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Intrigued by an episode of the BBC programme Coast - a series about, appropriately enough, Britain's coastline and its history - I wanted to propose the following scenario.

A tunnel is built under the English Channel (or la Manche, if you wish), linking Britain and France. So what? The point is, this one is finished in time for the end of the nineteenth century...

Background:
In OTL history, an undersea tunnel linking Britain and France was built in the 1980s, but had already been proposed many a time. The first such suggestion appears to have been made in 1802, by an aide of Napoleon, during the brief lull in the Napoleonic Wars. This would have been a road tunnel, and was probably impractical.

However, the first serious proposals to build a tunnel crossing the Straits of Dover did not come along until two conditions were met: railways were firmly established as a fast and reliable form of transport; and some surveys and educated guesses had been made on the geology of the seabed between Dover and Calais (the shortest possible route).
The image below shows the geology of the seabed (from this site:

The black line is the route of the historical, 1980s tunnel. As the site points out, "the geology of the sea bed is generally favourable for tunnelling as a continuous stratum of chalk marl under the sea bed extends from England to France. The high clay content makes it almost impervious to water; it is firm yet sufficiently soft for boring machinery."


The above, from this site, shows the geology from above.

Even so, it wasn't until 1881 that any real effort was made to dig a Channel Tunnel. The project did get started, and the workers on the British side, using a tunnel boring machine, managed to dig almost 1km of tunnel under the seabed. The French side got even further: however, work was halted on both sides of the tunnel due to lack of funding, partly caused by British worries of invasion.
The proposal was raised every now and then over the following decades, but it wasn't until the 1980s that a firm commitment was made on both sides to build the Channel Tunnel.

I can't find out a huge amount about it, but it seems that the technology and geology for the 1881 effort was generally sound.
- they were digging through chalk mixed with clay, which apparently provides a solid and waterproof wall for the tunnel.
- on the TV programme, they did show the remains of the tunnel, which are dry and waterproof to this day with no leaks, and more remarkably no actual walls other than the natural chalk & clay.
- as said above, the start of the 1881 tunnel is almost 1km in length, so it's not that they couldn't dig the tunnel at all.

SO, my question is:
what if the first serious tunnel, started in 1881, had been completed?

I am proposing a completion date, given serious funding and political backing on both sides, of 14 years after the starting date: twice as long as the historical tunnel. This seems reasonable to me given the very challenging technical issues with such a tunnel at the time.
What would be the results had this tunnel been built?
- greater economic contact between Britain and France? a tunnel would mean that storms on the surface wouldn't be a problem, goods could get through in any weather.
- obviously, improved physical communication between Britain and France. What effects would this have had on ATL-WWI?

What other effects might be caused?
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