Empire: World History - 275. The Battle To Build The Panama Canal (Part 3)

Episode Date: July 23, 2025

What madcap schemes did French engineers use to drum up support to build the Panama Canal in the 1880s? How did the Gold Rush affect the flow of travellers through Panama looking for a shortcut? Who was the eccentric Frenchman Ferdinand de Lesseps and why did he fly a hot air balloon over Paris to support the building of the Panama Canal? William and Anita are joined by Matthew Parker, author of Hell’s Gorge: The Battle To Build The Panama Canal, to discuss the nineteenth-century history of Panama and the French campaign to drill a sea canal through the isthmus. Empire Club: Become a member of the Empire Club to receive early access to miniseries, ad-free listening, early access to live show tickets, bonus episodes, book discounts, our exclusive newsletter, and access to our members’ chatroom on Discord! Head to empirepoduk.com to sign up. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com. Email: [e-mail] Instagram: @empirepoduk Blue Sky: @empirepoduk X: @empirepoduk Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Anouska Lewis Executive Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 podcasts, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. And welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Duremberg. 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 travelling 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 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. Completely wonderful book and just beautifully written, amazingly researched.

You just butted in before the big build-up of the author. Wait, it is a wonderful book. I felt we needed to pick it up at 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 to continents, but it is such a mountainous area. And to have the human Kutzpah, 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 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? 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. I haven't been lucky enough yet, but I will be going now. 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 lots, which were built 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, at this sort of steps going down. 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. 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 narrow isthmus. And it looked so easy. Well, just clear out there's little blockage out of the way. On a flat map, it looks easy. On a flat map, it looks easy. 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 canalitis. 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. Well, I mean, one of the quotes that made

me laugh was, I mean, as you say, hundreds of years ago, ever since there was imperial travel, people have dreamt or have this infection of canalitis. But when, you know, 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. It's a lovely quake. God would have wanted a canal. He would have put a canal there. 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 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 ships.

And that meant 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. 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 is particularly longing to hear more about Scotsman. Oh, God.

And 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 pound a colonel. 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. Well, yes, William Patterson, 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 show.

He was part buccaneer, part missionary. There's a two van diagrams that only rarely meet. 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, and which would be a trade entrepoux. 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 established this, we will have the gates to the Pacific, the keys to the universe. Which you kind of was right about. And yet the whole thing was a total. catastrophe. We haven't given the date. This is 1690, what is it? This is the 16th, 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, might have appealed. But there was also a lot of, 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 colonising efforts.

So he starts raising money. But the English don't really like. You know, they're sort of vested interest, including the East India Company, who are not keen on it. And so the English investment is withdrawn. So it becomes a patriotic imperative for the Scots. And half the capital in Scotland has sunk into it. Yeah, 400,000 pounds or something, which is basically all of the capital, something that 20% of all currency in circulation is put into this. And they sent a ship with like 1,200 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 1,500 Bibles in English. Yes.

Which isn't necessarily what the local cuna or whoever they're going to be trading with wants. Not the greatest gift-giving mentality from the Scars. Yeah. It's an absolute catastrophe. Paterson's wife is one of the first to die

and they suffered starvation and illness and sort of internal dissent. And very soon they abandoned the colony and the survivors go to New York. But the idea does not die, doesn't it, Matthew? Because quite soon after that, both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson are very, very keen to take this idea up. Yes, Benjamin Franklin, when he was in Paris as the United Colonies representative there, he became gripped with the idea of a transismian 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 Gargaz proposed would bring world peace through enhanced commerce and communication. If only he knew. So this is very much the idealistic. 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 and 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 Patterson. 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 currencies wiped out, this contributes to the end of the union. The end of an independent Scotland is the other way of looking at it. So it's an early but spectacular casualty of the lure of the isthmus. 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 rumours of it, because 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 a 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. There's not an empty sort of swirling their retail because people are. Technology is moving on. People are making strides in engineering and canals appear to be the thing of the future. Absolutely. I mean, there'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. They'd been four or five surveys, what sort of explorers going up and down the Isthm 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. Yes, just connecting back to Scotland, please. Tell us about the Caledonian Canal. 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 as 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 a 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. 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

hard. I mean, just get your head around that. Rather than traversing your own country, it's easier to pulling yourself into the ocean, get to the isthmus, cross. the isthmus somehow and then go up the other side of the country. 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 of stupendous achievement. One thing we haven't talked about there 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? Well, Panama was originally part of sort of Bolivar's Grand Columbia, which included Venezuela and Ecuador.

Just explain who Bolivar is. Bolivar, they're sort of one of the leaders of the independence movement for South America against Spanish rule. Mixed race and an extraordinary fighter and incredibly charismatic figure. 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 peter to a hall. The Bolivar was very aware of Panama, and actually he, in 1826, his Latin American conference, he held it 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

stopped the treasure ships. So then Panama loses its commercial position. Just explain that again, Matthew, who's Admiral Vernon and what's going on here? This was actually a period of official war with Spain, because obviously in the Caribbean, war didn't necessarily need to be declared. This is the British war with Spain. Yes, that's right. So Admiral Vernon lands 3,000 men and Portobello, and his aim is to cross the Isthmus to Panama City, as Morgan had 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. There was this amazing fair at Nomba de Dios. It became a transshipment for all over the America. all that's gone. So by the 1820s, the Panamanians are saying, look, we need some sort of a canal or a road or something to restore our prosperity. 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, 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, cockpets, 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. I mean, we sort of gets 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 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 the world.

many ways. There's never much truck given in it. I haven't seen any in the French, the American. In fact, we'll come to it in a little while, but Mary Secault 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. to go via Panama and cross the Istner. And the Gold Rush of 1848 is transformative, is it not?

Can you tell us a bit more about that? We should tell people that we've done an episode on this. If you want to listen to a whole episode on the California Gold Rush, go to episode 162 of Empire Pod. And you can have the whole story, but Matthew, carry on. 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 Cologne. You can cross over to Panama City, and you can be in San Francisco and get in there before everyone else. 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, completely transformed by this. Transformed, but also rather swamped, because Mary Seacol, who at that time, is watching these prospectors. And what does she call them, muleteers? Is it's how you said? Mouleteers. 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, planning 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? 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 bars 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 Shagras, which is where they land in on Cologne. Which is not a big place for 200 prostitutes to be working morning, noon, night. 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 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. And while, you know, you're painting a picture of the Wild Wild West, 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 Seacol, 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 travellers were stricken with as soon as almost as soon as they arrive. Yes, Panama is host to all sorts of diseases and particularly for new incomers who bring sort of a lack of defences 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 Seacol, she was from Jamaica, and she'd been in Jamaica in, there was a terrible cholera outbreak 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 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 of people at that time. To the point where, and so for those of you who don't know who Mary Seacall was, I mean, we're familiar with her here, but she was mixed race. And so they would say of her, when somebody got sick on the Christmas, 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 and 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 they can withstand disease. I mean, they had immunity to some things, but not everything, did they? Absolutely not. It was a myth, really, that people from the West Indian Islands were immune to tropical diseases. It's actually not the case. Possibly with yellow fever, they 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.

I mean, cholera, typhoid, I mean, they took lives 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? 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 rushes 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 costs something like $9 million and something between six and nine thousand 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 by the company. that's standard. But then this rather sort of do-good American vicar or something causes a huge stir saying,

oh, American company is a drug dealing, whatever. So they take the opium away, which causes chaos, an absolute misery. And a lot of the Chinese actually commit suicide, either by drowning themselves or by impaling themselves on sharpened bamboo sticks. They go through withdrawal, basically. They're going cold turkey. They're going massive 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 has completed in 85. So let's take a break here and come back after the break.

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. 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.

Well, there's sort of lessons learned and not learned from the railway construction. It's a real breakthrough for a Panama Canal. They've found the lowest point in the continental divide at a place called Culebra, 275 feet. And this is, of course, of this rocky spine that runs, I guess, from the Andes through Central and, America and into the Rockies and the Appalachians. And this is like any canal's got to 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 importantly. 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. And the majority of people who worked for the French and who will work for the Americans will be West Indians. Is that right?

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 that. imported by the Brits or did they come with their own volition or what's the method they get there? What would happen is that the railway company will send recruiters to Kingston who will set up offices and sign people up and ship them in. 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 Leszips, he sounds fascinating.

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 been going on from the European 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 Lasseps, who is absolutely world famous for his amazing achievement of building the Suez Canal that opened in 1869. It was built right through the 1850s, wasn't it? That's right, 120 miles, which changed the world. It made India 6,000 miles closer. I mean, it altered

the geography of the world. And Dolesse is portrayed in cartoons as Hercules separating the continents of Africa and Asia. And the idea of the Suez Canal, it 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 revenge, 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 Dolesc is very much a 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 series thing going. Always good to have a Pasha on board. Yes. After the Franco-Prussian War, there's an obsession with geography in France, and that 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 one 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-ismian canal. And lots of people go, oh, you know, his son, Charles, who's a very different character, says, look, come on, Dad, you're 70.

Leave it, dad, leave it. Not worth it. 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, you know, asked to fight another one to win it, why shouldn't he take that on?

You know, he wanted this sort of second act. So he announces, right, I'm going to build a trans-isimine canal. And explorers are sent out to the Istmos, and they go all the routes that have been explored before, going back to Alexander von Humboldt, you know, in 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 the letter. So he's just, for him, difficulties are things to be overcome, not to actually sort of be warned off by. You know, he's that sort of character. Because he is Hercules. He's, he's been portrayed as Hercules. He believes he's. these hercules, yeah. 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, these huge brood of very photogenic children. You know, he's perfect fodder for all the new illustrated magazines that are sort of coming out at this time. So 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, DeLessips 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. A lot 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. 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 lot canal where you've got, in a sense, a staircase of canal

segments. Is that right? 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. So you're making a much. You're making a much bigger task for yourself. Yes, you're making a what turned out to be crazy, crazily ambitious project. And what did he intend to pay for this grand scheme? I mean, how is he going to get the money? Well, like with Suez, he sells sort of bonds to investors and to the public. And that's how he paid for the Suez Canal. 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, The first issue, he issues bonds trying to raise, I think it was 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, Doleseps is too old. Two, Panama is too full of diseases.

You know, it wasn't a secret. The 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, won't the Americans just come down and shut it down? Yes, give us a little bit of an insight there, because this is long after the Monroe Doctin has already a thing. Monroe says he doesn't want Europeans interfering in America in the 1820s. We're now in the 1880s, and America is a rising power. What do they think of this cocky French attempt to one-up them?

Well, they're absolutely appalled. I mean, the French have a particular bad reputation because of obviously what happened in Mexico. You know, with Napoleon III 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 de Lesop says, well, I'm a private company. I'm not a country interfering. So anyway, in order to address these four issues, Delessette 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.

Gosh, so this is PR. I mean, he's taking them for PR purposes. 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 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 fated. and praised and given dinners. Because 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.

This is a Trumpian claim. 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. It has a dinner with Gladstone and Disraeli both give him speeches in his honour. But the British don't want anything to do with it. The Times says it's magnificent, but it's 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. 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 good of humanity. So it's sort of like that as well as a patriotic duty. We should say that with the mention of Gladstone and Israeli, that this is soon after the British have bought a controlling interest in the Suez Canal, which happens in 1875. Is that right? 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 are, had said this Panama. He's too old. It's too dangerous. They're saying, who's looking virile today? He's looking madly fine today. Now they're all saying, this is going to be for the glory of France. This is going to be

the most spectacular achievements. One of the great features of this podcast. We have over and again these stories of the press being completely literally available for sale. Almost every point of history. Yes. Or the editors suddenly become directors of the canal company. Shocker. 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.

So he tries again with another Bond Lord and his other sort of spectacular PR. He had hot air balloons floating around Paris with these huge banners saying, buy this stock. 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.

Wow. He could have raised twice the money and he really should have done at that point. 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? 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 we might come back to called Claude Mallet. He's there. 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. Oh, my Lord, that's hilarious. The less that young daughter gets the pickax and does the symbolic first little sort of chip out of the Panama Canal. Into a champagne box? A champagne box full of dirt. I mean, he is one of history's nutters. And I, you know, I like you, William, quite fascinated and becoming even more obsessed.

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. 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 DeLessup's dreams come crashing down in rather spectacular fashion. It's a scandal.

So to listen to that episode right now, go to Empire Pod. UK.com, that's EmpirePodukuk.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 Arnden. A goodbye from me, William Durember.