As I mentioned in a previous post, I intended to bring Julie Greene's book, The Canal Builders, with me to Morocco. A friend's advice and limited space merged, resulting with the book sleeping on my shelf until I returned. Julie taught at CU and trained me to appreciate and strive for transnational and international history. She led a readings and research class in comparative labor history and labor history, respectively, and was one of my PhD oral examiners. Now that the caveats are out of the way....The Canal Builders provides, at a basic level, a detailed examination of those who built the canal. However, that description simplifies her impressive accomplishment. In reality, the subject is those who constructed the literal and metaphorical world of the canal and the canal zone--from the imperious director, George Goethals, to West Indian laborers to Progressive Gertrude Beeks. An underlying concept Greene employs is that of "boundaries." She charts the boundaries produced and traversed by the white Americans (those on the higher gold pay scale), the mass of non-white or non-American laborers (those on the lesser silver wage rate), women who accompanied their husbands to the canal zone, Panamanians, American military officials, and hosts of workers and civilians who inhabited the conflicted imperial project. It was in the world of imperial, transnational, and gendered boundaries that construction transpired, and an imperial project thrived.
The book clocks in at 388 pages of text (with impressive notes following) and is filled with anecdotes from the above listed groups of actors. Greene weaves the rich, diverse voices with a narrative that interrogates and illuminates the processes of building the physical as well as social and cultural canal and canal zone. She rescues the stories of those who traveled far and wide (ranging from American steam shovel operators to Indians and Chinese) and who survived the perils of building the Panama Canal and the task of living under the Goethals' repressive regime that hurdled toward a singular pursuit: maximize labor output to complete construction; all resources diverted to build the canal. Although I skimmed the book quickly, I did not detect any gross repetitions of the anecdotes, which is a common error when an author employs this methodological approach. For instance, rather than repeat a story that would illustrate her point, she acknowledged its previous usage without retreading the same ground. I found that chapters two, "As I am a True American," and three, "Silver Lives," best display her research and analytical focus, as well as the human element of segregation and racism present in the canal. Also owing to her expert as a labor historian, chapters two and three explicated the labor dimension as well as the struggles to control and express labor rights.
What would a review be without criticism? The Canal Builders is a feat of research and writing, and does not suffer from the near tedium of Peter Way's Common Labor: Workers and the Digging of the North American Canals, 1780-1860. Still, canal building for 388 pages can be a tad long, even though the subjects shift and Greene avoids redundancies and dwelling upon one particular group. My principal complaint centers on Goethals' and others' aspiration. That is, the grander story of the canal's progress is oddly absent. In fact, until the final chapter, "Hercules Comes Home," the canal and steps in the direction of the Pacific float in a distant ether. The simple rebuttal is that David McCullough's book The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914, among others, recite the much-ballyhooed paths of the American ascendancy and triumph in Panama. Regardless, brief synopses of the chronological advances through the jungle could have supplied her narrative and the thematic chapters with a sense of cohesion. With that said, the complaint is minor for such a solid work of history.
The Panama Canal continues to be a stunning engineering and logistical feat. Greene's book eviscerates the easy narrative that romanticizes the intrepid rising imperial power's conquest of nature and geography. A model of transnational, labor, and foreign relations history, The Canal Builders reveals the messy steps and missteps that occurred in Panama, itself a product of US imperialism, as Goethals and workers from across the globe drove to the Pacific.
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