The Panama Railroad

419 Pages·2021·13.334 MB·English

by  Peter Pyne

THE PANAMA RAILROAD
Railroads Past and Present
H. Roger Grant and Thomas G. Hoback, editors
THE
PANAMA
RAILROAD
Peter Pyne
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
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1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.org
© 2021 by Indiana University Press
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No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any
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requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—
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Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing 2021
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Pyne, Peter, author.
Title: The Panama Railroad / Peter Pyne.
Description: Bloomington, Indiana : Indiana University Press, [2021] | Series:
Railroads past and present | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020005970 (print) | LCCN 2020005971 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780253052070 (hardback) | ISBN 9780253052087 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Panama Railroad Co.—History. | Railroads—Panama—History.
Classification: LCC HE2830.P2 P96 2021 (print) | LCC
HE2830.P2 (ebook) | DDC 385.097287/5—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020005970
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020005971
To my parents,
Paul Pyne and Mary Freyne,
and to
Joan Magee

Contents
Foreword ix
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xix
Introduction 1
PART I: CONSTRUCTION
1 The Grand Design 11
2 A False Start 26
3 Slow Progress 47
4 A New Departure 64
5 Hopes Dashed 80
6 The Final Push 96
PART II: THE WORKERS
7 The Men Who Built the Railroad 109
8 Working Conditions 133
9 Workers’ Amenities 154
10 Mortality 177
PART III: THE IRISH
11 The American Irish 199
12 The Men from Cork 219
PART IV: EPILOGUE
13 Railroad-Government Relations 241
14 The Aftermath 259
Conclusion 277
Appendix 1: Panama Railroad Construction Account, 1850–1858 289
Appendix 2: Panama Railroad Passage Account by Date of
Ledger Entry, 1850–1855 290
viii contents
Appendix 3: Likely Cork Workhouse Emigrants to Panama,
December 1853 292
Appendix 4: Estimates of Mortality of the Inhabitants of Panama City,
1884–1893, and among the Workers Constructing the
Panama Canal, 1881–1889 297
Appendix 5: Petition of the Irish Laborers to the British Consul,
Panama City, 1854 301
Notes 303
Bibliography 363
Index 379
Foreword
Special challenges confront anyone who seeks to write
the history of a small place with global significance. The virtues of the biog-
rapher and microhistorian must be balanced with those of a world historian,
including the capacity to draw connections and make comparisons across
oceans, continents, and the frontiers of empire and nation. Peter Pyne has met
these challenges admirably in a book that will be of interest not only to histo-
rians of railroads or Panama but to anyone with a stake in the broader histories
of capitalism, working people, and migration in the nineteenth century.
The construction of the Panama railroad ranks among the great feats of
capitalism in the nineteenth century. The first interoceanic rail link in world
history, the railroad served as a vital bridge between the Atlantic and Pacific
worlds in the mid-1800s and was also instrumental in the building of the Pan-
ama Canal. The Panama Railroad Company’s business and political strate-
gies, including the foundation of the enclave port of Colón, were among the
earliest manifestations of the United States’ informal empire in Latin America.
Similarly revolutionary was the company’s formation and reliance on a divided
workforce composed of workers from different continents. The consequences
of the railroad’s completion, intended and otherwise, continue to reverberate
in Panama and elsewhere in the region into the present.
This book represents the first comprehensive scholarly history of the Pan-
ama railroad’s construction. The story told here includes several titans of
nineteenth-century capitalism, including figures such as William Aspinwall,
George Law, and Cornelius Vanderbilt. But more significantly for me, it gives
an entirely new account of the workers whose labor was essential to the success
of the enterprise, whose lives and stories have been almost entirely ignored or
unknown until now. Readers who have enjoyed Julie Greene’s classic history
ix