Review by New York Times Review
Beyond the flag-waving and the engineering and medical feats, it was the workers who built the Panama Canal. WHILE running for the Republican presidential nomination in 1976, Ronald Reagan stumbled onto an issue that energized his upstart campaign. In stop after stop, he recalled, people expressed "utter disbelief" that an American president - the Republican incumbent, Gerald R. Ford - would even think of relinquishing control over the Panama Canal. Knowing next to nothing about its history, but quite a lot about the politics of flag-waving, Reagan quickly turned the canal into a symbol of American resolve in an increasingly dangerous and disrespectful world. "We bought it, we paid for it, it's ours," he told the cheering crowds, and "we are going to keep it." What was so special about the Canal Zone? Why this allegiance to a distant spot of land, 10 miles wide and 50 miles long, that many Americans would have trouble finding on a map? The answer lies in the mythology that has surrounded the canal since its opening, in 1914. America had not only pulled off one of the greatest engineering feats in history, it had succeeded where France had failed. It was our technology, our science and our leadership that had carried the day. Even better, we had shared the blessings of this modern marvel with the entire world, once again showing our selfless intent. What clearer example could there be of America's distinctiveness, its ability to shape the future, to get big things done? Many historians of the canal accept this line of thinking. Their works have centered on the genius of American planners like George Washington Goethals, seeing the decisions they made, and the obstacles they overcame, as signs of a superior national character. Whether eradicating deadly diseases like yellow fever, constructing the massive locks and gates that raised and lowered the ships, of disposing of millions of tons of rubble produced by the dynamite and steam shovels that leveled entire mountains, these planners faced down every problem thrown their way, finishing the project ahead of schedule and well under budget. "I think often about why the French failed at Panama and why we succeeded," the historian David McCullough said a few years ago. "One of the reasons . . . is that we were gifted, we were attuned to adaptation, to doing what works, whereas they were trained to do everything in a certain way. We have a gift for improvisation." "The Canal Builders," by Julie Greene, a history professor at the University of Maryland, takes a very different approach. Less interested in the now fabled engineering feats of the project, she instead emphasizes the human dimension - the daily lives of the thousands of workers and family members who journeyed to the Canal Zone from all parts of the world seeking adventure, better wages or simply a fresh start. Who were they? What jobs did they do? Where did they live? What did they eat? How were they governed? Her answers provide a fascinating look at those who actually built the canal between 1904 and 1914, a largely forgotten population of 60,000 brought to life in a remarkably creative way. Workers from the Caribbean, especially Jamaica and Barbados, constituted the bulk of the unskilled labor force, doing the dirty, dangerous jobs that whites wouldn't do. Recruited by company agents, paid far more than they could ever earn at home, these men were used up and replaced like the junked parts of a machine. In one of the many personal histories employed by Greene, a West Indian named Constantine Parkinson wrote that "people get kill and injure almost every day and all the bosses want is to get the canal build." Indeed, so many of them died in landslides and explosions that a special envelope was used to alert their families back home. A woman from Barbados remembered the sight of a local mother with a black-bordered envelope in her hand : "That meant her son had died in Panama." While thousands of other workers came from Europe and Asia, the best jobs almost always went to white Americans. Because word had spread in the United States about the perils of Panama, hefty incentives were required. A skilled American worker in the Canal Zone - an accountant, a steam-shovel operator or a locomotive engineer - could make as much as $200 a month, a staggering sum in that era, paid in American gold currency. (Most nonwhites and non-Americans were "silver workers," paid in Panamanian silver.) White Americans received six weeks of vacation each year. Wives received free passage to Panama, and married couples were given prime living quarters. American officials believed that women and children would help stabilize the region by cutting down on drinking, prostitution and crime. Laborers about to be transported to a work site. LIFE beyond the Canal Zone teemed with immigrant peddlers and lonely workers flush with cash. A tourist in Panama City described a street scene in which a cart, "loaded with English tea biscuit, drawn by an old American Army mule, driven by a Hindu wearing a turban, drove up in front of a Chinese shop." Across the street was "an Italian lace shop run by a Jew." But white Americans lived a world apart from this clamor. The Canal Zone gave them all the comforts of home, resembling a modern-day gated community, with schools, churches, servants, ball fields, libraries and Y.M.C.A.'s. Neighborhoods were segregated by race and class. Labor unions were frowned upon. A well-organized police force kept order. As Speaker of the House Joseph Cannon, who led a touring group of congressmen, put it, "We're just as comfortable here as in Illinois." At its best, "The Canal Builders" presents a telling portrait of exploitation, privilege and insularity, backed by a mountain of fresh research. But it veers toward predictability in its epilogue, which sees the canal project as both a launching pad for America's global dominance (a well-worn historical theme) and a precursor of the suffering that plagues our current world economy. "Strategies devised during the canal construction project have reached across the decades to the current day," Greene concludes. "We can see them in the increasing importance of transnational migrant labor and the rapid flow of capital around the globe, in the persistent notion that citizens deserve certain rights that are denied to aliens, and in the sentimental and idealistic ways Americans sometimes approach the exercise of U.S. power around the world." But Greene never considers the possibility that the canal project was merely a reflection of powerful forces already in place, and not some grand design for the future. As a result, she doesn't question whether conditions for West Indian canal workers were any more dangerous than those for immigrant laborers in, say, a Pittsburgh steel mill or a Chicago meatpacking plant. Or whether these West Indians were afforded fewer rights than immigrant workers in Europe, Asia or other parts of the Americas. The differences, I suspect, were extremely small. The canal project represented the best - and worst - of the spreading industrial revolution, circa 1910, with a strong dose of American bravado mixed in. The real strength of "The Canal Builders" lies not in floating big theories, but in recreating forgotten lives. It is history from the bottom up, and it speaks for 60,000 anonymous people who helped build what President Theodore Roosevelt grandiosely called "the greatest work of the kind ever attempted." That should be more than enough. David Oshinsky holds the Jack S. Blanton chair in history at the University of Texas and is a distinguished scholar in residence at New York University.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
Like preceding chronicles of the construction of the Panama Canal (Matthew Parker's Panama Fever, 2008), Greene's account focuses on its feats of engineering, but in this case, social engineering. Previously an author of a history about the American Federation of Labor, Greene includes the workers' experience within the context of the creation of a community from scratch, and that, within the wider contexts of empire building and Progressivism. Many Progressives, Greene relates, visited the canal project; the encouragement some of them took from an American example of governmental socioeconomic intervention contrasts with the actual on-the-ground character of the canal zone until the completion of the canal in 1914. Greene portrays a complex web of regulations that authority applied to those drawn to the zone. Through many personal accounts, Greene covers conflicts that inevitably arose, centrally over labor rules and a pay structure that discriminated against black workers, among others means of enforcing segregation. Interests in social history and attitudes of the Progressive Era will be drawn to Greene's perspective on the building of the Panama Canal.--Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2009 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
With the centennial of the opening of the Panama Canal coming in five years, interest has resurfaced in a topic that has already prompted study, most notably David McCullough's best-selling The Path Between the Seas (1977). Whereas McCullough told the classic tale of the first major American engineering feat of the 20th century, these two new books recount only parts of the story. Nonetheless, The Canal Builders is more than a footnote. Greene, a labor historian (Univ. of Maryland, College Park; Pure and Simple Politics: The American Federation of Labor and Political Activism, 1881-1917) is well qualified to tell the story, from the bottom up, of the canal's construction. She interweaves newly unearthed documentary records in a social history linked to the emerging "American empire" and its Bull Moose Progressives, racial segregation, and labor movements. An exceptional writer, Greene has produced a narrative that ranges from the canal's inception up to the current political situation regarding Panama and the United States. By comparison, Seaway to the Future, a revision of Missal's dissertation from the University of Cologne, is a methodological footnote aimed at justifying a "cultural history of empire." Though he is a journalist in Germany, Missal's work here relies more on neo-Marxist theory and speculation than on uncovering new facts. Readers are bombarded with the word empire throughout the text. Yet arrogance and hubris explain as much as empire: the author might have been more to the point if he'd noted that this huge governmental task was an invitation to trouble owing to how labor and racial conditions prevailed in the United States then. Most libraries will suffice with McCullough's classic; larger ones may find interest in The Canal Builders. Only academic libraries with cultural history collections are likely to find interest in Seaway to the Future.-William D. Pederson, Louisiana State Univ., Shreveport (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The Path Between the Seas, viewed from a decidedly different angle. Most histories focus on the larger-than-life men who conceived the Panama Canal, particularly President Theodore Roosevelt and chief engineers John Stevens and George Goethals. Greene (History/Univ. of Maryland; Pure and Simple Politics: The American Federation of Labor and Political Activism, 18811917, 1998, etc.) shifts the focus away from those at the top, instead telling the story of rank-and-file workers on the ground. The incredibly diverse labor force assembled between 1904 and 1914, tens of thousands strong, included Americans, West Indians, Mexicans and workers from all over South America and Europe. When they arrived in the Canal Zone, they soon realized that conditions were brutal. The weather was hot, the work was extremely dangerous, the food was barely edible and early on there were outbreaks of yellow fever, bubonic plague, malaria and pneumonia. An estimated 15,000 workers died during the course of the building project, mostly nonwhites. American officials imported segregationist and anti-union policies from home; nonwhite workers, particularly West Indians, received far lower pay. Dissatisfaction eventually flared up into strikes and threats of riots. The author deftly details how hard-line American policy clashed with the reality of managing an army of laborers in a foreign land. Officials were eventually forced to revise their policies and make concessions to workers on many issues. Greene also examines the resentment generated by American colonialism, ably illustrated with the story of a 1912 riot in Panama City between American personnel and Panamanians that caused the death of one U.S. citizen. American imperialism was frequently at odds with American idealism, the author skillfully demonstrates. A telling quote from Secretary of State Elihu Root conveys the essential: "The Constitution follows the flag, but it does not catch up with it." Engaging labor history, and an astute examination of American policies. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
