French Businessmen and the Channel Tunnel Project of 1913

Abstract

During a recent international conference on the English Channel tunnel, the history of the project was compared to the movement of a bicycle: fundamentally unstable but kept in equilibrium by its forward momentum.' Britain, it was implied, had contributed most of the wavering motion, while the onward momentum had been provided by France. The comparison is not unjust. In the hundred years since construction of a Channel tunnel was first given serious consideration by the British and French governments, its realization has been checked repeatedly by the reluctance of British politicians, military leaders, and the general public to destroy an insularity that was widely held to be the foundation of the nation's greatness.2 Even today, membership in the European Common Market has not allayed British doubts about the wisdom of linking their future to that of the continent, nor has it brought the Channel tunnel any closer to completion. In January 1975, the most recent tunnel project was halted when the British government withdrew its support of the scheme. Yet, if the history of the Channel tunnel has been marked by British hesitation, it has also been characterized by an equally constant French support. In 1882, when the British government was debating whether to permit