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The Panama Canal: Its History, Its Political Aspects, and Financial Difficulties

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This is a useful reprint of an important contribution to the history of how the Panama Canal came to be built. Jose Carlos Rodrigues was an eminent Brazilian journalist, later editor of the Jornal do Commercio. He was asked by a New York paper to cover de Lesseps' attempt to build the Canal. Written some years later as articles for the London Financial News, this 1885 book exposed the financial flaws of the French attempt, and also doubted their engineering expertise. He made the point forcibly that even if the French succeeded the Americans would never accept the sole link between the Atlantic and Pacific being under European control, and could and should build a second canal. His arguments influenced President Hayes and later, after the French had abandoned their attempt, President Theodore Roosevelt, under whom the Canal was eventually completed.