when did the french start 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.