Coventina's History Thread: The Suez Canal
Sorry it's been a while. Things got kind of crazy with the start of school.
I should be able to post a little more regularly now.....
The centuries-old dream of a canal linking the Mediterranean and the Red Sea became reality in 1859, when French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps stuck the first shovel in the ground to commence the building of the Suez Canal.
Over the next ten years, 2/4 million laborers would move 97 million cubic yards of earth and build a 100-mile Sinai shortcut that made the 10,000-mile sea journey from Europe around Africa to India unnecessary.
De Lesseps convinced an old friend, Egypt's King Said, to grant him a concession to build and operate the canal for 99 years. French investors eagerly bankrolled three-quarters of the project. Said had to kick in the rest to keep the project afloat because others, particularly the British, rejected it as financial lunacy. Their criticisms were seemingly justified when the canal's final cost rang in at double the original estimate.
The Suez dramatically expanded world trade by reducing transportation time and cost. De Lesseps was proclaimed the world's greatest canal digger. The British, leery of France's new backdoor into their Indian empire, spent the next 20 years trying to wrest control of the Suez from their imperial rival.
How important it still is was underlined in 2021 when the ship blocked the canal and impacted the world supply chain.
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