Deep cut : science, power, and the unbuilt interoceanic canal

2020·2.1 MB·English

by  Keiner, Christine

Deep Cut
Series Editors
Lynne Itagaki, University of Missouri
Daniel Rivers, Ohio State University
Founding Editors
Claire Potter, Wesleyan University
Renee Romano, Oberlin College
Advisory Board
Mary Dudziak, University of Southern California
Devin Fergus, Hunter College, City University of New York
David Greenberg, Rutgers University
Shane Hamilton, University of Georgia
Jennifer Mittelstadt, Rutgers University
Stephen Pitti, Yale University
Robert Self, Brown University
Siva Vaidhyanathan, University of Virginia
Judy Wu, University of California, Irvine
Deep Cut
Science, Power, and the Unbuilt Interoceanic Canal
•
Christine Keiner
The University of Georgia Press
athens
© 2020 by the University of Georgia Press
Athens, Georgia 30602
www.ugapress.org
Some rights reserved
CC BY-NC-ND
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Note to users: A Creative Commons license
is only valid when it is applied by the person or entity that holds rights to the licensed
work. Works may contain components (e.g., photographs, illustrations, or quotations)
to which the rightsholder in the work cannot apply the license. It is ultimately
your responsibility to independently evaluate the copyright status of any work or
component part of a work you use, in light of your intended use. To view a copy of
this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Most University of Georgia Press titles are available from popular e-book vendors.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020932724
ISBN: 9780820358635 (ebook: open access edition)
ISBN: 9780820338941 (hardback: alk. paper)
ISBN: 9780820338958 (paperback: alk. paper)
ISBN: 9780820358307 (ebook: standard edition)
An earlier version of material from chapters 1 and 3 appeared, in very different form,
within Ashley Carse, Christine Keiner, Pamela M. Henson, Marixa Lasso, Paul S.
Sutter, Megan Raby, and Blake Scott, “Panama Canal Forum: From the Conquest
of Nature to the Construction of New Ecologies,” Environmental History 21 (2016):
206–87. An earlier version of material from chapters 5–6, in very different form,
appeared in Christine Keiner, “A Two-Ocean Bouillabaisse: Science, Politics, and
the Central American Sea-Level Canal Controversy,” Journal of the History of
Biology 50 (2017): 835–87, to which Springer Nature retains copyright.
This book is published as part of the Sustainable History
Monograph Pilot. With the generous support of the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Pilot uses cutting-edge
publishing technology to produce open access digital editions
of high-quality, peer-reviewed monographs from leading
university presses. Free digital editions can be download-
ed from: Books at JSTOR, EBSCO, Hathi Trust, Internet
Archive, OAPEN, Project MUSE, and many other open
repositories.
While the digital edition is free to download, read, and share,
the book is under copyright and covered by the following
Creative Commons License: BY-NC-ND. Please consult
www.creativecommons.org if you have questions about your
rights to reuse the material in this book.
When you cite the book, please include the following
URL for its Digital Object Identifier (DOI):
https://doi.org/10.46935/9780820358635
We are eager to learn more about how you discovered this
title and how you are using it. We hope you will spend a few
minutes answering a couple of questions at this url:
https://www.longleafservices.org/shmp-survey/
More information about the Sustainable History Monograph
Pilot can be found at https://www.longleafservices.org.

To the Memory of James A. Keiner
1940–2016
Sailor, Civil Servant, Father, Friend
•

Contents
Illustrations xi
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction
The Central American Sea-Level Canal and the Environmental History of
Unbuilt Megaprojects 1
Part I. In the Shadow of the Panama Canal
Chapter 1
Canalizing and Colonizing the Isthmus 17
Chapter 2
Confronting the Canal’s Obsolescence 33
Chapter 3
Mobilizing for Panama Canal II 49
Part II. The Panatomic Canal
Chapter 4
Navigating High Modernism 67
Chapter 5
Assessing Mankind’s Most Gigantic Biological Experiment 88
Chapter 6
Avoiding an Elastic Collision with Knowledge 107
Part III. The Post-Panatomic Canal
Chapter 7
Optioning the Sea-Level Canal for the Energy Crisis 131