Panama fever: the battle to build the canal, by Matthew Parker
By George Rosie

THEREareplansafootto spend many billions of dollars widening the Panama Canal. This engineering glory of the early 20thcenturyisnowtoonarrowto accommodate many of the huge ships that shuttle between Asia, America and Europe. As a result, vast quantities of crude oil and fancyelectronicstake the long way round, via Cape Horn, where the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans dangerously collide. Avoiding the waters off Cape Horn has been a seaman'spriorityeversinceEuropeans found their way to America.

WhichmakesMatthewParker'slatest book on the building of the great canal all the more timely. The Panama Canal is a vital part of the planet's man-made infrastructure. Without it, life for everyone East and West would get much more expensive.

And Parker does a first-rate job of telling its story. The idea had been around since 1513, when a Spanish colonist called Vasco Nunez de Balboa hacked his way across the isthmus to report back to the King of Spain that,whiletherewasnonaturalstrait between the two great oceans, "yet it might not be impossible to make one".

TheideaplayeditspartinWilliam Patterson's ill-starred Darien scheme in the 1690s and was considered, among others, by Thomas Jefferson, and the poet Heinrich Goethe. But it was the French who first took up the shovel and started to dig. In 1882 Ferdinand de Lesseps, the engineer who had carved out the Suez canal between the Mediterranean and Red Sea, was handed the job of repeating his success at Panama. The venture collapsed after thousands of men died, and vast sums of money were lost.

WhentheAmericanspickedupthe shovel at the beginning of the 20th century it was for reasons of military strategy as muchascommercialadvantage.Their empire was growing fast. The Philippines, Puerto Rico, Hawaii and Cuba had all fallen within Uncle Sam's influence and the need for a fast route between the Caribbean and the Pacific was pressing.

In 1914 the great dream was realised and thecanalwasopened.Parkerpaysdue credit to the contribution of American doctors. "Crucial to the morale of the white Americanworkforcewasthedefeatof yellow fever and the taming of malaria, made possible by discoveries that largely postdated the de Lesseps effort."

Therewereotheradvantages,too. Americansteamshovels,forexample, could shift earth three or four times faster than the French variety. But technology notwithstanding, much of the work was done by sheer human sweat. Thousands of labourerswereimportedfromBritish colonies in the West Indies. Barbados alone, with a population of 200,000, sent more than45,000peopletolabourin Panama. The project that Parker rightly describes as one of "history'sgreatestengineering marvels"was largely built by low-paid black folk.

America's tightly-run Canal Zone lasted until 1999 when the area was handed over to the state of Panama, to be run by the Autoridad del Canal de Panama (ACP).

"Opponents of the 1999 handover argued that the Panamanians would be unable to run the canal efficiently," writes Parker, "but theyhavebeenprovedwrong.Canal improvements have continued steadily and threats to the water supply, so vital for the huge locks, have been addressed." Indeed it is the ACP which is behind the plans to buildnewlocks, starting later this yeartohandletheworld's maritime behemoths.

Matthew Parker has done his subject proud, and his book is for anyone with aninterest in the making of the modern world.