Lead
From the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal in China to the Panama Canal in South America, many canals built by humans can be seen in all corners of the world, connecting countless cities and countries, and opening the door to trade and interconnection.
However, on the island of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, it seems that a "boring" canal has appeared, parallel to the eastern coastline of the entire island, more than 600 kilometers long, only 10 kilometers from the sea, and not a single boat has passed through it.
But in fact, this canal is not useless, and even saying that it is "boring" may cause some unnecessary misunderstandings, so as geographers and lovers of the history of human geography and engineering are discussing: why should Madagascar build a canal parallel to the sea, which costs a lot of money but no one cares?
The role of the canal.
If you want to talk about the most famous canals in the world, it has to be the Panama Canal and the Suez Canal.
Because they connected two different seas on all continents of the world, they led to a revolution in global maritime commerce, and became the key point to improve the structure of the global "Silk Road" network from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century, and it was also the hub that brought the world into a new era.
Therefore, the driving force behind such two canals is actually very simple, that is, the development of world economy and trade, with the relatively stable social form and economic model of human beings for a long time, the self-sufficient life model that is relatively independent of other countries can no longer meet the needs of development, human beings gradually find that trade can bring greater space for development, so it is necessary to establish links between different sea areas to accelerate the speed of resource exchange between countries.
This is where the canal comes in, and in order to transport goods faster and cheaper, mankind began to invest in the construction of canals on a large scale, and the final construction of the two canals of Panama and Suez is the result of this effort, which clamped the edge between the many seas of the earth like two huge pincers, so that the sea, which was originally divided by a large landmass, was connected together as easily and quickly as a line.
Of course, this is only the basic role of the canal, and in specific applications, the canal can play more than that.
Judging from the two major canals of Panama and Suez and tens of thousands of other canals around the world, the role of the canal is not only the "passage" between the two seas, but also a very important function, that is, to make up for the shortcomings and eliminate the barriers.
Madagascar's Pomana Canal is a prime example of one of the biggest effects of canals that allow areas with a small local coastline to "own" a port, or even become a trade hub.
The canal is almost parallel to the coastline of the island of Madagascar, so it is not designed to connect the different seas in the first place, so why should it be built?
A great opportunity to build the Pomana Canal.
In fact, the existence of the Poincarana Canal did not become "boring" at the beginning, on the contrary, it was built because it was built at an excellent time, and it can even be said that without this "help", the canal will probably never be built.
To trace the predecessor of the Pomana Canal is to trace the development and change of the Na River Basin.
On the island of Madagascar, there are four natural rivers of different lengths and basins, the longest of which is the "predecessor" of the Pomana Canal, and the rich surrounding resources and population of the local towns through which the river flows quickly became the most important water transport route on the island of Madagascar, and because of the gentler terrain on the west bank of the basin, it became a favorite place for local people to enjoy leisure and entertainment.
Unexpectedly, the river's original mountain stream bed was developed to open up the topography of the artificial canal, and the construction project that was delayed again and again was finally withdrawn due to the irresponsible destruction of local leaders, and the northern tributary of the river was affected by a small part of the flood that threatened the whole country, and was finally forced to abandon.
In this way, the Pomana River, which had benefited the local people so much, was abandoned and eventually fell into the corner of history.
This seemingly "unfortunate" event provided an unparalleled opportunity for the construction of the Pomana Canal in later generations.
First of all, because the original river has been used for many years, the surrounding population has become more dense, so the desire for a new river has increased dramatically, and after a few decades, the voices of those who proposed the construction of a new canal have increased several times, and learning from the failures of their predecessors, the new river has been successfully built after years of discussion and research in the planning and construction process.
Secondly, the newly built canal benefited greatly from the natural environment of the time.
The natural environment here made it impossible to meet the needs of the local port by building a natural port alone, so the idea of building a canal was even more popular, and because the construction of the Grand Canal was in a peaceful era at the time, people did not have to worry about the war destroying the repaired canal, so more and more funds were included in the plan to build the canal.
Why was the canal built?
In fact, the construction of the Pomana Canal was not only due to the fact that the surrounding ports could not adapt to the needs of local development, but also because of other factors.
One is that the eastern coastline of the island of Madagascar simply has no suitable place for the construction of a port.
The eastern crust is mostly volcanic, the islands have been cut into cliffs, and even if there are natural harbors, most of them are hidden deep in the overhanging rock cliffs, which are extremely unfriendly to ships, and no one wants to enter or leave.
Second, the coastal terrain in the east is complex, and the port is often threatened by floods and tsunamis during the construction of the port, once the port is damaged, many ships entering and leaving the port in the future will have accidents, and the natural port itself is also very dangerous, once the situation is chaotic when it is occupied by the opponent on the other side, it will pose a great threat to our country, so it is very necessary to build a canal to solve these two problems.
The last reason is that the population of Madagascar is very geographically distributed, with at least two-thirds less population in the east than in the north, so the construction of the canal will accelerate the increase in population and wealth in the east, gradually spreading to the rest of the island, and balancing the population and economic distribution of the whole island.
As boring as it may seem, the Pomana Canal is not unjustified because of its long-standing role on the island of Madagascar, without which the prosperity of the eastern coast would have been diminished, which would have had a huge impact on the rest of the island.
epilogue
Although the Porana Canal in Madagascar may not look like a sight to behold, there is a lot to be learned from the geography and history of human development behind it.
However, no matter how good things are, they will have their shortcomings, the Pomana Canal is particularly prone to siltation in daily use, so it often needs to be cleaned and channeled, which is a very labor-intensive thing in the era when there were no artificial facilities so developed, but there is no way to bypass it, so there is a saying that for modern people, this is also one of the biggest disadvantages of the Pomana Canal, but fortunately, this matter can be taken over by modern scientific and technological facilities.