The Canal Builders: Making America’s Empire at the Panama Canal

The standard Panama Canal history, epitomized by David McCullough's defini- tive The Path Between the Seas (1977), is chronological and hierarchical: it begins with colonial dreams of an interoceanic canal, chronicles the construction of the Panama Railroad in the 1850s, and ex- plains the failure of the French canal proj- ect in the 1880s in a manner that sets the stage for the ultimate triumph of U. S. lead- ers. Greene shows that engineering challenges paled in compari- son to managing the canal's culturally, economically, racially, and linguistically heterogeneous labor force. [...]the U.S. government sought to exercise disciplin- ary power in a manner that would sub- sume everyday life to the construction project, an approach that encountered di- verse forms of resistance-some overt, some subtle-by workers themselves, their friends and families, and Panamanians whose lives were disrupted.