when did france try to build the panama canal
History of the Panama Canal After the 1869 completion of the Suez Canal, France thought that an apparently-similar project to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans could be carried out with little difficulty. In 1876 an international company, La Société internationale du Canal interocéanique, was created to undertake its construction; two years later, it obtained a concession from the Colombian government (since Panama was a Colombian province) to dig a canal across the isthmus.
History of the Panama Canal Construction of the canal began on January 1, 1881, with digging at Culebra beginning on January 22.[1] A large labor force was assembled, numbering about 40,000 in 1888 (nine-tenths of whom were afro-Caribbean workers from the West Indies). Although the project attracted good, well-paid French engineers, retaining them was difficult due to disease. The death toll from 1881 to 1889 was estimated at over 22,000, of whom as many as 5,000 were French citizens.[3]