![]() ![]() ![]() Supremely confident of the benefit this project will bring humanity, and the honor it will earn for France, de Lesseps in 1879 organizes and closely controls the Congris International d'Ytudes du Canal Interocyanique to legitimize his plans for a sea level, lockless canal. De Lesseps repeats the process of gathering financial backers, and through explorer Lucien Wyse, buys from Columbia the rights to build a canal across Panama. Various routes across Panama, Nicaragua and Mexico are put forth, but no systematic surveying is undertaken before 1870, when the Navy Department commissions several missions, most notably the Darien Expedition, led by Thomas Oliver Selfridge.įerdinand de Lesseps steps in, fresh from his victory over the deserts of Egypt, joining the Mediterranean and Red Seas, the most impressive engineering project to date. The United States shows interest in a navigable connection between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans from the days of Thomas Jefferson, negotiates access to the Isthmus of Panama with Columbia (the Bidlack Treaty, 1846) and builds a small Panama Railroad, just as fast transportation to the West Coast becomes crucial during the Gold Rush. The Path Between the Seas combines a wealth of detail on politics, economics, medicine and engineering in showing how a handful of remarkable Frenchmen and Americans direct masses of Caribbean workers in joining the Atlantic and Pacific oceans at Panama. ![]()
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