Global trading

The Suez Canal opened on November 17th, 1869, and it was on the same date 44 years later, in 1913 that the first ship sailed into the Panama Canal. The Suez Canal connected the Indian Ocean to the North Atlantic via the Mediterranean, and the Panama Canal joined the Atlantic to the Pacific. The Suez Canal eliminated the need for ships to round the Southern tip of Africa, and the Panama Canal cut the need to pass the stormy seas off the Southern tip of South America.

Both were stupendous engineering projects, and both facilitated global trade, making freight and passenger transit times both shorter and safer. Both were early pioneers of measures to speed up worldwide trade, and both lowered not only the time it took to convey goods internationally, but also the cost of doing so,

The construction of the Suez Canal was easier, but the Panama Canal required a vast system of locks to allow for the different sea levels of the two oceans. The French engineer, Ferdinand de Lesseps, who built the Suez Canal, was thwarted by the challenge of the Panama project, and saw his construction firm go broke, and have the undertaking later taken over by the United States.

Both canals have enjoyed a chequered political history, since they represented strategic choke points that different powers sought to control. They represent a determination to make the world smaller, and to make travel easier. Since their construction, this drive has continued with projects such as the Channel Tunnel joining Britain and France, and the Oresund Bridge connecting Sweden and Denmark. Later still came the $20 billion Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge, the world's longest sea-crossing bridge.

Perhaps the ultimate will be a link across the Bering Strait, establishing a land link between the United States and Russia, most likely built as a combination of a bridge and a tunnel. The point of these endeavours is that surface links, either by sea or land, make for much less costly transport than air transport provides. They also enable pre-packaged containers to be loaded onto different vehicles without goods needing to be off-loaded and reloaded at various stages of their journey.

Ventures such as these represent projects of international co-operation, as well as means of facilitating transport. They call to mind the view, attributed to Claude-Frederic Bastiat, that when goods cross frontiers, armies rarely follow. Nations that trade with each other grow used to negotiating with each other and tend to settle disputes peaceably, by agreement or by legal settlements.

A globalized world, trading across frontiers, and aided by the shortcuts that bold engineering projects can make possible, is more likely to be a peaceful world. It is also guaranteed to be a richer world, creating the wealth that international specialization and exchange makes possible. We thus have every reason to applaud and thank the bold engineering pioneers who made the world smaller, who made it closer, and who helped to make it richer.