The Costs of a Canal Dispute

摘要

Ferdinand de Lesseps arrived in Panama in 1879 as the most famous engineer in the world. He had accomplished the impossible: the construction of the Suez Canal. Five years later, de Lesseps' reputation was in tatters. The French-backed attempt to build a canal through Central America collapsed after gross financial mismanagement and a vast underestimation of the environmental complexities of the project.