How the Suez Canal changed the world - Lucia Carminati
In March 2021, fierce winds blew
a container ship off course.
In most places, this would have
caused a minor incident.
But in the Suez Canal,
it was a global crisis.
This vessel wasn’t just blocking
other ships—
It was obstructing the flow
of international trade
through one of the world’s
most important waterways.
The site of the Suez Canal has been
of interest to rulers of this region
as far back as the second millennium BCE.
To move goods between Asia
and the Mediterranean basin,
traders had to traverse the narrow isthmus
separating the Red Sea and the Nile,
journeying in camel-bound caravans
through the unforgiving desert.
A maritime passage between the
Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea
would bypass this trip altogether.
And throughout the 16th century,
multiple powers attempted
to construct such a canal.
But their plans were obstructed
by cost, political strife,
and the ever-shifting sands.
In 1798, interest in building
a canal was rekindled,
this time attracting attention
from across Europe.
Over the following decades, individuals
from Austria, Italy, Britain, and France
pitched their plans to Egypt’s rulers.
At the time, Egypt was a territory
of the Ottoman Empire,
which was resistant to these proposals.
But Egypt's political and economic
autonomy was gradually increasing,
and its government was eager
to pursue the project.
When Sa’id Pasha came into power in 1854,
he approved a plan
from the enterprising and manipulative
French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps.
Signed in 1854 and 1856,
a pair of concessions gave de Lesseps
authority to establish
the Suez Canal Company
and finance it by selling shares
to “capitalists of all nations.”
The contracts between Sa’id Pasha
and the Canal Company
also promised a workforce of
hundreds of thousands of Egyptian workers.
Beginning in 1862, about 20,000 laborers
were forcibly recruited every month,
digging the canal
in harsh desert conditions
without easy access to food or water.
Diseases like cholera ran rampant and
workers toiled under the threat of whips.
The estimates of those who died during
construction range into the thousands.
In 1864, the new Egyptian ruler,
Isma’il Pasha,
put an end to the coerced Egyptian labor,
but he still pressed forward
with construction.
Foreign workers from all
over Europe and the Middle East
labored alongside dredgers
and bucket excavators
to remove 74 million cubic meters of dirt.
This massive population of workers
required infrastructure
to deliver drinking water
and other supplies,
giving rise to a flourishing economy of
restaurants, brothels, and smuggled goods.
Amidst the bustle were born three
new cities with multi-ethnic populations:
Port Said on the northern
Mediterranean shore,
Ismailia on the canal's middle tract,
and Port Tewfiq,
at the southern edge of the canal.
The construction site bypassed the Nile
and ran directly from Port Said to Suez.
And after years of work, the streams
of the two seas finally began merging
in the mid-1860s.
The finished canal was
164 kilometers long,
with a width of 56 meters at the surface,
and it was officially inaugurated
on November 17th, 1869.
While it struggled financially
during its first few years,
the canal ended up dramatically
accelerating global trade.
It also facilitated the migration
of numerous marine species,
dramatically changing local
ecosystems and cuisine.
Over the decades,
traffic through the canal grew.
But in 1875,
financial issues forced Egypt to sell much
of its stock in the Canal Company,
allowing Britain to take over.
It was only in 1956 that control
of the canal fully reverted to Egypt
when it was nationalized
by President Gamal Abdel Nasser.
This move sparked a military standoff
between Egypt
and Britain, France, and Israel.
But once resolved,
it transformed the canal into a major
source of Egypt's national revenue
and helped redeem the canal's
imperialist legacy.
Today, nearly 30% of all global ship
traffic passes through the Suez Canal,
totaling over 20,000 ships in 2021.
However, the incident
of the Ever Given is a stark reminder
of just how fragile
our manmade systems can be.
