Suez Canal
Canal de Suez
- Date
- 1859-1869 · confidence high
- Place
- Suez Canal, Ismailia, Egypt
- Credited to
- Ferdinand de Lesseps and the Suez Canal Company
- Field
- Movement
What it is
A lockless canal of 164 km joining the Mediterranean to the Red Sea that shortened the Europe-Asia route by about 7,000 km. Its opening in 1869 favoured steam over sail and reshaped colonial geopolitics.
It follows ancient canals (Darius, Ptolemy); tens of thousands of Egyptian labourers worked on it, with many deaths.
What it led to
- the decline of the clippers and rise of steam liners
- British presence in Egypt from 1882
- the Suez Crisis (1956)