Canal Dreamers: The Epic Quest to Connect the Atlantic and Pacific in the Age of Revolutions

In the 1820s, there was a little-known quest to unite the world by building a waterway between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. As Spanish American nations declared independence and new canals intensified US expansion and British industrialization, many imagined the construction of an interoceanic canal as predestined. With dreams substituting for data, an international cast of politicians, lawyers, philosophers, and capitalists sent competing agents on a race to transform Lake Nicaragua, the San Juan River, and the terra incognita of Central American forests into the world’s first global waterway.

Jessica M. Lepler tells the captivating story of this global journey in Canal Dreamers. Although the idea of literally changing the world by connecting the oceans proved too revolutionary for the Age of Revolution, the quest itself changed history. Canal dreams prompted political transformations, financial crisis, recognition of new countries, concern about climate change, and more. Full of adventure, corruption, far-reaching consequences, and present-day parallels, Lepler’s absorbing narrative cuts through two centuries, revealing that dreams do not need to come true to make history.

Jessica Lepler is associate professor of history at the University of New Hampshire.