Steven_R
Tommy Vercetti Fan Club
- Jul 17, 2013
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I just finished a book called "Bond of Union: Building the Erie Canal and the American Empire" by Gerard Koeppel. It is, as the title states, the history of the building of the Erie Canal in upstate New York.
The most interesting thing I found in this book was the political battles over the canal in the first place. It seems like a no brainer to build a canal between the port in NYC and the Great Lakes to encourage trade and shipping (and cut of the Canadian monopoly on goods), but like most things it was subject to the politics and economics. Who was going to pay for the canal, how much Federal versus state control and funding would be involved, who was going to control the canal, profit from it, and so on. Reading about that fight was reinforced the notion that nothing new existed under the sun. Change the canal to any modern topic and the fights and personalities are still there in DC today.
The other interesting thing is that the battles for the canal involved a few of the lesser known Founding Fathers as well as a few of the better known ones. Jefferson's view on the canal wasn't based on what powers the Federal government had, but rather over what effect that canal would have on Virginia trade and economic future.
I'm not going to lie. The first half of the book is all about the fighting and the money and is really quite dry. The second half gets into the engineering and actually building of the canal, but again we see parallels with today and government contracts and fraud and backscratching. Of course human nature hasn't changed, so it shouldn't be a surprise, but we've built this mythology around the early days of the Republic and it isn't one that involves the deceit that often accompanies the realities that history illustrates.
The second half picks up the pace and we see once again how failure is an orphan but success has a thousand fathers when the canal starts to pay off and everyone and their brother tries to use the canal for political points, even people opposed to the canal's existence in the first place. NYC didn't want the canal because they didn't want to pay for it, but they certainly would benefit for it trade-wise and tax-wise. People would run campaigns for election based on supposed involvement with the canal and the futures of communities depended on the canal.
The irony is that for all the good of the canal, the whole endeavor was rather short-lived. Not long after the canal opened up the upper Midwest for trade and settlement, the entire point of the canal was lost with the adoption of railroads.
All in all, it was an interesting book, but one that I found a bit tedious in the first half. All the information about the politics and money was just dry (and normally I find that kind of material interesting). I was pleasantly surprised at the discussion of the engineering and construction of the canal and the cast of characters, many of whom were losers and ne'er-do-wells but who managed great feats and built (or resurrected) their reputations in the process.
The most interesting thing I found in this book was the political battles over the canal in the first place. It seems like a no brainer to build a canal between the port in NYC and the Great Lakes to encourage trade and shipping (and cut of the Canadian monopoly on goods), but like most things it was subject to the politics and economics. Who was going to pay for the canal, how much Federal versus state control and funding would be involved, who was going to control the canal, profit from it, and so on. Reading about that fight was reinforced the notion that nothing new existed under the sun. Change the canal to any modern topic and the fights and personalities are still there in DC today.
The other interesting thing is that the battles for the canal involved a few of the lesser known Founding Fathers as well as a few of the better known ones. Jefferson's view on the canal wasn't based on what powers the Federal government had, but rather over what effect that canal would have on Virginia trade and economic future.
I'm not going to lie. The first half of the book is all about the fighting and the money and is really quite dry. The second half gets into the engineering and actually building of the canal, but again we see parallels with today and government contracts and fraud and backscratching. Of course human nature hasn't changed, so it shouldn't be a surprise, but we've built this mythology around the early days of the Republic and it isn't one that involves the deceit that often accompanies the realities that history illustrates.
The second half picks up the pace and we see once again how failure is an orphan but success has a thousand fathers when the canal starts to pay off and everyone and their brother tries to use the canal for political points, even people opposed to the canal's existence in the first place. NYC didn't want the canal because they didn't want to pay for it, but they certainly would benefit for it trade-wise and tax-wise. People would run campaigns for election based on supposed involvement with the canal and the futures of communities depended on the canal.
The irony is that for all the good of the canal, the whole endeavor was rather short-lived. Not long after the canal opened up the upper Midwest for trade and settlement, the entire point of the canal was lost with the adoption of railroads.
All in all, it was an interesting book, but one that I found a bit tedious in the first half. All the information about the politics and money was just dry (and normally I find that kind of material interesting). I was pleasantly surprised at the discussion of the engineering and construction of the canal and the cast of characters, many of whom were losers and ne'er-do-wells but who managed great feats and built (or resurrected) their reputations in the process.
