E – 1208 Ethical Issues from the Panama Canal Failure

This course will examine the ethical issues that arose from the attempt by French commercial and government interests to build a maritime canal across the isthmus of Panama in the 1880s. The United States, of course, subsequently successfully constructed a Panama Canal but this earlier French project was an abject engineering, commercial and financial failure that resulted in thousands of deaths and the loss of billions of investor dollars. The primary engineering issues were route and alignment selection, soils engineering, tidal control and seasonal flood control. The ethical lesson is about what can happen when political, financial and commercial goals override engineering considerations and result in a tragic project failure that provides lessons in engineering and public policy ethics that are as valid today as they were in the 19th century.

This course will give engineers and others an insight into the lessons that can be learned from the tragic failure of French commercial and political interests to build a Panama canal in the 1880s.