
William Duranpool
And yet the whole thing was a total catastrophe. Give us the. We haven't given the date. This is 1690. What is it?
- [07:30]
Matthew Parker
This is the 16, the end of the 1690s, which was, I gather, the coldest decade in Scotland for 700 years. So the idea of the Caribbean might have appealed, but there was also a lot. There was a financial incentive. He said, you know, if we do this trade will beget trade, money will beget money. We'll all become rich and we'll be able to sort of keep up with the English and their sort of colonizing efforts. So he starts raising money, but the English don't really like, you know, they're sort of vested interests, including the East India Company, who are not keen on it. And the English investment is withdrawn. So it becomes a patriotic imperative for the Scots.
- [08:06]
William Duranpool
And half the capital in Scotland has sunk into it.
- [08:08]
Matthew Parker
Yeah, £400,000 or something, which is basically all of the capital. Something like 20% of all currency in circulation is put into this. And they send a ship with like 1200 people and they've got trade goods and they arrive and they set up a camp in what became of course, Caledonia Bay it was called in Darien. But there's a few problems. First of all, too many of the people on the ship are gentlemen. They don't really dig latrines and build huts and this sort of thing. And also their trade goods is mainly heavy Scottish cloth and 1500 Bibles in English.
- [08:39]
William Duranpool
Yes.
- [08:40]
Matthew Parker
Which isn't necessarily what the local kuna or whoever they're going to be trading with want.
- [08:46]
Anita Arnand
Not the greatest gift giving mentality from this card. Yeah, yeah.
- [08:51]
Matthew Parker
I mean it's an absolute, it's an absolute catastrophe. Patterson's wife is one of the first to die and they suffered starvation and illness and sort of internal dissent. And very soon they abandon the colony and the survivors go to New York.
- [09:06]
William Duranpool
But the idea does not die, does it, Matthew? Because quite soon after that, both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson are very, very keen to take this idea up.
- [09:14]
Matthew Parker
Yes, Benjamin Franklin, when he was in Paris, as the United Colonies representative there, he became gripped with the idea of a Trans Isthmian Canal. And actually published on his own Press in 1781, a pamphlet written by a French ex convict called Pierre Andre Gargaz, which advocated cutting canals at Panama and Suez. And this, Gauguin has proposed, would bring world peace through enhanced commerce and communication.
- [09:43]
William Duranpool
If only he knew.
- [09:45]
Matthew Parker
So this is very much the idealistic trend. And then Jefferson, who is there just a few years later in Paris, he also became gripped by this idea, but for much more pragmatic reasons. He saw it as part of the southwards expansion of the United States. So they very neatly encapsulate this conflict or this mix in the Panama story between this idealism between transport and commerce and communication, bringing about the end of empires, the end of nations, world peace, and also the sort of hard headed pragmatism of imperialism and of making money, which is really the same as Paterson. He has this idealistic view, but he also has the idea to make lots of money. And of course for Patterson, 2,000 people die, Scotland's currency is wiped out. This contributes to the end of the Union.
- [10:33]
William Duranpool
The end of an independent Scotland is the other way of looking at it.
- [10:35]
Matthew Parker
So it's an early but spectacular casualty of the lure of the isthmus.
- [10:41]
Anita Arnand
What's really interesting is both Franklin and Jefferson are thinking about Panama. The Panama's taken up so much headspace when they're having a revolution. They're building a nation. It is like one of the foundation blocks of a new nation. And Jefferson is also driven by is that there had been surveys of a canal route at Panama. He's hearing rumors of it. Cause he's in Paris, he's in this sort of melting plot pot of intrigue and rumour and he thinks that the Spanish have got to jump on this. And he says, I'm assured a canal appeared very practicable. He wrote in 1788 to a fellow US diplomat in Madrid. And the idea was suppressed for political reasons. So I mean, this is an era of canal building. This is not an empty sort of swirling fairy tale because people are. Technology is moving on, people are making strides in engineering and canals appear to be the thing of the future.
- [11:29]
Matthew Parker
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's no coincidence that they were both in Paris when they sort of got infected with this bug. Because during the sort of mid 18th century, the French had been sort of making the running on this. There'd been four or five surveys with sort of explorers going up and down the isthmus looking for routes. And you're right, it's about to be the Canal age. You know, the 1820s is when the Erie Canal linking Hudson and the Great Lakes, of course, Telford's Caledonian Canal.
- [11:57]
William Duranpool
Yes, let's connect it back to Scotland. Please tell us about the Caledonian.
- [12:00]
Matthew Parker
The extraordinary Caledonian Canal was, you know, considered to be a sort of epic achievement. And it was really the sort of poster boy of canal and sort of launched the Canal age in Europe and in the United States. And there's various other technologies. There's steam, which obviously means you can have steamers towing the ships rather than having tow Paths with donkeys and this sort of thing. And there's a general confidence in sort of new technology to sort of solve the challenges that are facing us. And then Telford, like every other sort of engineer, he came up with an Isthmian Canal plan, But just to sort of go back to what Anita was saying. The technology is not there yet in order to build the Panama Canal.
- [12:42]
Anita Arnand
But they're so close. They're so close, and the dreamers will dream, and they do believe, and they're quite right in believing it, that whoever controls the canal controls part of the world. You know, that they will have untold riches because they will have supremacy, they will have shortcuts. I mean, even just for the Americans, it's quicker to take that route, to get from New York to San Francisco, to take a route over Panama, than it is to go across country. So it is an incredibly tempting thing to try and hide. I mean, just get your head around that rather than traversing your own country, it's easier to fling yourself into the ocean, get to the Isthmus, cross the Isthmus somehow, and then go up the other side of the country.
- [13:22]
William Duranpool
What is also very important, of course, is the Erie canal, which is 1825, when they join the Hudson river with the Great Lakes, which is another stupendous achievement.
- [13:30]
Anita Arnand
One thing we haven't talked about, though, is where is Panama in the world? So it has been under the thumb of Spain for a while, Colombia at its side. I mean, what is the political allegiance and independence or not of Panama at this time?
- [13:46]
Matthew Parker
Well, Panama was originally part of sort of Bolivar's Gran Colombia, which included Venezuela and Ecuador.
- [13:51]
William Duranpool
Just explain who Bolivar is.
- [13:53]
Matthew Parker
Bolivar, one of the leaders of the independence movement for South America against Spanish rule.
- [13:58]
William Duranpool
Mixed race and extraordinary fighter and incredibly charismatic figure.
- [14:02]
Matthew Parker
That's right. And Panama achieves independence from Spain in 1821, but remains part of Colombia. But there is a sort of independent spirit, I would say, in Panama. It's very difficult to get from Colombia to Panama because of this very almost impenetrable jungle in Darien, which is still there. I think that's where the Trans American highway kind of peters to a halt. The Bolivar was very aware of Panama, and actually he. In 1826, his Latin American conference, he held in Panama, which he called the veritable capital of the world, the center of the globe, one face turned towards Asia, the other towards Africa and Europe. And he actually envisaged Panama City being a future world capital, such was its sort of incredibly important position. And he wanted the Canal, because up until about 1750, their raison d' etre had been as a transit route for the Spanish. But then it just becomes with all the pirates. And I think the final straw was admiral Vernon in 1739, landing in Portobello with 3,000 men. So they stop the treasure ships, so then Panama loses its commercial position.
- [15:08]
William Duranpool
Just explain that again, Matthew. Who's Admiral Vernon and what's going on here?
- [15:12]
Matthew Parker
This was actually a period of official war with Spain because obviously in the Caribbean, war didn't necessarily need to be declared.
- [15:18]
William Duranpool
This is the British war with Spain.
- [15:20]
Matthew Parker
Yes, that's right. So Admiral Vernon lands 3,000 men in Portobello and his aim is to cross the isthmus to Panama City, as Morgan have done. But this isn't successful. But it's the final straw for the Spanish moving their treasure across the Panama isthmus, which had brought such prosperity. You know, there was this amazing fair at Nombre de Dios. It became a transshipment, you know, for all over the Americas. All that's gone. So by the 1820s, the Panamanians are saying, look, we need some sort of canal or road or something to restore our prosperity.
- [15:55]
William Duranpool
We can't pass Admiral Vernon by without mentioning that his nickname was Old Grog, which is as good a nickname as anyone was ever given anyway.
- [16:04]
Matthew Parker
So Bolivar, actually, he sets up a survey for a canal in the 1630s, which was actually run by an English army captain called John Lloyd. And he came up with a scheme for a sort of river, then a railway and then at some point a canal. But he gives us a nice little snapshot of Panamanians at this time. This is from the point of view of an English captain. Just to warn you, he dubbed them superstitious. Billiards, cockpits, gambling and smoking in low company are their exclusive amusements. Their best quality is great liberality to the poor and especially to the aged and infirm. So that's just a little picture of Panamanians at this time.
- [16:45]
Anita Arnand
We sort of get the impression that he doesn't, you know, particularly approve of their soft heartedness to the infirm and poor, because they are poor themselves. I mean, and there's an awful, awful lot of judgment. And we'll get to hear more of this as more and more become interested in this isthmus, looking down on Panamanians, on the natives as being somehow not worthy of the geographical gift that God has bestowed on them, that they are poor or they are unruly or they are lazy, they are, you know, sort of dispensable in many ways. There's never much truck given in it. I haven't seen any in the. In the French, the American. In fact, we'll come to it in a little while. But Mary Seaco was positively horrified by the new influx, and we should talk about them now, of Americans who are drawn to Panama and this isthmus. And that is because there is gold in America and they want to get to it from all over America. And as I was saying before, you know, this wild idea that actually this is the quickest route to get from one end of America to another is to go via Panama and cross the isthmus. And the gold rush of 1848 is transformative, is it not? Can you tell us a bit more about that?
- [17:52]
William Duranpool
We should tell people that we've done an episode on this. If you want to listen to a whole episode on the Californian gold rush, go to episode 162 of Empire Pod and you can have the whole story. But, Matthew, carry on.
- [18:02]
Matthew Parker
Yeah, this is a key moment in the Panama story, the discovery of gold in California. Because, Anita, as you said, to get to California from the obviously much more populous east coast, you could take your chances crossing the landmass of the United States, where of course, there is not yet a transcontinental railway. You can take the 8,000 mile route around the Cape, or it's more expensive, but you can get a steamer from New York to Colon, you can cross over to Panama City and you can be in San Francisco and get in there before everyone else. It's, you know, you've got a rush, it's a gold rush in order to stake out your claim. And so thousands of people took this route and Panama was completely transformed by this.
- [18:44]
Anita Arnand
Transformed, but also rather swamped because Mary Seacole, who at that time is watching these prospectors and what she called them muleteers. Is that how you say it? Muleteers. Thank God, there you are. But, you know, there are this influx of sort of rough and ready young men who are trying to seek their fortune panning for gold or mining for gold in America, and they descend on this place in enormous numbers and they're not very well behaved, are they?
- [19:11]
Matthew Parker
Yes. If you're a Panamanian with a bar in 1848 or 49, you would make a fortune. They were charging seven times what new York boroughs would charge, and they had plenty of takers. And very soon it becomes a proper sort of Gold rush vibe. There's something like 200 prostitutes in Chagres, which is where they landed on Cologne.
- [19:32]
Anita Arnand
Which is not a big place for 200 prostitutes to be working morning, noon and night.
- [19:36]
Matthew Parker
Yeah. And some of them have come from as far away as Paris. But such is the lawlessness of this sort of new rush is that the women carried pistols with them, them at all times. And one English visitor described it as a very disconcerting experience. She kept hold of her six shooter the entire time. So it's boom time for people running hotels and brothels and also for the porterage, you know, the people who are muleteers and boatmen, because you can go some of the way on rivers to cross the isthmus. And it's also boom time for the people who are shipping the steamer company that is bringing people from New York and taking them up to San Francisco. And the people who are running this are also got another business, which is building a railway.
- [20:18]
Anita Arnand
And while, you know, you're painting a picture of the wild, wild West, I mean, it feels like a Western, you know, with saloons, the sound is punctuated by gunfire. You've got a sort of useless local constabulary that's almost as lawless as people who are shooting each other. And women travel fully armed, because you have to. In the middle of all this, watching all of this, is somebody that we're very familiar with in Britain, Mary Seacole, who sort of ends up becoming this great heroine of the Crimea. But this is where she basically makes her reputation as not just a really good businesswoman because she's one of these people selling grog to those coming through, but also as a healer. Because if you are in Panama, then disease is your companion. Talk a little bit about the kind of things that, you know, these travelers were stricken with as soon as. Almost as soon as they arrived.
- [21:03]
Matthew Parker
Yes, Panama is host to all sorts of diseases, and particularly for new incomers who bring sort of a lack of defenses against that. And one of the real crises, and this was for, not just for the travelers, but for the people who were building the railway, was a big attack of cholera. Now, Mary Seacole, she was from Jamaica and she'd been in Jamaica in. There was a terrible cholera outbreak in Jamaica in 1850 that killed thousands of people. So she was very familiar with the disease. So when she was working in the hotel which her brother ran, she became a. A sort of cholera healer for lots and lots of people. And she used mustard, a lot of mustard, sort of compresses and so on, and gave them cinnamon water to drink, which may sound rather sort of old fashioned, but she managed to achieve a Reputation as a great healer. So she must have helped a lot.
- [21:56]
Anita Arnand
Of people at that time to the point where. And so for those of you who don't know who Mary Seacole was, and we're familiar with her here, but she was mixed race. And so they would say of her, when somebody got sick on the isthmus, take them to the yellow woman because she was lighter skinned, and this would be the reputation she would then get. In fact, this reputation of being a healer goes hand in hand. And it will go hand in hand. We should come to the railways now that somehow people who are from the West Indies have an immunity that you can exploit. And they will be the best workers to either dig or hammer or nail, bring them over to do the work. Because. Because they can withstand disease. I mean, they had immunity to some things, but not everything, did they?
- [22:38]
Matthew Parker
Absolutely not. It was a myth, really, that people from the West Indian islands were immune to tropical diseases. It's absolutely not the case. Possibly with yellow fever, there might have been a small immunity from a sort of childhood incident, because once you've had yellow fever, you are immune for the rest of your life. But no, this is a myth. They got ill and died just like everyone else.
- [23:01]
Anita Arnand
I mean, cholera, typhoid, I mean, they took lives in, in enormous numbers. And let's talk about the railway, because very soon it becomes apparent that there is so much traffic coming along that golden road, if you like, you know, people trying to make their fortunes in the gold rush, that you need a proper railway. So what is the inception and then the execution of this railway?
- [23:22]
Matthew Parker
Well, in fact, a French company had got a concession from Colombia to build a railway a few years earlier. But then all the sort of goings on in France in 1848 sort of stymied that. And an American New York based company took over the concession and started building. I mean, this is the first railway ever to be built in the tropics. It was incredibly difficult and absolutely lethal. And there's one example. They brought in 800 Chinese, what they called coolies. They were shipped in horrible circumstances from Shanghai. And as soon as a track is built, the gold rushers want to get on it, even if they have to get off five minutes later and go back to the old fashioned way of crossing the isthmus. It cost something like $9 million and something between 6 and 9,000 people of the workers died during the construction. And this is a 40 mile railway, so it's a life for every tie is the famous expression. There was a particular disaster because The Chinese coolies, as part of the deal, they're given opium, okay, by the company. It's that, that's standard. But then this rather so do good American vicar or something causes a huge stir saying oh, American companies are drug dealing, whatever. So they take the opium away, which causes chaos, absolute misery. And a lot of the Chinese actually commit suicide either by drowning themselves or by impaling themselves on sharpened bamboo sticks.
- [24:39]
Anita Arnand
They're going through withdrawal, basically. They're going cold turkey.
- [24:42]
Matthew Parker
They're ingoing mass withdrawal. And also the conditions, the conditions are appalling as well. It's absolutely miserable. So from the 800, only 200 are surviving by the time the railway is completed in 85.
- [24:52]
Anita Arnand
So let's take a break here and come back after the break when. So the idea of a railway suddenly is not enough because the numbers coming through are so great. The fortune that can be made is just too tempting. And people start talking about hacking into rock.
- [25:10]
William Duranpool
Close your eyes, exhale, feel your body.
- [25:13]
Anita Arnand
Relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today. Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts.
- [25:20]
Matthew Parker
In time for this class.
- [25:21]
Anita Arnand
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- [25:40]
William Duranpool
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- [25:42]
Matthew Parker
You brought it back.
- [25:43]
William Duranpool
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- [25:45]
Matthew Parker
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- [26:07]
William Duranpool
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Matthew Parker
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William Duranpool
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Matthew Parker
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Anita Arnand
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Anita Arnand
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- [26:24]
Matthew Parker
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- [26:29]
William Duranpool
So welcome back. We've now got a railway running across the isthmus of Panama. But the idea of a canal is brought up again and this time it's the French who bring it. Matthew, tell us about the beginning of this French idea.
- [26:46]
Matthew Parker
Well, there's sort of lessons learned and not learned from the railway construction. It's a real breakthrough for Panama Canal. They've found the lowest point in the continental divide at a place called Culebra, 275ft. And this is of course, there's of course this rocky spine that runs I guess from the Andes through Central America and into the Rockies and the Appalachians. And this is like any canal's got a break its way through this and they've found the lowest spot. So that's fantastic. The railway has opened up the interior to exploration and surveying and transporting labour also.
- [27:21]
William Duranpool
Importantly.
- [27:22]
Matthew Parker
Absolutely. And materials. But there's a couple of things that should have warned the French about the difficulties that were ahead. They had a terrible problem with the terrain. The deep marshes, the very hard and oddly mixed rocks and the landslides cause endless problems. But the biggest warning was the death toll. The horrendous death toll of building the railway should have warned the French that they might suffer from similar problems.
- [27:51]
Anita Arnand
And the majority of people who worked for the French and who will work for the Americans will be West Indians, is that right?
- [27:57]
Matthew Parker
That's right. And it was the same on the railway. There was something like 5,000 Jamaicans were a part of the construction team for.
- [28:04]
William Duranpool
That imported by the Brits. Or did they come with their own volition or what's the method they get there?
- [28:09]
Matthew Parker
What will happen is that the railway company will send recruiters to Kingston who will set up offices and sign people up and ship them in.
- [28:17]
William Duranpool
So Matthew, tell us about the different French people who suddenly turn up with a scheme to build a canal. And particularly this character, Ferdinand de Lesseps. He sounds fascinating.
- [28:27]
Matthew Parker
Yes. Well, what's been happening after the basically American built railway? The Americans are making all the running on potential canal plans. All of their presidents are very keen on the idea and they send surveyors out, they do some proper surveys rather than the sort of rather chaotic ones that have going on from the Europeans up to this point. They're all set to go. They decide we're going to build a canal at Nicaragua. And then suddenly into the picture comes Ferdinand de Lesseps, who is absolutely world famous for his amazing achievement of building the Suez Canal that opens in 1869.
- [29:04]
William Duranpool
It was built right through the 1850s, wasn't it?
- [29:06]
Matthew Parker
That's right. 120 miles which changed the world. It made India 6,000 miles closer. I mean altered the geography of the world. And de Lesseps is portrayed in cartoon as Hercules separating the continents of Africa and Asia. And the idea of the Suez Canal also is sort of. It's going to bring people together, it's going to unite the world politically, religiously, industrially. It's going to sort of launch this idyllic future with no nations and no wars. So he is a sort of superstar and very much the spirit of Revanche, which was the sort of recovery of the French after their terrible humiliation in the war with Prussia in 1870 and the chaos of the Commune subsequent to that. So France makes this amazing recovery and flescence is very much a sort of symbol of this. He's a sort of classic Victorian amateur. He was actually a diplomat, which is what took him to Egypt and helped him make friends with the pasha and the pasha's son, which sort of got the whole Suez thing going.
- [30:05]
William Duranpool
Always good to have a pasha on board.
- [30:07]
Matthew Parker
Yes. After the Franco Prussian War, there's an obsession with geography in France and all these geography societies spring up in these expositions. There was a feeling that the defeat was partly down, that France had been too inward looking and hadn't been out there in the world. So there are these great expositions of geography and in the Paris 1 in 1875, de Lesseps turns up and he's the star of the show. There's 2,000 people there and he suddenly announces he's going to build a trans Isthmian canal. And lots of people go, you know, his son Charles, who's a very different character, says, look, come on, dad, you're 70.
- [30:41]
Anita Arnand
Leave it, dad, leave it. Not worth it.
- [30:43]
Matthew Parker
Leave it. You know, you've never been interested in money, you've got all the glory you want. He goes, no, why, if a general's just won a great battle and he's asked to fight another one to win it, why shouldn't he take that on? He wanted this second act. So he announces, right, I'm going to build a transistmian canal. And explorers are sent out to the isthmus and they go all the routes that have been explored before, going back to Alexander von Humboldt much earlier. They look at all of these and they decide that actually it's going to be not so easy. And they come back and they report to Lesser. So he just, for him, difficulties are things to be overcome, not to actually sort of be warned off by, you.
- [31:23]
Anita Arnand
Know, he's that sort of character because he is Hercules. He's been portrayed as Hercules. He believes he's Hercules. Yeah.
- [31:29]
Matthew Parker
And he's got this huge charisma and he's got this huge. For the old ish man, you know, he's got this massive energy and he's got the French people eating out of his hand. He's got this gorgeous, much younger second wife, this huge brood of very photogenic children, you know, his perfect fodder for all the new illustrated magazines that are so sort of coming out at this time. So he, he then holds a big conference in 1879 at the palace, the Louvre palace, and he invites experts from all over the world and there's this huge debate, including the Americans who had set up their plan. They're there as well, and there's a lot of controversy. And at this point, de Lesseps makes a fatal decision. He says it's not a proper canal unless it's a sea level canal like Suez. He wants an ocean Bosphorus, you know, a lock canal. It slows it down. You don't get so much money because there's not so many ships going through. It's not something that's easy to sell as an idea as well. So he hasn't even been to the Isthmus, but he's already decided the type of canal that he's going to build there.
- [32:30]
William Duranpool
Just to explain, if you're doing a sea level canal, you have to cut away a lot more rock, presumably, than if you're doing a lock canal, where you've got, in a sense, a staircase of canal segments. Is that right?
- [32:41]
Matthew Parker
That's right. A lock canal is a sort of bridge of water. So you climb up, you go to the top of the bridge, you come down again. But a sea level canal, you don't have to just go down to sea level, you have to go to sea level and then deeper for the draft of the ships that you're going to allow there through.
- [32:55]
William Duranpool
So you're making a much bigger task for yourself.
- [32:57]
Matthew Parker
Yes, you're making what turned out to be crazy, crazily ambitious project.
- [33:02]
Anita Arnand
And what did he intend to pay for this grand scheme? I mean, how is he going to get the money?
- [33:07]
Matthew Parker
Well, he, like with Suez, he sells sort of bonds to investors and to the public, and that's how, that's how he paid for the Suez Canal and the Suez. And people who invested in the Suez Canal are now making serious money. They've got dividends of up to 17%. So it's a good buy. So he's confident he can do it. But the first issue he issues bonds trying to raise, I think it was 400. 400 million francs, something like that. And it's a failure because he cuts out the banks from the business and the press are hostile and there are concerns. I would say there's sort of four main concerns amongst the public and amongst the press. One, de Lesseps is too old. Two, Panama is too full of diseases. You know, it wasn't a secret that Panama was a very, very dangerous place in terms of illness. Three, is this actually technically possible to build a sea level canal in Panama? And four, weren't the Americans just come down and shut it down?
- [34:01]
William Duranpool
Yes. Give us a little bit of an insight there because this is long after the Monroe Doctrine is already a thing. Monroe says he doesn't want Europeans interfering in America in the 1820s. We're now in the 1880s and America's a rising power. What do they think of this, this cocky French attempt to one up them?
- [34:19]
Matthew Parker
Well, they're absolutely appalled. They're absolutely. I mean the French have a particular bad reputation because of obviously what happened in Mexico, you know, with Napoleon III's sort of ventures during the American Civil War. They sort of took advantage of the distraction to sort of establish a sort of French ish sort of empire in Mexico and they were causing problems around there. So the French are not to be trusted. And, and de Lessep says, well, I'm a private company, I'm not a country interfering. So anyway, in order to address these four issues, De Lesseps takes sort of important steps. He goes to Panama and he takes much of his family there as well, which of course he wouldn't do if it was dangerous for illness.
- [34:56]
Anita Arnand
Gosh, so this is pr. I mean, he's taking them for PR purposes.
- [35:00]
Matthew Parker
He's a PR genius. So he goes out there. It's actually the easiest time. It's the dry season, so it's all, all rather lovely. He goes to Panama, he charms everyone there, he takes with him lots of technical experts who all agree that actually building a Panama Canal is possible. And then he goes up to the United States where he's feted and praised and given dinners because he's, you know, he's famous all around the world and admired all around the world. But he visits President Hayes and Hayes says, well, I don't want any European power getting involved with protecting you or looking after you. And he goes, that's fine, that's fine. He then returns to Paris and reports the Americans are going to protect the canal. I've got their support. I mean, he just turns it. Hayes doesn't want them there. He says Panama is like a part of the coastline of the United States. This is, you know, you're on our territory.
- [35:50]
William Duranpool
This is a Trumpian claim.
- [35:52]
Matthew Parker
He's also trying to raise money, but the Americans don't want anything to do with it. He goes to London, where, again, he's fated. He has a dinner with Gladstone and Disraeli, both give him speeches in his honor. But the British don't want anything to do with that. The Times says it's magnificent, but it's.
- [36:07]
Anita Arnand
Not business, because also, it isn't that easy to rumble a lie like that. I mean, the Americans have said one thing, you're saying, they've said another. It just takes a little bit of time to double check what the Americans are saying.
- [36:18]
Matthew Parker
Yeah. So the British say it's magnificent, but it's not business. And so he turns to his advantages as well. He says it's now the patriotic duty of French investors to back the canal because French people have always been interested in the, you know, the good of humanity. So it's sort of like that as well as a patriotic duty.
- [36:36]
William Duranpool
We should say that with the mention of Gladstone and Disraeli, that this is soon after the British have bought a controlling interest in the Suez canal, which happens 1875, is that right?
- [36:46]
Matthew Parker
Yes. And that's another incentive for De Lesseps, you know, he's lost his canal, so he's going to get another one, basically. So the other key thing, to answer your point, Anita, about why people aren't calling this out, the other thing he did is he took on the banks, which he'd shunned before. He said the financial institutions were hostile because they hadn't been paid. So then he takes them on, they make a fortune. He also starts bribing the press hand over fist. So all of the journalists and all of the papers who had said this, Panama, he's too old, it's too dangerous.
- [37:19]
Anita Arnand
They're standing out. He's looking virile today. He's looking mighty fine today.
- [37:25]
Matthew Parker
No, he said, now they're all saying, look, this is. This is going to be for the glory of France. This is going to be the most spectacular achievement.
- [37:32]
William Duranpool
One of the great features of this podcast we have over and over again, these stories of the press being completely, completely, literally available for sale at almost every point of history.
- [37:40]
Matthew Parker
Yes. Or the editors suddenly become directors of the canal company and this sort of thing.
- [37:45]
William Duranpool
We had the same with the Opium wars, where they just absolutely take the money of Jardine and Matheson and write exactly what they want.
- [37:51]
Matthew Parker
So he tries again with another Bondlord and he's had this sort of spectacular pr. He had hot air Balloons floating around Paris with these huge banners saying buy this store. It's one of the most extraordinary financial moments. This time he's aiming to raise 300,000 francs. He could have sold twice as many. He could have raised twice the. And he really should have done at that point.
- [38:10]
William Duranpool
So tell us, Matthew, when does construction begin? He's got the money, he's moved his family over there. When is a pick first put into the ground against a piece of rock?
- [38:20]
Matthew Parker
Well, he actually, on his trip to Panama, he actually did this display. I guess they all went out in a boat in order to get to the mouth of the Rio Grande, the river that comes down to Panama City. So they're on the Pacific side and he's got his family with him and he's got all the dignitaries and also a young English consul who he might come back to called Claude Mallet. He's the. But unfortunately quite a lot of champagne has been drunk, it would appear, and they've sort of messed up with the tides so they can't actually land where they want to on the shore in order to do the first dig. So they end up just with this empty champagne box with some mud in it.
- [38:52]
Anita Arnand
Oh, my Lord.
- [38:53]
Matthew Parker
And de Lessep young daughter gets the pickaxe and does the symbolic first little sort of chip out of the Panama.
- [39:01]
William Duranpool
Canal into a champagne box.
- [39:03]
Matthew Parker
A champagne box full of dirt.
- [39:05]
Anita Arnand
I mean, he is one of history's nutters and you know, like you, William, quite fascinated and becoming even more obsessed.
- [39:11]
Matthew Parker
Yeah, but that's part of the Panama Fever. It does this to people. You know, he's not the only one to, you know, lose their reason in this story.
- [39:20]
Anita Arnand
And with that bizarre beginning of the French attempt to build a Panama canal. Let's end this episode here. The French are hopeful. They've got their hot air balloon PR campaigns up in the air and they've gone down a storm. But in the next episodes we're going to learn how De Lesseps dreams come crashing down in rather special, spectacular fashion. It's a scandal. So to listen to that episode right now, go to empirepod uk.com that's empirepoduk.com to get early access and ad free listening for the price of a cappuccino a month. But for now, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnand.
- [39:55]
William Duranpool
A goodbye from me, William Duration.