10 of History's Deadliest Construction Projects 10 of History's Deadliest Construction Projects Go to permalink The Panama Canal opened 100 years ago this month , one of the greatest engineering achievements in history. It was also one of the greatest sacrifices of human life in the name of construction, but tragically, it was far from the most deadly project in modern history. Advertisement It's not always easy to compare one project to another, since each project measures "deaths" differently—some include disease due to working conditions, for example. And though construction has become far safer today, worker deaths are still common. New reports estimate that 4,000 migrant workers might die building eight stadiums for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar—which would place it far ahead of most major infrastructural projects in history. Is this the price we pay for progress? Here's a sampling of projects—not a complete list—finished since 1900 using numbers reported by McGraw Hill's Engineering News Report , along with the explanations for how record-keepers decided upon those numbers.

Panama Canal, 1880-1914 Illustration by artist Charles Graham Advertisement One of the largest and most ambitious engineering projects in modern history, the Panama Canal was also one of the deadliest, at 30,609 deaths. France managed the construction starting in 1880, which likely saw a death count of about 25,000 people, most killed not by construction incidents but by yellow fever and malaria. (The French would only officially record deaths that took place at their hospitals, which was a very small number overall.) After the U.S. took over construction in 1904, figures collected on the canal's site show that 5,609 workers died of diseases and accidents. A majority of the men who died under U.S. management were natives to the area. Only 350 of the U.S. deaths were white Americans. White Sea-Baltic Sea Canal, 1931-1933 As punishment for their crimes against the government, Russian gulag prisoners were forced to dig this canal under extremely deplorable conditions, using primitive tools and inadequate safety equipment.

At the end of the project, 12,000 prisoners were freed for their work, yet an estimated 12,000 prisoners died during construction. The finished 141-mile canal runs through Russia from the Baltic Sea to the inland White Sea, which allows goods to travel all the way to Siberian ports in the Arctic. Burma-Siam Railway, 1942-1943 Advertisement Sponsored Nicknamed the "Death Railway" for obvious reasons, this 258-mile railroad was built by Japan to get its troops and supplies to Burma during World War II. In addition to the 100,000 local residents who lost their lives working on the project, it's estimated that 60,000 Allied POWs were used as forced labor and at least 12,399 of those soldiers died, although the figure may be higher than 16,000. Many soldiers starved to death, while others were subjected to tremendous brutality at their hands of their captors. One of the bridges built during construction was immortalized in the book The Bridge on the River Kwai, which has been criticized for not accurately portraying how bad the conditions were.

Karakoram Highway, 1959-78 This 905-mile highway that connects the city of Abbottabad, Pakistan, with Kashgar, China, is the highest-elevation paved international road on the planet: At the Pakistan-Chinese border in Kashmir, the road reaches 15,520 feet above sea level. It also travels over some of the most treacherous and unstable mountains on Earth, so many of the 892 deaths were caused by landslides, which are still an issue for drivers today. A devastating landslide in 2010 created a lake which flooded a Pakistani valley and closed part of the highway. Aswan Dam, 1960-70 Over 30,000 workers contributed to the building of the Aswan Dam in Egypt, and 500 lost their lives. This diversion of the Nile River was a huge power move for the country's economic prospects, even though the environmental and cultural impacts on the area were devastating—100,000 people were relocated and many archeological sites were lost. Safety conditions improved considerably after the Soviet Union kicked in equipment and financial support in exchange for a stake.

Hawks Nest Tunnel, 1927 Image via Hawks Nest Tunnel Movie Advertisement A simple diversion tunnel for the New River in West Virginia turned into one of the deadliest industrial disasters in the U.S. due to poor health and safety regulations. After workers discovered silica in the rock they were told to mine it as a by-product of tunnel construction, however, they were never given any masks or protective gear. Hundreds of workers developed silicosis due to the long-term exposure of silica dust in their lungs. Although the official number of deaths is 109, which is transcribed on historical markers, the number could be as high as 1,000 due to the fact that many sick workers simply abandoned the site. Hoover Dam, 1931-1935 Photo by the Bureau of Reclamation Advertisement Harnessing the power of the Colorado River and ensuring water security for the west was one of the most dramatic infrastructural events the U.S. has ever undertaken, but for such a large project, the loss of life was relatively low.

The dam's records puts the official count at 96, however, that does not include deaths from heat, cardiac arrest, or other factors that may have been exacerbated from building a dam in the desert. The 96 deaths include men who died from "industrial fatalities:" drowning, blasting, falling rocks or slides, falls from the canyon walls, or truck accidents. The dam's site also refutes another urban legend: Due to the dam's structure made from interlocking concrete blocks, there are no bodies buried in the dam. Los Angeles Aqueduct, 1908-1913 Image via Water and Power Advertisement One of most audacious water infrastructure projects on American soil was designed to deliver water from the Owens Valley in the Sierras to a thirsty and growing Los Angeles, 419 miles away. 11 construction divisions began work simultaneously, carving out reservoirs, tunnels, canals and hydroelectric plants, as well as the rail, telephone, and power infrastructure to support it all. Conditions were often difficult for the workers, who were in remote locations with little access to medical services—they often had to use mules due to the treacherous terrain—yet only 43 deaths were documented during the entire five-year project.

New York City Third Water Tunnel, 1970 to present The largest infrastructure project in New York state history is currently tunneling below New Yorker's feet to provide a third connection to the upstate water supply (we paid it a visit last year ). The project also serves as a way to illustrate improvements in safety and technology over the last few decades: The earliest tunnels were created by blasting and drilling, while the new tunnels are being carved out by a tunnel boring machine. The 24 deaths include one boy who died while exploring water pipes which had been left uncovered in the Bronx. St. Gotthard Road Tunnel, 1969-1980 Photo by Raimond Spekking Advertisement At the time it was completed, this 10-mile tunnel in Switzerland was the longest road tunnel in the world. Tragically, 19 people died working on the tunnel—which was created to connect central Switzerland with Milan, Italy through the Alps, providing a faster and safer year-round alternative to the winding Gotthard Pass. It's not to be confused with the 35.4-mile Gotthard Base Tunnel , a rail tunnel nearby which will be the longest in the world when it opens in 2017.

Eight workers have died on that project. Top image: Panama Canal in 1907 by H.C. White Co, from the Library of Congress Gear from Kinja Deals WGBH American Experience . Panama Canal . The Workers | PBS General Article: The Workers In the decade-long American effort to construct the Panama Canal, tens of thousands of laborers worked, sacrificed and died while building the largest canal the world had seen to date. Combating harsh terrain, disease, and deplorable living conditions, workers from around the world held a variety of different jobs in the canal zone, their pay and quality of life often directly related to their ethnicity. Long before the U.S. attempt at building the Panama Canal began in 1904, workers from around the world had been coming to the isthmus. In the early 1850s, the Panama Railroad Company imported thousands of African and Chinese workers to lay the tracks for the railway lines that would make the construction of the Panama Canal possible. Most would die from malaria or suicide. Throughout both the building of the Panama Railroad in the 1850s and the French excavation 30 years later, workers from Jamaica were recruited heavily.

In 1881, French recruiter Charles Gadpaille ran advertisements throughout Jamaica, offering wages much higher than average on the Caribbean island. The campaign showed the "Colón Man," a Jamaican who had gone to work in Panama, returning to his home country a rich and prosperous man. This ideal caught on quickly in the largely working-class country, and drove a huge migration of Jamaicans to Panama in the latter half of the 19th century. But the promise of riches was an empty one: in reality, West Indians earned $0.10 an hour and the work was treacherous. During the eight-year French excavation period, of the more than 20,000 workers who died, most were West Indians. Strikes proved fruitless, as there were always more men eager to take the jobs. Despite the heavy recruitment of laborers from the West Indies, Colombia, and Cuba, only one in five workers stayed on the job longer than a year. The U.S. Gathers a Workforce When the United States announced its plan to build in Panama, promises of grandeur breathed fresh life into workers recruited to the area.

"You here who are doing your work well in bringing to completion this great enterprise are standing exactly as a soldier of the few great wars of the world's history," Teddy Roosevelt announced to workers during his trip to Panama in 1906. "This is one of the great works of the world." In December of that year, two years into the project, there were already more than 24,000 men working on the Panama Canal. Within five years, the number had swelled to 45,000. These workers were not all from the United States, but from Panama, the West Indies, Europe, and Asia. The base of the workforce, however, once again came from the West Indies. After experiencing the empty promises of the French in the 1880s, most Jamaican workers were unwilling to try their luck on the American canal project, and so in 1905 recruiters turned their attention to the island of Barbados. West Indian labor was cheaper than American or European labor, and a West Indian worker was eager to believe a rags-to-riches tale spun by a recruiter.

The "Colón Man" was reborn as representatives from Panama boasted of a rewarding work contract, including free passage to Panama and a repatriation option after 500 working days. By the end of the year, 20 percent of the 17,000 canal workers were Barbadian. West Indians recruited with promises of wealth and success confronted a very different reality upon arrival at the Isthmus. The dense and untamed jungle that covered the 50 miles between coasts was filled with deadly snakes. The venom of the coral snake attacked the nervous system, and a bite from the ten-foot mapana snake caused internal bleeding and organ degeneration. The rainy season, which lasted from May to November, kept workers perpetually wet and coated in mud. Initially, accommodations for canal employees provided little protection against the wet weather or jungle life. The Isthmian Canal Commission (ICC) housed most workers in dilapidated barracks built two decades earlier by the French. Some employees opted instead to pay for rent in one of the two coastal cities, although options there were not much better. Others who could not find housing near their work site pitched tents or lived in old boxcars or barns.

The living conditions exacerbated the poor hygiene in the area, and newcomers quickly learned about the serious threat of disease on what was dubbed "Fever Coast." Smallpox, pneumonia, typhoid, dysentry, hookworm, cutaneous infections, and even the bubonic plague infected workers throughout the American excavation period, but yellow fever was the most treacherous ailment, both physically and mentally. Just the mention of an outbreak caused such panic that defection rates were higher than mortality from the disease itself. Experts predicted that yellow fever would kill hundreds of workers each year. Malaria, while less lethal, was more common. A strain of the disease called "Chagres Fever" led to jaundice, coma, and severe internal hemorrhaging. Even more damaging was its ability to recur after a patient had recovered. Statistics on illness among workers were staggering: in 1906 alone 80% of the total workforce was hospitalized for malaria. As work on the canal entered its second year, the death toll for laborers was four percent and 22,000 were hospitalized.

Every evening, a train traveled to Mount Hope Cemetery by the city of Colón, its cars brimming with coffins, forcing the men to confront the great odds against their survival. U.S. citizens were used sparingly in Panama because they were both disease-prone and demanded higher wages. In North America, however, the transcontinental railroad had been completed in 1869 and produced many U.S. workers adept at rail jobs: switchmen, signalmen, locomotive drivers, mechanics, electrical engineers, and foremen. Skilled U.S. laborers came to the canal with the promise of a generous pay package that included free benefits and services, 42 paid vacation days and 30 days paid sick leave -- much more than the majority of West Indian canal workers could expect. The local Panamanian citizens were initially tapped as a logical and cheap source of unskilled labor. Though more resistant to yellow fever than the foreign workers, locals proved to be equally susceptible to malaria and pneumonia. Worse, local laborers suspicious of Americans' power-grabbing ambitions did not prove to be the most enthusiastic workers, earning them a reputation as lazy and irresponsible.

Open hostility between workers ultimately added to Panamanians' dissatisfaction, and they did not make up a large percentage of the work force. Unequal Treatment The apartheid system governed every aspect of a worker's life. The distinction began as a division between "skilled" and "unskilled" laborers, but as time passed it evolved into a purely racial divide. Skilled employees went on the Gold Roll and were paid in gold coins. These workers earned paid sick and vacation time and were housed in better accommodations than their unskilled counterparts. Those on the Silver Roll, the unskilled workers, were paid in balboas, or local Panamanian silver. West Indian workers, plentiful in numbers and eager to work, could be paid 10 cents an hour -- half of the salary of a European or white U.S. worker. Over time, the Gold Roll became comprised of white U.S. citizens exclusively, while the workers on the Silver Roll, by far the majority of the workforce by the end of the construction period, were largely non-white. Discrimination extended to living quarters made available to each group of workers.

Barracks were distinctly worse for West Indians than for whites; as many as 72 West Indian men lived in a 50- by 30-foot hut. Mess halls for black workers had no tables or chairs and fed up to 8,000 men a day with unappealing, simple food. Inadequate housing and malnutrition made West Indian workers more vulnerable to injury and disease. Hospitals on the isthmus routinely located their black wards in the worst parts of the buildings. While the average death rate in 1906 was around 4% of the whole labor force, the rate for West Indian workers was closer to 5%. In stark contrast, white workers had a luxurious life in the canal zone. The dismal quality of life in the first years of construction on the Panama Canal had sent American workers away in droves. When the turnover rate of skilled U.S. laborers reached 75% in the summer of 1905, the ICC realized they needed to create incentives for Americans to stay on the isthmus. One of the first projects was building a new cold-storage unit to keep fresh, perishable foods. Then, the ICC set to work improving the living conditions.

In 1906, 2,500 structures were either renovated or built new, including two-story family homes that featured screened-in verandas, modern plumbing, and electricity. A year later, American workers celebrated Independence Day on July 4, 1906 with games, athletic competitions, and dancing. This was the beginning of recreation in the canal zone. Baseball leagues, social clubs, and fraternal organizations sprang up to fill lazy Sundays. By that winter, the canal zone had paved roads, warehouses, dormitories, and dining halls. Attractive enticements to keep white workers on the isthmus became the norm. New cottage homes, public schools, churches and bakeries opened in towns and camps along the route of the canal. Bachelor "hotels," built to house single workers, turned into social gathering places filled with noise and smoke. YMCA clubhouses charged Gold Roll employees $10 a year for access to bowling lanes, billiards tables, chess boards, and a host of organized social events. In 1911, workers published a yearbook titled The Makers of the Panama Canal that contained biographies of selected employees and pictures of clubs and brotherhoods on the isthmus.

By 1913, there were dances and band concerts every Sunday, and nine women's clubs. White workers were encouraged to bring their wives and families to the isthmus with increasingly extravagant incentives. Housing for married workers was provided rent-free, and homes increased in luxury according to a worker's place on the pay scale. In 1908, over 1,000 families were living on the isthmus and the ICC was spending $2.5 million a year for entertainment and games for white workers. The ICC provided nothing, on the other hand, for the accommodation, provisions, or entertainment of Silver Roll employees. The Labor Work on the Panama Canal could be dull and monotonous or deafening and treacherous. Laborers could be tasked to virtually any project in the canal zone, each with unique dangers and each requiring its own set of skills. Perhaps the worst job -- one to which almost all West Indians were assigned at some point -- was dynamiting. The greatest danger lay with the material's instability; it could blow up at any moment or malfunction upon detonation, remaining unignited until exploding later by accident.

Laborers heading out for dynamiting duty frequently carried all their belongings with them, understanding their relatively low odds of a safe return to the barracks. The worst accident to occur during the canal's construction, in fact, was caused by the premature explosion of dynamite in the Bas Obispo cut on December 12, 1908, causing the death of 23 workers and injuring 40 others. The most taxing physical labor was in the excavation of the Culebra Cut. Each day workers moved miles of construction track and filled the 160 spoil trains that ran in and out of the Cut. Landslides occurred in the Cut with little to no warning, often burying workers and equipment within seconds and wiping out months of progress. In 1909, construction of the locks brought a new host of potentially lethal dangers. Eight stories up, riveters worked without safety harnesses on precarious scaffolding, which could become unhooked with any sudden movement. Falling materials would hit other sets of scaffolding on the way down, causing scores of deaths and injuries. A job on the railroad was no easier.

Due to the number of train cars running from multiple directions around the clock, working by the spoil dumps on the rail track required constant vigilance so as to avoid getting run over or hit by a swinging boom. In 1914, 44 employees were killed by railroad accidents. Although the ICC made significant improvements in the second half of the U.S. construction period, treacherous construction methods and deadly diseases took their toll: at least 25,000 workers died during the combined French and U.S. construction periods of the Panama Canal. Panama Canal: Special Features History Of The Panama Canal History Essay History Of The Panama Canal History Essay Published: Last Edited: 23rd March, 2015 This essay has been submitted by a student. This is not an example of the work written by our professional essay writers. The completion of the Panama Canal was the climax of a combined effort of knowledge and American money used to dominate nature. The French failed in their attempt at control over the natural world because they lacked the knowledge of how to fight the environment of Panama, as well as the money to cut a sea-level canal through the jungle.

In addition, when they were given scientific evidence as to how malaria was spread, they did not accept it. The canal could not have been completed by the Americans were it not for the risks taken by them. The threat to human life was great, and the sheer size of the canal project was a great task as well. The Americans succeeded in dominating nature via the completion of the Panama Canal. One of the risks was the environment of Panama, which posed a great problem to the French and Americans. Panama has a tropical environment, with temperatures varying between 75 and 85 degrees. With over 500 rivers, it is a very wet environment, making it very easy for disease to exist. When the French began constructing the Canal, they faced the problem of many diseases, especially malaria and yellow fever. The French word for malaria, paludisme, meant marsh fever. It was widely believed that poisonous marsh gas was the cause of malaria. This belief, which was untrue, was one of the main reasons for the French failure in Panama. Over 22,000 French workers died, mostly due to disease, during the construction of the Panama Canal. There were many doctors who found evidence contrary to the belief in bad air.

In 1880, Ferdinand de Lesseps, the builder of the Suez Canal, launched the Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interoceanique, the construction company responsible for building the Panama Canal. That same year, a French doctor stationed in Cuba by the name of Alponse Lavaren discovered small bodies in a malarial blood sample that he deemed to cause the disease. Twenty six years earlier, Lewis Beauperthuy concluded that both yellow fever and malaria were caused by venom injected by mosquitoes. Earlier yet, in 1848, an American named Dr. Josiah Clark Nott mentioned briefly in a paper that malaria and yellow fever were conveyed by insects, and possibly by mosquitoes. However, none of these claims were accepted by the French, and their wrong approach to fighting the diseases in Panama led to so many deaths. Based on their knowledge of the diseases, the French took measures to prevent mortalities. A hospital was built near Panama City, regarded as the best in the tropics. A smaller hospital was also built near Colon, as well as a convalescent sanitarium at Tabago. These were placed under the control of Dr. Louis Campanyo.

Sewage was improved, bodies were quickly disposed of, and quinine was mass-distributed. The French knew that quinine helped bring down fevers caused by yellow fever and malaria, but did not know why. Because the French believed marsh air caused malaria, they dried up swamps and encouraged people to avoid them. However, because no one knew the true cause of the fevers, hospital mortality rates were near 75%, and most sick employees avoided hospitals. Even worse, pans of water, perfect breeding grounds for mosquitoes, were placed next to each hospital bed. There were many other afflictions that killed and sickened French workers, such as typhoid fever, smallpox, pneumonia, dysentery, beriberi, food poisoning, snakebite, and sunstroke. Over 22,000 French workers, most of them natives of Panama, died during the eight years of construction. The Americans learned from the mistakes of the French, and listened to the multitude of scientific evidence which indicated that the mosquito was responsible for malaria and yellow fever. Colonel William Crawford Gorgas, who was appointed Head of Hospitals and Sanitation by the Canal Commission in July 1904, quickly set to work fighting disease.

Vaughan Cornish describes it well: Natives of the [canal] Zone and West Indian negroes are immune from yellow fever, but this swiftly fatal disease has invariably broken out on the Isthmus [of Panama] when a large number of non-immune strangers have gathered thereâ€¦ Heroic measures were adopted; the force of the Sanitation Department was increased to four thousand men; the city of Panama was cleansed and fumigated house by house, the stegomyia [aedes aegypti] mosquito which propogates the disease was exterminated, and the epidemic ceased. Gorgas believed, based on the evidence brought forth by scientists that the Aedes aegypti, a type of mosquito, was the cause of yellow fever, and that anopheles, another type of mosquito, was the cause of malaria. Gorgas' main goal was to eliminate these mosquitoes from the Panama Canal Zone, an area surrounding the canal that was ten miles wide and forty miles long. He divided Panama City into eleven districts and Colon into four. In each district, inspectors searched buildings for mosquitoes and put oil, which was believed to kill mosquito larvae, in stagnant water.

Buildings in which evidence of mosquitoes was found were quickly fumigated. Amazingly, within the first year of Gorgas' appointment, every residence in Panama had been fumigated, using up the entire U.S. supply of sulfur and pyrethrum. The Americans were proving to be much more successful in their fight against Panamanian disease than the French. Gorgas successfully eliminated malaria and yellow fever from the Panama Canal Zone. Thanks to him, only one case of yellow fever was reported during the entire work process. Yellow fever was wiped out in the Canal Zone by 1906. The hospitals were the best in the tropics, and 32,000 patients were treated a year. Unfortunately, blacks died ten times faster than whites, because they were natives, and were not provided housing by the construction company. In addition, many black workers lived outside of the Canal Zone. Thankfully, though, only approximately 4,500 black workers died, which was much less than the amount of natives working for the French who died. Today, over a hundred years later, the Panama Canal Zone is considered yellow fever and malaria free. Construction of the canal itself was another complication in the quest to complete it.

The French began construction on the Panama Canal on January 1, 1882. Ferdinand de Lesseps wanted to construct a sea-level canal. This was a great risk. The excavation in itself was a lot more difficult than digging in sand during the construction of the Suez Canal. In addition, the Chagres River, which ran across the planned area of the canal, flooded during the rainy season, which would have threatened the canal had it been completed by the French. Another flaw was the fact that the French made the slopes of the canal too high, which caused many landslides. When they abandoned the project, they were about 2/5 of the way done. The Compagnie Universelle went bankrupt and closed on February 4, 1889. The French took a gamble in attempting to construct a sea-level canal, and it didn't pay off. The U.S. successfully completed the construction of the Panama Canal, partly because they learned from the French mistakes and improved their infrastructure. The U.S. began working on the canal on May 4, 1904, after buying the rights to it from the French for 40,000,000 dollars.

Learning from the French failures, they decreased the slope of the Culebra Cut and increased its dimensions. John Frank Stevens, who was the Chief Engineer of the Panama Canal Project, was key in the creation of the Panama Canal. He improved the drilling and dirt removal equipment, and convinced Theodore Roosevelt to do a lock canal in 1906. Being a railroad engineer, his main contribution to the construction of the Panama Canal was the improvement of infrastructure around the Canal Zone. Because of all these decisions and contributions, landslides were less frequent, greater construction jobs were able to be undertaken, and the canal was successfully completed in 1914. The United States took a great risk in terms of the sheer size of the Panama Canal. No concrete construction that large was undertaken until the construction of the Hoover Dam in the 1930's. There are 46 lock gates, the total mass being about 58,000 tons. Each gate has two doors, or leaves, each weighing 300-600 tons. The Gates stand between 47 and 82 feet tall, and each leave is 65 feet wide and seven feet thick.

At the bottom of each leaf is an eighteen ton still. In addition, ships are raised an amazing height above sea level: "Three locks in flight at Gatun raise vessels from the level of the Atlantic ocean to the surface of Lake Gatun, 85 feet above mean sea- level." These risks paid off, but if the scale of the construction could not have been achieved, the canal could not have been constructed. . In conclusion, both the Americans and the French took risks when confronting the building of the Panama Canal. The abundance of disease in Panama at the time posed a great threat, and the nature of the terrain made building the Canal itself a difficult task. The French lacked the knowledge and resources necessary to complete the Canal within the guidelines of their intended methods. The Americans learned from the French mistakes and built off of their failures, and conquered nature by completing the Panama Canal. How the Panama Canal helped make the U.S. a world power | PBS NewsHour How the Panama Canal helped make the U.S.

a world power EMAIL BY Anya van Wagtendonk August 15, 2014 at 6:32 PM EST The first P&O Orient liner Oriana returns to Southampton after her maiden voyage to the Panama Canal in 1961. She was the largest vessel to pass through the canal since the German liner Bremen in 1939. Photo by Central Press/Getty Images Considered one of the wonders of the modern world, the Panama Canal opened for business 100 years ago this Friday, linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and providing a new route for international trade and military transport. At the time it was built, the canal was an engineering marvel, relying on a series of locks that lift ships – and their thousands of pounds of cargo – above mountains. But thousands of workers died during its construction, and its history has seen no shortage of controversy, including a contentious transference of authority from the US to Panama in the 1970s. Work recently began on a substantial expansion effort that will allow the canal to accommodate modern cargo needs. PBS NewsHour recently interviewed several regional experts to discuss the canal’s first 100 years, and to get a sense of what’s ahead.

Gallery: 100 years of the Panama Canal in 10 photos Richard Feinberg is a professor of International Political Economy at the University of California, San Diego, and a nonresident Senior Fellow with the Latin America Initiative of the Bookings Institution . He served as special assistant to President Clinton and senior director of the National Security Council’s Office of Inter-American Affairs. Julie Greene is a professor of History at the University of Maryland , specializing in United States labor and working-class history, and co-directs the University’s Center for the History of the New America. She is the author of The Canal Builders: Making America’s Empire at the Panama Canal , and serves as President of the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Noel Maurer is an associate professor of business administration at Harvard University, and the author of The Big Ditch: How America Took, Built, Ran, and Ultimately Gave Away the Panama Canal . Orlando Pérez is Associate Dean, School of Humanities & Social Sciences at Millersville University in Pennsylvania. He is the author of Political Culture in Panama: Democracy after Invasion , and a member of the Scientific Support Group for the Latin American Public Opinion Project at Vanderbilt University.

Steam shovels load rocks blasted away onto twin tracks that remove the earth from the Panama Canal bed circa 1908. It took the United States 10 years to build the canal at a cost of $375 million (which equals about $8.6 billion today). Photo by Buyenlarge/Getty Images PBS NewsHour: Why did the U.S. build the Panama Canal? Richard Feinberg: This is about Teddy Roosevelt, the great nationalist, the imperialist. The canal is built in the early part of the 20th century, right after the US-Spanish war. It was when the US was sowing its oats. They had expanded their power over Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Caribbean, but also the Philippines, so the US is becoming a Pacific power, and the Panama Canal was about linking our growing Pacific power to more traditional Atlantic relationships. It was linked to the idea of the rise of the US as a global power, with both commercial and military potential. The canal was a geopolitical strategy to make the United States the most powerful nation on earth. Ovidio Diaz-Espino: The US for the first time was going to be able to gain control of both oceans.

That was critical in times of war. There was no air power, so the way you fought an enemy was through the sea. World power was consistent with maritime power. Americans knew they needed this to move ships from east to west quickly. If they did that, they would control power because they would control the oceans. The Canal was a geopolitical strategy to make the United States the most powerful nation on earth. Also, the economic impact was massive. Now you could unite the trade between the two oceans. Starting in the 1890s, and until WWI, global trade was just as significant as it is now, so it was important to have a commute route across the continent. This is why Wall Street was very supportive and helped fund it. The US wanted to frame a vision of itself as more selfless, more a help to the world, more advancing civilization. Julie Greene: In part, the Canal was central to the US vision of itself as a beneficent power in the world. As the US was emerging as a global power, it was important to distinguish themselves from the old powers of Europe, which they saw as more crassly seeking power and control and colonialism.

The US wanted to frame a vision of itself as more selfless, more a help to the world, more advancing civilization. Of course there’s the other side to that: often the US was, despite its self-image, imposing its power. In Panama, it asserted its power over the republic and dominated the county’s history for 100 years. But nonetheless the canal has remained central to American national identity, in part because it’s seen to exemplify that beneficent self-image. The SS Ancon, the first Ship to pass through the Panama Canal on August 15, 1914. Photo by Getty Images PBS NewsHour: What did it take to get the Panama Canal built? What was the cost of this project? Julie Greene: It was in incredible project, the largest public construction project in US history. The engineering, technical, medical, and scientific challenges were incredible, first having to get disease under control and then figure out whether it should be a sea-level or a lock canal. It was 40 miles long and literally cut through the continental divide, so it was extremely difficult. Orlando Pérez: The idea of an interoceanic canal dates back to the Spanish colonial period.

The French attempted to do this and failed. After that failure, the US came in. The American ingenuity was of building, rather than a sea level canal, a lock canal. The way the terrain is, a sea-level canal would flood, it was prone to landslides and the terrain was not stable enough. You had to accommodate different levels. It was lower on one side than on the other side, with mountains in between. The systems of locks is what made it possible. When it rained, the dirt would turn to puddles, which attracted mosquitos, which meant malaria rips through your workforce. Noel Maurer: A key thing the US did, was they used railroads to truck out the dirt. The French were piling it up, which led to landslides. Also, when it rained, the dirt would turn to puddles, which attracted mosquitos, which meant malaria rips through your workforce. The US established medical innovations to control malaria and yellow fever. Ovidio Diaz-Espino: The construction itself was so significant that at one point one-third of the city of Pittsburgh was working to build the canal.

Every lock of the canal, and there are four, has more steel, more concrete, and took more work than the Empire State Building. Something like six Empire State Building constructions are here. There was massive steel, provided by US Steel. Massive concrete provided by Portland Cement. GE had to invent new type of machineries to be able to move the ships, these huge tankards that only had a few inches on either side needed to be controlled. Railroad had to be developed with minute precision. Dredging techniques used to dredge the Port of New York had to be much more precise. With such a massive body of work it probably employed one-third of Central America and the Caribbean, and the US was heavily influenced by it and by the money that was flowing through Wall Street, the banks, the insurance companies. Richard Feinberg: Congress was raising questions of, “Do we need this, is it worth it?” So in 1906 when it was under construction, Teddy Roosevelt travelled down, the first time a sitting US president ever left the continental United States while in office.

He staged a successful PR stunt: he sat in a big earth moving machine wearing a Panama hat, made a speech that America could and needed to do this, and when he returned to the US the Senate supported its construction. Julie Greene: But on top of that had to do with the human challenges involved. The chief engineer said at one point that the real challenge of this canal, and what allowed the US to succeed, was in figuring out how to manage and discipline the humans. “That was my contribution,” he said. By that, he meant they had to build a whole society: a police force, dorms, cafeterias, a judicial system. Forty-five thousand women and men, mostly men, came from dozens of different countries, and then thousands of women and children came to be with their menfolk. To create a world for them and then to keep it orderly was a challenge. PBS NewsHour: What was the human toll? Julie Greene: The United States built the Canal between 1904 and 1914, picking up the ball from the disastrous efforts by the French. The loss of life during the French era was much greater because disease was more widespread.

The US managed to get yellow fever completely under control, and malaria largely under control. By the official US statistics, the mortality rate was about 10,000 people, maybe a little less. But it’s hard to gauge: one historian who looked more closely argued that the death rate was probably 15,000 – or 1/10 of all men who worked on the project. 27,000 people died building the Panama Canal during those two periods. Can you imagine an infrastructure project today that cost 27,000 lives? Richard Feinberg: Panama had not existed before this. There were some independence movements which the US decided to support, creating a new country in order to construct this canal. So Panamanians who welcomed independence welcomed the canal. But the canal was built mostly by foreign workers. They imported tens of thousands of Caribbean workers, many of whom died from disease or accidents. Ovidio Diaz-Espino: 27,000 people died building the Panama Canal during those two periods. Can you imagine an infrastructure project today that cost 27,000 lives? PBS NewsHour: What were some of the controversies surrounding its construction?

How was it seen on the ground in Panama and by its neighbors? Julie Greene: The chief engineer had extensive powers thanks to an executive order. Anyone in the Canal Zone not productive could be deported. Many were. Workers who refused to show up would be, if not deported, sentenced to jail time. They had a massive police force, and did not allow strikes. Workers who might try to organize could be and were quickly deported. In the end, this kind of careful system of rules and regulations allowed order. The US relied on a vast system of racial and ethnic segregation, the Gold and Silver Rolls. American, white workers were paid in gold, and they had better housing and conditions. Most workers of African descent in the Caribbean were on “silver rolls.” They lived in hovels and ate outside or under porches during the torrential rainfalls. It’s not surprising they’d rely on segregation, but the demographics of the Canal Zone weren’t black and white. Thousands of Spaniards came in and found that they were referred to as the “semi-white Europeans,” and excluded from the white hotels and cafeterias.

They were pretty ticked off, and built up a vast network of anarchist politics and would go on strike even though they weren’t allowed to. So the US found it constantly had to manage problems resulting from its own policies. Noel Maurer: Bringing in all these black laborers created a bit of a stink in Panama, and contributed to racial tensions that lasted a long time. A big chunk of the country today is descended from those workers, creating tensions. Beginning in 1999, the effect for Panama has been massive. It was as if we suddenly discovered oil, except it’s a more stable commodity than oil. Orlando Pérez: For Panamanian nationals at the time, this was the accomplishment of their dreams, to position Panama at the heart of a global commercial enterprise or system, to use the geographic location of Panama to its commercial advantage. Geography has always determined Panamanian politics and the economy. The problem was how that accomplishment came about, which was essentially by subordinating a chunk of their territory to an extraterritorial power, through a treaty that no Panamanians signed. The payment [to Panamanians] was substantial, but it wasn’t anywhere near the benefits that the US would accrue.

So the Panamanians started with the great hope that it would place Panama at the center of world commerce, but also resenting that they achieved this victory at the cost of ceding sovereignty over the Canal itself. PBS NewsHour: In 1977, President Carter signed a treaty with General Omar Torrijos, then Commander of the Panamanian National Guard, ceding control of the Canal to Panama beginning in 1999. What impact did this shift in authority have? Ovidio Diaz-Espino: The Canal was administered exclusively by Americans for the interest of American military and geopolitical concerns. Panamanians felt they were not benefitting from the canal. And there was a fence. As a child growing up, I could not go into the Canal Zone because I was Panamanian. It was pure American land. This was the most valuable piece of land in the country, and it was being exploited by somebody else. There was a lot of conflict leading to massacres, students killed by soldiers because they tried to raise a Panamanian flag at the Canal. It was an unstable situation.

Richard Feinberg: I wasn’t in the Clinton administration during the handover but I was part of the negotiations leading up to it, and I was also in the Carter administration for the treaty. The treaty was a huge political debate. Reagan enhanced his reputation as a strong nationalist by opposing the treaties, and it cost Carter dearly, in terms of creating a narrative that he was somehow retreating from American power abroad, which was later compounded by crises in Iran and elsewhere. But it was extremely important for relations with Panama and Latin America. Noel Maurer: By the time the treaty came along, the US benefits from the Canal were almost gone. This wasn’t charity, it wasn’t Carter being nice to the Latin Americans. This was strategy. By the 1970s, American farmers shipping food to Asia could railroad to Seattle and ship from there because railroad costs was much cheaper post-WWII. Militarily, the Canal turned out to be strategically useless, and totally indefensible. Truman tried to hand it over the UN. It was losing money under Johnson. The only reason for the political opposition to the Carter treaties was that it was a symbol of American national pride, especially after Vietnam.

Ovidio Diaz-Espino: The political consequence in Panama was felt immediately. Within two years, the Canal Zone came down. The Americans were still managing it, and the military bases were still here, so the security was still in the hands of the Americans, but it was now Panamanian land. That defused a lot of tensions not just in Panama but throughout Latin America, as it had been the poster child of American colonialism in Latin America. The Panamanians have done a marvelous job at running it. It’s efficient and profitable. Orlando Pérez: The Panamanians have done a marvelous job at running it. It’s efficient and profitable. It’s run independent of the Panamanian government. There have been very few reported or alleged cases of corruption within management. It’s a very efficient, moneymaking enterprise, and I think everyone that looks at how Panamanians have handled the management, creating an authority for it, they wish the national government was run as efficiently and effectively as that. Ovidio Diaz-Espino: Beginning in 1999, the effect for Panama has been massive.

It was as if we suddenly discovered oil, except it’s a more stable commodity than oil, and it will become even more stable as there is more dependence on the Canal as a result of the expected growth in global trade between Asia and America. And it’s not just the revenues, but everything around it: 3 major ports creating thousands of jobs. A whole industry devoted to shipping services as a result. Sixty percent of all world cargo has a Panamanian flag. There’s a burgeoning residential market in the former Canal Zone, and a huge part around the canal is this untouched rainforest, a watershed, so it’s becoming is a hotbed of ecotourism. Now they’re planning for cruise ships to drop off in Panama City. This is all because of the canal. And there’s something more important, which I call the peace element. The canal gives us something no neighbor has, and that’s political stability. The neutrality clause in the Torrijos-Carter treaty says that the US has the right to intervene in Panamanian internal affairs if the security of the canal is ever threatened. Why is there no corruption, why does the canal operate with the precision of a Swiss watch factory? Because Americans always have their eyes on it.

You know it’s not going to be ruined. Construction underway on new locks in the Panama Canal in 2011. Photo by Juan Jose Rodriguez/AFP/Getty Images PBS NewsHour: Expansion of the Panama Canal is due to begin soon. What should we know about this project? Richard Feinberg: It’s a modernization. As container ships have gotten bigger and bigger, the canal needs to be larger. There’s no doubt that commercially the expansion is important and it will pay off over time with the increased traffic that will result, as more and bigger ships pass through. Julie Greene: It’s a huge undertaking being run efficiently. It’s behind schedule, but that’s not surprising. What they’re doing is building another set of lock basins, and they’ve designed it in a very green, environmental way. Instead of using fresh water every time the locks have to be filled, because that would have been stressful on water supply, they devised an engineering system that allows them to recycle the water. There are nonetheless challenges even though green ideals were in mind.

For ships to go through quickly, that will put pressure on the Gatun Lake and hurt its environment a bit, so there’s some debating going on as to whether they should slow down the speed to protect the lake. Orlando Pérez: The expansion project has generated a huge amount of employment, and has been the catalyst for high economic growth. Some Panamanians see a problem with this growth, that it’s not well shared across the nation. Panama is still a dual economy. Economic growth is centered mostly in the urban areas, tied to commercial enterprises, tied to tourism and to the Canal. But if you go to rural areas, poverty is much higher. Julie Greene: Certainly it’s an important part of the US political economy, and will be more so with the expansion once it’s complete in 2015. In fact lots of changes are happening across the US as different port cities prepare for the larger ships that will be able to come through. Ovidio Diaz-Espino: The expansion is important for Panama, but it’s much more important for the United States. I can’t imagine how much is being invested in the US. No port was ready to take those ships, so every major port has to expand.

So New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, Miami, Galveston, New Orleans, all have to do major dredging. Then you need to expand the highways, and you’ll need more container space locally. The expense is massive, and all are racing to prepare. The delay in finishing the project means the US has more time to get ready. The other thing is that it is going to change patterns of trade. Right now, most Asia-US trade comes through Long Beach. That will change. Most trade by water will go to southern and northeastern ports. That has implications for railroad companies, truck companies, and entire cities. Joe Biden said this may make inflation go down, which will make the US more competitive in its exports to China. These interviews have been edited for clarity and brevity.

Question: What construction project, completed in 1914, killed over 30,000 workers (mostly due to disease)?
Answer: Panama Canal