Abstract
The French diplomat who promoted the Suez Canal
FERDINAND de LESSEPS (1805-1894)
The French diplomat successfully promoted the Suez Canal . Ferdinand de Lesseps was born on Nov. 19, 1805, at Versailles. After a childhood spent at Pisa – where his father was sometime consul – and then in Paris, his education at the Lycée Napoleon fitted him for entry into the French consular service. From 1825 he held posts of rising importance, usually in the Mediterranean area. In 1849 he went as minister plenipotentiary to the Mazzini Republic in Rome. The unknowing tool of duplicity from the first, he was made a political scapegoat, but he weathered this storm, as he was to ride out future crises, through his political innocence and personal integrity. He soon resigned from the foreign service.
With the accession of Mohammed Said, an old friend, as pasha of Egypt in 1854, Lesseps saw a way to realize an old ambition: the cutting of the Suez Canal from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, an idea which was not new. In Egypt, Lesseps became Said’s favorite to undertake the project and by the year’s end had gained a concession to cut the isthmus. It authorized Lesseps to form the Compagnie Universelle du Canal; the concession was to last 99 years. The international repercussions surprised Lesseps, for he did not appear to realize how the canal could change the balance of power and hazard communications with the British Indian Empire.
The British government applied pressure to delay the Ottoman sultan’s ratification of Said’s firman, while Lesseps went on with his preparations. Skillfully meeting opposition, Lesseps floated his company Lesseps commenced work in 1859. Said was succeeded in 1863 by Ismail Pasha, who ordered Lesseps to release the Egyptian laborers and return the land granted by Said in 1856, with the aim of stopping the work. However with mechanized dredging the work got completed faster. Lesseps became a national hero when the canal was opened in 1869.He died in 1894.
Biography 
