Loading summary
Transcript153 lines
- [00:01]
Anita Arnan
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.
- [00:19]
William Drimple
Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. With the price of just about everything going up, we thought we'd bring our prices down. So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing Mint Mobile Unlimited Premium Wireless get 3030 better get 30, better get 202020 better get 2020 better get 15151515 just 15 bucks a month. Sold. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.
- [00:42]
Ryan Reynolds
Of $45 for three month plan equivalent to 15 per month required. New customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes of networks busy taxes and fees extra. Cmc mobile.com Summer's here and Nordstrom has everything you need for your best dress season ever. From beach days and weddings to weekend getaways in your everyday wardrobe. Discover stylish options under $100 from tons of your favorite brands like Mango Skims, Princess Polly and Madewell. It's easy too, with free shipping and free returns in store order pickup and more. Shop today in stores online@nordstrom.com or download the Nordstrom app.
- [01:19]
Anita Arnan
The McDonald's Snack Wrap is back. You brought it back. Ranch snack wrap Spicy snack wrap.
- [01:27]
William Drimple
You broke the Internet for a snack.
- [01:30]
Anita Arnan
Snack wrap is broke back.
- [01:44]
Matthew Parker
Hello and welcome to Empire with me.
- [01:47]
Anita Arnan
Anita Arnan and me, William Drimple. So we are joined once again by the brilliant Matthew Parker, author of Hell's Gorge, to discuss our final chapter of the building of the Panama Canal. Now, in the last episode, we saw the complete failure of the French attempt and Bunua Varia convincing the Americans to build a canal in Panama over Nicaragua. But Colombia does not want to hand over the rights to the U.S. so the U.S. is going to have to help Panama get its independence. And we have before us now the first American skullduggery of fiddling the politics of Latin America to suit themselves. Something of course, that we will see much more of in the 20th century. So, Matthew, tell us more about how the Americans managed to separate Panama off into a much smaller and more bullyable independent state.
- [02:35]
William Drimple
Okay, so the leader of the wannabe Panama independence movement, a guy called Manuel Amador, travels to the United States to get help with basically freeing his country from Colombia and therefore getting the canal in his country rather than someone else's. He meets Cromwell the lawyer, obviously who was so important in getting the Americans to change their mind and choose the Panama route. And he is basically promised help from him. He also meets Buno Varia and one of his compatriots meets John Hay, the Secretary of State, who he can't say exactly, but basically says the Americans will support an independence movement in Panama without American help. The Colombian army will just move in and close them down.
- [03:22]
Anita Arnan
But if America joins in, this can just get rid of that whole Colombian issue and create a small, easily dominated Central American state that America can lord over and get its way with.
- [03:35]
William Drimple
Yes, and there's a very happy sort of background to this in that much earlier, sort of 50 years before, the Americans had signed a treaty with the Colombians which allowed them to land troops on the isthmus in order to keep the transit open or suppress any sort of civil revolt. And they've done this many times, often actually to suppress independence movements, ironically enough. So they've got that sort of card to play. And also they've got sort of. Buno Maria promises to give Amador $100,000, which he needs to bribe the Colombian garrison. They work out how much they need, but, you know, a general gets this, a colonel gets that, an ordinary soldier gets that, and it adds up to about $100,000.
- [04:18]
Anita Arnan
This is astonishing because this is only 1903 and we're already getting America doing the stuff it's going to do for the whole of the rest of the 20th century of picking and choosing Latin American leaders.
- [04:28]
Matthew Parker
Yeah. The one thing we haven't mentioned which normally goes hand in hand with this, is American gunships. Now, when do they suddenly, you know, arrive on the scene?
- [04:35]
William Drimple
Well, what happens is they announced the revolution. They announced the revolution. And unfortunately, the plotters had taken in someone into their group, into their confidence, who then looked like he was going to flake. So in order to get rid of him, they invent an invasion from Nicaragua and they send him and his soldiers north to deal with it. So he's off the scene, but word has got to Bogota, and acting with really unusual haste, The Colombians send 500 expert marksmen and three generals to Panama to help deal with this. Fictional. So that's really backfired. So these troops arrive and the date has already been set. Bunau Varilla told Hay, and he actually had a meeting with Roosevelt as well, that there'd be a revolution on the 3rd of November.
- [05:22]
Matthew Parker
Oh, they put it in their day planner.
- [05:24]
William Drimple
It's in the planner because it's the day that, with the results of the Midterm elections. So it's going to be, it's a good day for bad news or for rather exciting news. They arrive, all of these soldiers and these three generals resplendent in their braid and their big hats and everything. I mean, the Americans are up to their neck in this. The American owner of the railroad says, oh, we haven't got any trucks here to take your men over to Panama City, but we've got a special luxury train. We can just take you generals. So they rather reluctantly agree. They're taken to Panama City where they're wines and dined, and then they come out to inspect a load of troops. And then the troops wheel round, point their guns at them and say, you're under arrest.
- [06:02]
Anita Arnan
Brilliant.
- [06:02]
Matthew Parker
Wow.
- [06:03]
William Drimple
So they've separate, they've sort of decapitated this Colombian force. One of the generals rushes off, but is found hiding in a toilet stall. So he's forked out.
- [06:11]
Anita Arnan
This is 45 years before the CIA is formed, and yet all the fingerprints are sort of already there.
- [06:17]
Matthew Parker
But also it's farcically easy, I mean, just to, you know, guarding officers.
- [06:21]
William Drimple
It's just so, you know, there are some wobbles. There are some wobbles because you've still got these 500 soldiers and a colonel in Colon and the revolution is announced in Panama City and they need the money. They need the money now from Bunau Varilla to wire them the hundred thousand dollars. And he goes, well, hold on, the deal was you make me your plenipotentiary ambassador in Washington in exchange for the money. And they haven't done that yet.
- [06:46]
Matthew Parker
This man is a mover, isn't he?
- [06:48]
William Drimple
He is a mover. He's a mover. So he sends 25,000, which isn't enough. So they borrow the money from the American owned Panama Railroad in order to pay off these men. And at one point there's this tent standoff. But eventually they manage to get all these soldiers bribed and away. You know, the revolution is a success. There's one fatality which is a donkey. That's the only.
- [07:10]
Matthew Parker
Oh, what happened to the donkey? Wait, wait, what happened to the donkey?
- [07:12]
William Drimple
Donkey was caught in some sort of crossfire that got the details or haven't got the donkey research done on that.
- [07:17]
Anita Arnan
You haven't done the donkey work.
- [07:19]
Matthew Parker
You haven't done that. Look at that. That's very, very good.
- [07:23]
William Drimple
Meanwhile, Bunau Varilla is moving with extreme haste to do a deal as the temporary ambassador for this new republic with John Hay. So in the meantime, after these sort of American gunboats have now arrived on both sides of the isthmus.
- [07:40]
Matthew Parker
He's still, though, a French national. He's a French national. He wants to be the ambassador to Panama.
- [07:45]
William Drimple
He is briefly. He is briefly.
- [07:48]
Matthew Parker
Right.
- [07:48]
William Drimple
So what happens is Amador and another leader of the revolution get on a boat and hurry to New York to do a deal with the Americans, who have already recognized the new Republic of Panama in indecent haste.
- [08:01]
Matthew Parker
Right.
- [08:01]
William Drimple
The Americans arrive, they've got gunboats on either side, so the Colombians can't come by sea. And there's this sort of patriotic up feeling of anger in Colombia. And loads of people volunteer to take back Panama. The only way you can get there is through the Darien jungle. And they get about halfway before they're done.
- [08:19]
Matthew Parker
For Darien has no. I mean, it's just merciless Darian. So many are defeated by it century after century.
- [08:26]
William Drimple
Yeah, yeah. So the. So the Americans have basically made the revolution safe, and now they want to do a deal with the new republic, but they want to do it quickly because the Colombian general is rushing to New York as well, and they know that he will offer anything in order to get the canal and Panama back. So they've got to move quickly. So while Amador and his. His companion are going to New York, Buonau Vril is in Washington talking to John Hay, who produces the. The fastest treaty document ever. He's working day and night, which doesn't.
- [08:57]
Anita Arnan
Have a single Panamanian in the room when it's signed.
- [09:00]
William Drimple
No. Well, they're nearly there. Amador arrives at New York and the treaty hasn't been signed yet. By a happy coincidence, he's met by a guy called Roger Farnham, who is part of William Cromwell's organization. Said, oh, he's going to be here tomorrow. Can you just wait for 24 hours? And they do. And that 24 hours gives buno Varia enough time using Lincoln's inkwell to sign the treaty, which is, for Panamanians, an absolute disgrace. But it gives the Americans pretty much everything they want in order to get a canal zone and build a canal.
- [09:36]
Matthew Parker
So his inky fingers have left the paper, which is actually known as the Hay Bunau varia treaty of 1903. And the provisions of that treaty are that the United States would pay Panama up to $10 million and an annual FE of a quarter of a million dollars for the right to a Canal Zone 5 miles either side of the canal route. So basically, Americans get everything that they want. No Panamanian is in the room. The Colombians in whose territory this was in have been basically robbed from their point of view, of their own sovereign territory. And this has all happened pretty much in the matter of two weeks, a fortnight.
- [10:12]
William Drimple
Yes. And it causes huge ruptures everywhere, obviously in Colombia, but also in the United States. It's very, very controversial. Obviously going back to the Spanish war. There was the Anti Imperialism League that had a lot of followers. It's not quite at that level. The sort of more liberal press describe the canal as stolen property and they say it's might makes right. And Roosevelt has dragged the United States down to the sordid land grabbing sort of levels of the European powers. And something unique about America has been lost. And in the Senate they have to obviously pass the bill to ratify the treaty. And one of the people says, stands up and says, well, you know, you're saying that the isthmus rose as one man. I say that one man was in the White House. And that's really the sum of it. It remains controversial for, you know, well, ever since.
- [11:05]
Anita Arnan
And it becomes a fact on the ground, so to speak, with the creation of the Panama canal zone, established February 26, 1904. And this is a zone over which the United States has complete sovereignty.
- [11:20]
William Drimple
Yes, well, the exact wording is as if it were sovereign, but effectively, yes, it is. And they also. Originally the Americans wanted the terminal cities, Colon and Panama City included. But even Bruno Varia couldn't agree to that. But they have huge rights to go into the city for sanitation, law and order. The Panamanes originally, they're very grateful to the Americans that have helped them, without whose help they couldn't have had their independence. But the honeymoon period is incredibly short.
- [11:49]
Matthew Parker
Very short. Very short. Yeah, with the zone, the American zone. And what tickles me hugely is that the people who live in the zone, which is a predominantly white area, are called Zonians. And it becomes very, very apparent very quickly. It's going to be run on an apartheid system. I mean, it is. I mean, talk a little bit more about what the Americans want from their zone and what, what the Panamanian reaction might be, because as you said before, this is a mixed melting pot of a place.
- [12:18]
Anita Arnan
And the two tier system, the golden roll and the silver roll. Tell us about that.
- [12:23]
William Drimple
Yes, that's to do with the labor force, which obviously they have to assemble to build the canal. They have pretty much political control over the whole country. No one is really elected unless they are agreeable to the US interests. What happens initially is a guy called Wallace is sent down as Chief engineer. And because of the sort of all of the heat that Roosevelt had taken over, the effectively annexation of the Canal Zone, it's very important that he makes the dirt fly in order to satisfy, you know, they were some nice pictures of sort of digging happening. So he starts all, he starts all of that straight away and it's really completely the wrong thing to do because there's hardly any equipment there, there's hardly any workforce, and it really causes more problems than it solves. And then very soon after they start the work, there's the first yellow fever case. And rather like Louise Danglay we heard about in the last episode, it's a pretty young girl, it's the wife of Wallis's secretary. They've only been married for two months and she dies this hideous, agonizing yellow fever death. And panic breaks out. And what happens is that something like three quarters of the white American workforce desert. They just, they leave, they run, just.
- [13:41]
Anita Arnan
Leave with this one death.
- [13:42]
William Drimple
There were several others, not huge numbers, nothing like the French period. But there's none of the sort of heroic, you know, sort of self sacrifice of the French period. They scuttle and the whole work is in crisis and people think that it's going to suffer the same fate as the French project.
- [14:01]
Matthew Parker
Wow, okay, so Zonians have left and fled for their lives. America, the press is starting to turn against Roosevelt or has been actually doing critical things. He hated what the press did. He called them all muckrakers and they gave him quite a hard time. So how do they sort of pull this project out of the fire, the Americans? What do they do?
- [14:21]
William Drimple
Wallace was a sort of slightly unfortunate appointments because he was totally terrified of yellow fever as well, to the extent he actually brought two coffins with him for him and his wife should the need arise. Anyway, so he resigns and he's replaced with a guy called John Stevens, who is one of the sort of key figures in the American period. He's a very Rooseveltian figure. He built railways across northwestern the United States, you know, fighting wolves and hostile Native Americans and blizzards and everything. And he was a brilliant railway engineer. And he arrives and looks around and he says, this is the most discouraging project I've ever seen. You know, the Panama Railroad he describes as two streaks of rust going through the jungle. Everywhere he sees fear and hunger and there's no accommodation. And he says, right, I'm stopping. However much Roosevelt's going to be annoyed, however much the press are going to stop. And let's just plan it properly. And he spends a year planning how he's actually going to do this. For him, the key thing is he describes as transportation, it's getting the spoil away. One of the problems with the French is they dumped the spoil by the side of the canal and it just fell back in or it became unstable and it was a night. So the most difficult thing about the excavation is what you do, getting the soil away. He was absolutely the right person to do this also. He orders in some real state of the art equipment. You know, in the generation between the French and the American, there'd be huge improvements in sort of technology, of steel and of mechanics. And so he, he's got these state of the art massive shovels, all of which travel on rails. And there's also some other sort of very clever little sort of inventions, like a sort of self emptying train where with a plough at 45 degrees, you can empty it in one swoop rather than digging it, emptying one by one. There's ingenious things that lift, track and move it without having to disentangle. So he really sort of gives it the American technical ability and sets it up for the task ahead.
- [16:31]
Matthew Parker
Just as you're saying that. I mean, this really is the first time that canal madness has some method behind it, because everybody else who's tried has basically had a suck it and see attitude. You've got sort of de Lesseps who hadn't even been there before. He was promising everybody a canal and then all these other people who were not, not engineers who are promising a canal. And then suddenly you've got a man who does know railways and does know how to put these things in, saying, actually, can somebody give me the plan? Can anyone show me a plan?
- [16:58]
William Drimple
Exactly. Exactly.
- [17:00]
Anita Arnan
Okay, let's take a break here. American engineers are finally setting up a proper plan and using all their technological prowess. But how will they get over the major obstacle that broke the French attempt first time round when building the canal? Yellow fever.
- [17:17]
Ryan Reynolds
On WhatsApp, no one can see or hear your personal messages. Whether it's a voice call message or sending a password to WhatsApp, it's all just this. So whether you're sharing the streaming password in the family chat, or trading those late night voice messages that could basically become a podcast, your personal messages stay between you, your friend and your family. No one else, not even us. WhatsApp message privately with everyone.
- [17:48]
David Olusoga
I'm David Ulushogu.
- [17:49]
Sarah Churchwell
And I'm Sarah Churchwell. Together we're the hosts of Journey Through Time. Where we explore the darkest depths of history through the eyes of the people who live through it.
- [17:58]
David Olusoga
Today we're going to tell you about our new series on the Great Fire of London. One of the great pivotal events of the 17th century, one of the most important events in all of English.
- [18:07]
Sarah Churchwell
In Britain, it began at a bakery on Pudding Lane and quickly turned into a catastrophe. It consumed 13,000 houses. It decimated London and caused £10 billion worth of damage in today's money. It even burned down the iconic St. Paul's Cathedral.
- [18:23]
David Olusoga
The city was already devastated by the great plague, but rumors of foreign invasion led mobs to attack innocent foreigners on the streets. In this episode. In this episode we'll explore the chilling consequences of rumors of fake news, of xenophobia, problems that clearly are not unique to today.
- [18:42]
Sarah Churchwell
From desperate attempts to save their homes and belongings to the struggle to assign blame which turned deadly. This is the story of the fire as it was lived through by the people on the ground and the lasting impacts it left on the city.
- [18:55]
David Olusoga
We've got a short clip at the end of this episode.
- [19:05]
Anita Arnan
Welcome back. So, Matthew, let's talk about how the Americans tried to combat yellow fever in Panama.
- [19:10]
Matthew Parker
You know what, we haven't said what yellow fever does to a person.
- [19:13]
Anita Arnan
Yes. Give us a really gruesome description. We've had two people dying in great pain and agony.
- [19:18]
Matthew Parker
Yes. So what, what happens to somebody when they have yellow fever? What are the stages of yellow fever?
- [19:23]
William Drimple
What happens? You get bitten by an infected mosquito. Originally, you'll have headaches, loss of appetite, muscle pain, a high temperature and then really, really severe back pain that is described like being on a rack.
- [19:36]
Anita Arnan
This is a bit like dengue fever which everyone gets in Delhi every one soon. It sounds hideous.
- [19:41]
William Drimple
You have about a sort of half, one in two chance as a fit adult of surviving.
- [19:47]
Matthew Parker
Right.
- [19:48]
William Drimple
And so you've got agonizing back and then thirst and then you get jaundiced as your liver packs it in. And then probably the most sort of terrifying thing about the vomito negro, it's called, where you're coughing up black blood because by this stage you've got multi organ failure and sort of hemorrhage. And the brain is often affected as well, producing delirium, seizures and coma. And the medical shock alone caused by extreme fluid loss can be fatal.
- [20:16]
Matthew Parker
Oh, it's horrific. It's a horrific way to die. And so you said, you know the plan he plans and plans and plans yellow fever strike. So how does he respond to that? The great planet? I mean, what can you do?
- [20:28]
William Drimple
Well, what the Americans had done if they'd sent their top yellow fever doctor to the isthmus, a guy called William Gorgas, who was a sort of frontier doctor. And he'd actually contracted yellow fever on the borders of Mexico, but has survived. And once you survive, you're immune. And he made it his life's work to combat yellow fever, Yellow Jack, as it was known in the States. And part of that he was sent to Havana after the end of the Spanish War, during which something like five times the number of American soldiers had died of yellow fever than in combat. This was something that urgently. And there was all sorts of experiments. The mosquito theory of transmission is emerging. It's emerging from India and it's emerging in Cuba itself. And they do all sorts of experiments. So they put people in a cell with all the disgusting vomito negro covered blankets of someone who's died, and they're fine. Okay, so it's not about dirt.
- [21:22]
Matthew Parker
It's not carried in air and dirt and. Yeah, okay.
- [21:25]
William Drimple
And then they actually. With volunteers, people volunteer to have themselves stung by a yellow fever mosquito to see what happens. And one of these volunteers actually died.
- [21:34]
Anita Arnan
Why would you volunteer to do that? What's possible?
- [21:37]
William Drimple
Inducement for the good, for the great. This is an American doing it for the greatness of mankind and obviously for his country as well.
- [21:45]
Matthew Parker
Matthew, were they really volunteers? Because so much of the time you hear the word volunteer and actually it's people who were so corralled into doing it. They were.
- [21:52]
William Drimple
James Lazier, he was called. Yeah.
- [21:53]
Matthew Parker
Oh, good. Well, it's good to remember his name. Yeah.
- [21:56]
William Drimple
A Gorgas arrives with the knowledge of how to deal with a mosquito. So you exterminate the mosquito. It's a particular mosquito, it's Edith, a gypsy, which is actually quite vulnerable because it stays very close to humans. The female relies on human blood to produce its eggs, and it also lays its eggs close to human habitations in ideally the clean water. So he. He knows you've got to kill the. You've got to kill the larva. And anyone who's infected with. With yellow fever, you've got to keep them from being bitten by an unaffected mosquito, because that's how it travels. A normal. A mosquito bites someone and then takes away and then bites them. And that's how. That's how it's. And they have to be unimmune people, which is why all these American incomers were so vulnerable. And so Gorgas has the tools to do it, but he asks the. The commission of old gents who are in Washington who are sort of overseeing the project. He says, I need a million dol and I need a workforce of 2,000. They give him $50,000 and a workforce of about 20 of the most feeble people. That's why yellow fever happened. And once it's happened, there is a crucial meeting between Roosevelt and his Dr. Lambert. The head of the commission says Gorgas is useless. We've got to sack him and we've got to bring in this friend of mine who's an osteopath with no experience at trouble. Gorgas.
- [23:08]
Matthew Parker
Oh God, oh God, I hate these stories so much. God, how many lives could have been saved?
- [23:13]
William Drimple
The commission, they didn't believe, they didn't believe the mosquito theory, even though Ronald Ross had won a Nobel prize for it.
- [23:19]
Anita Arnan
This is the early 20th century equivalent of modern anti vaxxers ignoring all the science.
- [23:24]
William Drimple
And yeah, so Gorgas is saying, look, I can do this, I can do this, but if I have the backing. And Roosevelt's, Dr. Lambert, who's a friend of his, has this meeting with Roosevelt and you know, Roosevelt saying, well, they want to get rid of Gorgas because they think it's just dirt and dead rats and that kind of thing. And it's the terminal cities are filthy. And Lambert says to him, no, no, no, no, no. Gorgas knows what he's doing. If you don't back him, it'll be like the French. If you back him, you'll have your canal. Wow.
- [23:52]
Matthew Parker
Okay, so good.
- [23:52]
William Drimple
And so Roosevelt puts his weight behind and then bang. The most expensive sanitary campaign in history is launched in the spring of 1905. And then by November, Gorgas can say to his staff, they gather in an autopsy room where there's a yellow fever victim. He says to them, this is the last yellow fever death you will ever see in Panama.
- [24:13]
Matthew Parker
I mean, that's extraordinary.
- [24:14]
William Drimple
And that's how it was.
- [24:15]
Anita Arnan
What a brilliant man.
- [24:16]
Matthew Parker
Were there Nobel prizes handed out for this because this is like epoch changing.
- [24:20]
William Drimple
Gorgos is one of the heroes. He then launches a huge campaign later against malaria, which is a massive problem, which is huge. He describes yellow fever as like making war on the, on the family cat. Malaria is like taking on all the beasts of the jungle, because they do, they are everywhere. But as Woody said, they studied them and if they cleared vegetation from around the habitat, you know, there were ways to lessen it. But there's one thing that I found that he wrote later that really sort of made me sort of do A double take, because in Havana he cleared that he'd save Havana. Our work in Cuba and Panama will be looked upon as the earliest demonstrations that the white man could flourish in the tropics. And the starting point for the effective settlement of these reasons by the Caucasian.
- [25:01]
Matthew Parker
Oh, God. Okay. All right.
- [25:02]
Anita Arnan
Before we elevate him, it's the nuance.
- [25:05]
William Drimple
In imperial medicine, I don't need to tell you, is so interesting.
- [25:08]
Matthew Parker
So we talked about sort of, you know, the white suffering due to diseases. But what we haven't talked about is the suffering amongst those West Indian workers who, again, you know, the Americans are going to rely on to do the work for this canal. And just give us a little picture of how, you know, they are treated. Are they getting treatment? Are they getting access to this kind of groundbreaking science that is coming from Gorgas? I mean, is anyone looking out for them at all?
- [25:31]
William Drimple
The idea of who was going to build the canal was much debated. And Stevens actually had very little respect for what he called black labor. He said they were lazy, they were stupid or whatever. He tried bringing in sort of others. Originally he wanted Chinese and Japanese, but people from Tokyo came and had a look around, said, no way. No, no, you're not. And the Chinese thing, it was kind of, you know, there had been terrible scandals in South Africa about Chinese labor, and the whole sort of indenture thing was very unpopular. So eventually they did have to look to the West Indies. And originally they went to Jamaica. And the governor of Jamaica was actually rather anti American. Said, you're not recruiting from here because it cost us a fortune to bring back all the people from the French effort. You know, it cleaned us out. So they go to Barbados and there they have much more luck. The Barbados governor is married to America, which maybe helped. And Barbados is chronically poor. This is the island that used to be the richest place in the whole British Empire. Made fortunes for people through sugar and slavery. And now it's described as the empire's darkest slum. It has infant mortality rate over 50% malnutrition. So it's a very fertile recruiting ground. And the Americans offer a contract which is you work 10 hours a day, six days a week, you'll get paid 10 cents an hour, and we'll give you accommodation and we'll ship you over and back. Originally people go, oh, no, Panama, you know. But then a couple of people who went earlier come back and land in Bridgetown, in Carlisle Bay. And they get off the boat and they're wearing these. This really fancy suit. They got Hats, they're smoking. And then they get in a cart and carriage and a driven home, which is just for a young black person, it's just not usual at all. And then suddenly there's this rush, everyone wants to go to Panama. And thousands and thousands are shipped over. Something like 45,000 Barbadians worked on the canal out of a population of only 200,000.
- [27:25]
Matthew Parker
Gosh, that's extraordinary.
- [27:26]
William Drimple
So it's major, major, major.
- [27:28]
Anita Arnan
So, Matthew, there's two tiers of workers, aren't there? There's the silver workers and then there's the gold workers. And that makes a massive difference whether you're one or the other.
- [27:39]
William Drimple
Yes, I mean, it becomes something like a sort of euphemism for the sort of Jim Crow segregation, which of course was sweeping across southern United States. And visitors to Panama would say, it's very much south of the Mason Dixon line in terms of the setup there. And everyone assumed that all the Americans were southerners, which of course they weren't at all originally. It's non skilled workers get paid in silver and skilled workers get paid in gold. And that's something they inherited from the railway and so on. But very soon this becomes a sort of way to segregate the workforce. So every shop, every drinking fountain, every toilet, every post office has separate entrances for gold and silver. There's no sort of pretense that these are separate but equal facilities. A shocking example from schools that were set up. They originally sort of mixed, but then this is a gradual process. The whites are taken and set up in different schools to everyone else. In 1909, there were 17 pupils per teacher in the white schools. In the black schools it was 1 to 115.
- [28:44]
Matthew Parker
Crikey.
- [28:45]
William Drimple
And in every way they set up hotels and restaurants for the white workforce and they do for the black workforce as well. But in the black workforce, there no tables or chairs. You have to sort of stand with your food. And there's many, many examples like this that really made it clear that this was really sort of stratified racist system, you know, very unlike anything that Panama had experienced before for many Americans, you know, a severe embarrassment.
- [29:16]
Matthew Parker
The experience of some of these workers, I mean, apart from where they're housed and how their loved ones are educated and all of that, is that they are facing such danger at work. So I mean, there was the guy that you quote in your book, Alfred Dottan, who's a West Indian worker, talks about this. He says, I shall never forget the trainloads of dead men being carted away daily as if they were so much lumber, it was a living hell. You talk about, you know, sort of cartfuls of limbless amputees who were taken away from the scene and, you know, yellow fever, Okay. I mean, and Gorgas has done some amazing work here, but I'm guessing that the West Indian workers are still having to face it down pretty much themselves.
- [29:55]
William Drimple
Yes. I mean, a lot of them, as we suggested earlier, had some immunity to yellow fever. Rather sickeningly. The biggest killer of West Indians, over 5,000 of the workers died, was viral pneumonia, which was caused directly by their very poor diet. The fact that a lot of them were sort of weakened by malnutrition. But also for the white workforce, there were these laundries and there were these drying rooms because, remember, Panama is incredibly wet. So you would return back from work absolutely soaked to the skin. But none of these were laid on for the West Indian workers.
- [30:32]
Anita Arnan
So they're putting on wet clothes and.
- [30:34]
William Drimple
Sleeping in wet clothes, putting on wet clothes. And thousands of them died from pneumonia. Not one single white person died of the disease.
- [30:44]
Anita Arnan
Which brings us, Matthew, to the gorge of your title, Hell's Gorge, the Culebra Cut. This is the last great challenge faced by the engineers as this canal becomes closer and closer to reality. Tell us about it.
- [31:01]
William Drimple
Well, this is the nine mile stretch going through the Continental Divide, which is.
- [31:05]
Anita Arnan
A mountain range, just to make that.
- [31:06]
William Drimple
Clear, the rocky spine of the Americas and something like three quarters of the exclusive total excavation came from just those nine miles. There was a huge amount to do and it was incredibly difficult. The more they dug, the more the rock slid. If you talk to anyone, any engineer who's running some big, big, really big program like a bridge, a tunnel or airport, whatever, they will say the biggest cause of delays or overruns is unforeseen ground circumstances. And Panama had this absolutely in spades because of its history of sort of up above the sea, below the sea, the volcanoes. It was the most chaotic geology that anyone had ever come across. So you dig, you dig something and you'd expose some rock to the air and it would crumble and then everything would come crashing in and it was just landslide after landslide. That was one of the problems they had.
- [31:59]
Anita Arnan
Just to give the figures that you have in your book, the trench of the Culebra Cut is more than 290ft wide, 10 stories deep, over the length of something like 130 football fields. And they're using pretty basic equipment, better than what the French had, but still not, you know, at all what A modern engineer would have at their disposal.
- [32:21]
William Drimple
Yeah, they had much better material than the French that was established. If you sort of time travel back and you went to Hell's Gorge and you stood there, you know, towards the end of the construction period, I think the first thing you'd be struck by was the noise because you've got, you know, hundreds of pneumatic drills, you've got explosions from dynamite going off, you've got hundreds of trains, whistles, you've got. And all of this bounces off the rocky sides of the, you know, amplified by the. The rocky sides of the Big Ditch. And in the rainy season it was just muddy, you know, sticky mud. And in the dry season it could reach 50 degrees centigrade down there where you could sort of hardly breathe to work. And it was incredibly dangerous. The dynamite technology is fairly primitive and, you know, it can go wrong. And on one occasion there was an explosion that killed 23 people and injured 60. And a West Indian who saw it said flesh was hanging on the faraway trees. It was something terrible and awkward to look at. So these accidents are happening all of the time. And the Americans, they actually blamed the West Indians for a lot of this. They'd do an autopsy and they'd weigh the brain and measure the skull and conclude that West Indians had a very undeveloped sense of danger.
- [33:37]
Anita Arnan
Eugenics at the.
- [33:39]
William Drimple
A lot of the Americans were sympathetic to the West Indians. There's one who visited one of the main hospital's black wards, which is obviously situated on the least favorable side of the building, as you'd expect. And he described sturdy black men in pajamas sitting on the verandas or in wheelchairs, some with one leg gone, some with both. One could not help but wonder how it feels to be hopelessly ruined in body early in life for helping to dig a ditch for a foreign power that, however well it may treat you materially, cares not a whistle blast more for you than for its old, worn out locomotives rusting away in the jungle.
- [34:11]
Matthew Parker
What a beautiful bit of writing. That's amazing.
- [34:14]
Anita Arnan
So after all these years, with a death toll now reaching 5,600 of whom only 350 were white, which is a very telling statistic. The canal reaches its conclusion in 1914. There's two. They're coming from two sides and they meet in the middle. Is that right, Matthew?
- [34:35]
William Drimple
Yeah. There's two steam shovels actually, back in 1913. They meet at the bottom of the. What is going to be the final depth of the culebra cut in the meantime. So temporary Dams have been built at either end to keep it, keep the water out. They've built the biggest dam ever built at Gatun which solves the problem of the Chagas river and creates this, the largest man made lake ever seen Lake Gatun until that time. And then in 1914, they blast away the dam holding back the lake and it rushes through the cut and the two seas are joined together.
- [35:10]
Anita Arnan
Magnificent moment.
- [35:12]
William Drimple
There were cheers, there were tears and there was lots of celebrations. And they had planned this great opening ceremony for August 1914 when the International fleet of warships would assemble, including the Oregon ship that started all you could argue, started all this in the first place. And then they'd sail through and go to a big exposition in San Francisco. But before that they have a trial run with the first ocean steamer which is called the Ancon. And on board is Claude Mallet who was present at the de Lesseps opening. And also Philippe Bouldou Varilla is on that boat as well.
- [35:48]
Matthew Parker
Yeah, we hadn't heard from him for a while.
- [35:50]
William Drimple
He's there and the practice goes really well. And then news comes through, this is the 3rd of August that Germany has declared war on France.
- [35:59]
Anita Arnan
1914.
- [36:00]
William Drimple
3Rd of August 1914. Bunau Varille announces to the assembled people. Gentlemen, the two consuming ambitions of my life are fulfilled on the same day. The first to see an ocean liner sail through the Panama Canal. The second to see France and Germany at war.
- [36:18]
Anita Arnan
How quickly did he revise, revise that idea. But this is also the kind of beginning of the American century. The Americans have succeeded where the French failed.
- [36:29]
William Drimple
The timing is exquisite. When the Americans have really, they've demonstrated their global power by cutting this canal. They have complete control over the western hemisphere at exactly the time that the old hegemony of Europe is collapsing in itself in this absolutely ruinous war. You can almost smell the tectonic plates sort of shifting. And this is the beginning of the American century.
- [36:54]
Matthew Parker
This is the moment and the American century. You know, this powerful superiority continues. And it's really only until the era of Jimmy Carter in the 1970s that anybody from America thinks, you know, what, what was done was not well done. And actually maybe the people of Panama deserve better. And maybe what, you know, we did our part in it as Americans is not honorable at all. Can you tell us what Carter did and made him hugely unpopular at the time with great swathe to the public?
- [37:23]
William Drimple
As I said, the honeymoon with the Panamanians didn't last very long. And there was endless sort of clashes between Panamanians And Americans, The Americans sort of. They didn't really sort of wear it very lightly. They put flags everywhere and in the zone. And you could only if you're a Panamanian. You can only really go in there if you're a gardener or a maid. It became increasingly humiliating for Panamanians and Panamanian nationalists. And gradually over the. Certainly, so the 50s and the 60s, there are increasingly large and violent protests against the American presence there. And in fact, the Americans had, looking back, even Wilson, you know, in 1914, tried to sort of do a deal with Colombia and pay the money. And Roosevelt was still alive, said, no, you can't do that. But when Roosevelt dies in 1919, then when he's off the scene, the Americans actually pay the Colombians $25 million. It was dubbed Canalimony.
- [38:15]
Matthew Parker
Is that under Wilson? Woodrow Wilson did that. Is it? Or later on.
- [38:18]
William Drimple
That was actually Harding by that stage. Wilson tried to do it, but it was Harding who did it. And it was partly because there'd been great oil discoveries in Colombia and Anglo Dutch Shell was kind of getting in there first. So it was trying to improve relations. But they realized that the Canal Zone was a sort of open soar for relations with the whole of Latin America. And the UN condemned it. And, you know, as early as Eisenhower and certainly Ford, Nixon, Johnson, they all knew that something had to change. That this treaty. That the treaty with Panama was absolutely shocking.
- [38:48]
Matthew Parker
A travesty.
- [38:49]
William Drimple
It was a travesty.
- [38:50]
Anita Arnan
A treaty just to remind people in which not one Panamanian was present when it was signed.
- [38:55]
Matthew Parker
A Frenchman who, you know, blown a huge amount of money, was pretty much bankrupt. And Americans.
- [39:01]
William Drimple
Yeah, yeah. And so. So. So Carlos is there. And in Panama, there's President Turellos, who's the. Who's the military dictator. And as I said in 64, there was this awful. There was. It's all about a flag. And, you know, a lot of people were killed. And the Panamanian authorities didn't support the white zoning community at all. And so it had kind of become untenable. I mean, you have to realize that a lot. A lock canal is really vulnerable. It doesn't take much to blow a couple of locks. And the whole of Lake Gatun flows out into the Atlantic.
- [39:32]
Matthew Parker
Oh, Wedge. A big tanker in there. I mean, we've seen that.
- [39:35]
William Drimple
We saw the chaos caused by a tanker in Suez, Strait of Hormuz. So that would be disastrous for America more than anyone else is the biggest, biggest use of the canal. And Torreos described. Described the canal as vulnerable as a newborn Baby. And the American military had been saying, well, since 64, they said, look, if the canal is in a hostile population, it will take 100,000 soldiers to defend it. So it's just not on. So Carter had to do this deal. Obviously, the Zonians were appalled and they lobbied hard, and they had a great effect on US Public opinion, who were very opposed to the treaty that agreed to end the zone in 79 and then hand the canal back in 99, and it went to a single vote. And Reagan, of course, exploited this in 76 in the Republican primaries, which he lost, saying, we built the canal, we own it, we don't want to give it back. And this is why Trump says political dog whistle, because it really galvanized the right, and it led to big midterm elections, and it led to a landslide for Reagan, who was never going to do anything about it because the grownups knew that this treaty had to happen.
- [40:40]
Anita Arnan
Do you think the same is true of Trump, or do you think Trump is quite crazy enough to send some troops in and retake the canal?
- [40:48]
William Drimple
When I saw his announcement, on whatever channel it was, that 38,000 people of our people had died in the canal, I just thought, this is deranged. I know you can't say that about the elected political leader of our closest ally, but this is deranged. Did no one check this before it went out? But I guess that's his appeal. It's sort of unfiltered.
- [41:04]
Anita Arnan
How many would the real figure be, in your view?
- [41:06]
William Drimple
As you said, sort of 350, if that refers to Americans, which I'm sure it does. And so if he can be that sort of off kilter, maybe. But, you know, as I said, if it's, you know, the military are going to say to him, as they did say to Carter and to, you know, Nixon and everyone else, you can't defend the Lock Canal against a hostile population or in a war zone because it's too vulnerable.
- [41:28]
Matthew Parker
I mean, Trump's concession speech in March, taking a more conciliatory tone, was, the Panama Canal was built by Americans, for Americans, not for others. But others could use it. We might let others use it.
- [41:41]
William Drimple
Yeah, I suppose that's true to an extent. You know, I think American commerce and American military was absolutely the priority.
- [41:47]
Matthew Parker
Yeah, I mean, it's also interesting. Thank you so much for taking us through this. I mean, you are the ultimate navigator.
- [41:54]
Anita Arnan
We must get you back for your other books in due course.
- [41:57]
Matthew Parker
Absolutely. You're welcome anytime.
- [41:59]
William Drimple
Yes, my most recent book, One Fine Day, which is about the British Empire and its maximum territorial extent in September 1923, which is a fascinating story.
- [42:08]
Matthew Parker
I feel a Matthew recall coming up on the horizon.
- [42:11]
William Drimple
It will be a great pleasure.
- [42:12]
Matthew Parker
We are out of time, so till the next time we meet. It is goodbye from me, Anita Arnan.
- [42:18]
Anita Arnan
And goodbye from me, William Durimple.
- [42:25]
William Drimple
You say you'll never join the Navy, never climb Mount Fuji on a port visit or break the sound barrier. Joining the Navy sounds crazy. Saying never actually is. Learn why@navy.com America's Navy forged by the Sea Support for this podcast and the following message comes from America's Navy. The Navy offers new graduates hands on training and experience in careers like computer science, aviation and medicine, plus education and sign on bonuses. Parents help your grads start their career today. @navy.com.
- [43:02]
David Olusoga
It's David Ulusoga from Journey Through Time. Here's that clip that we mentioned earlier. If you look at all of the accounts of the fire at this point, as we get to the end of Sunday the 2nd, the 1st day, this fire is not behaving in any way the way fires traditionally did in London. And there are some people who've argued that it was becoming a firestorm, that the heat and the wind and the movement of air caused by the fire was feeding. It was becoming, becoming self sustaining, as it were. John Eveling, who's a great writer and a diarist of this moment, he talks about the sound of the fire. He said it was like thousands of chariots driving over cobblestones. There are descriptions in Pepys and elsewhere of this great arc of fire in the sky. I mean, imagine that everything around you is colored by the flames, yellows and oranges, and above you is this thick black smoke. This is a city, you know, these are streets you walk. This is a place that's deeply familiar to you and it looks completely otherworldly. It looks like another, like a sort of landscape you've never seen before. People describe the fire almost as if it's supernatural.
- [44:17]
Sarah Churchwell
If you want to hear the full episode, listen to Journey Through Time. Wherever you get your podcasts.