The suez canal: why do we care?   | thearticle

For the British, almost as much as for the Egyptians, the Suez Canal has a special significance. Whether thanks to its historical resonance or its economic importance, the story of how a

container ship, the _Ever Given, _ran aground in the canal has caught our collective imagination. The world’s most important bottleneck was blocked for nearly a week by one of the world’s

biggest vessels, causing the mother of all traffic jams and necessitating the most dramatic of salvage operations.  On Monday the heroic efforts of digger and dredger, aided by 15 tugs,

dislodged the colossus. The _Ever Given_ was refloated only after the earth — literally — moved. Only after the rocks into which the ship had rammed herself were cleared and vast quantities

of sand had been sucked from beneath the hull. At last _Ever Given_’s stern was freed, enabling her mighty propellers to turn; the rescuers sounded their sirens in triumph. Later, helped by

the high tide, the bow was finally detached from the rocks and the ship towed into the Great Bitter Lake, the canal’s crossing place, there to lick her wounds. The palpable sigh of relief

that greeted the success of this operation — which pessimists had warned might take much longer — bore testimony to the vital role still played by this “navigational artery” (as President

Sisi called it) more than a century and a half after it was completed. When the Suez Canal was opened in 1869, having taken a decade to construct by the company led by the French diplomat

Ferdinand de Lesseps, the 120 Mike waterway was hailed as one of the greatest triumphs of human engineering in history. The linking of the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean immediately

created a much faster trade route between East and West. The huge increase in commerce during the decades that followed made possible what contemporaries called the _Belle Époque _and

historians see as the first age of globalisation, which ended only in 1914. The concession to build the Suez Canal was granted by Said Pasha, the Khedive of Egypt, who ruled the country as a

semi-autonomous part of the Ottoman Empire. Initially governments in Britain, France and Russia did not invest in the project, so the majority of shares were bought by French private

investors. In 1875, just six years after the canal opened, however, Said Pasha’s successor as Khedive, Ismail Pasha, went bankrupt and was obliged to sell Egypt’s 44 per cent share in the

Suez Canal Company.  In London, Benjamin Disraeli, the Prime Minister, saw his opportunity and seized it. He realised that the British, with their sprawling empire in the Orient, had the

most to gain from control of the canal. With an alacrity that astounded his rivals at home and abroad, Disraeli raised the £4 million (perhaps £450 million today) in secrecy. Bypassing the

Bank of England, which might have raised objections, he borrowed the money from Lionel de Rothschild’s private bank in Paris. Within three days of the Khedive’s offer to sell his shares,

they were deposited at the British consulate in Cairo. Disraeli told an adoring Queen Victoria: “It is settled; you have it, ma’am!” It was the most spectacular coup in his already

astonishing carrer. “Dizzy” had stolen a march on the imperial competition and secured the route to India. The subsequent history of the Suez Canal was less auspicious from a British point

of view. Having occupied Egypt in 1882, establishing a usually compliant monarchy, and defended the country in both world wars, the British kept their base in Suez and joint ownership of the

canal with France. The 1952 military coup that brought the nationalist General Gamal Nasser to power heralded the end of the post-colonial period. When Nasser nationalised the canal in

1956, the British and French organised a joint invasion with Israel. Sir Anthony Eden, the Prime Minister, lied to the House of Commons, claiming that there had been no collusion. The Suez

War was at first militarily successful but led to a political disaster: the United States forced the coalition to withdraw. No compensation for British shares in the canal was ever paid,

though freedom of passage has almost always been maintained by Egypt except in wartime. The memory of Disraeli’s triumph, however, has been eclipsed by Eden’s humiliation. This week’s

reappearance of the Suez Canal in our consciousness is a reminder that great powers, like great ships, can run aground. Unlike the _Ever Given, _political reputations cannot always be

salvaged. But the imperative is to keep the show on the road. The crews of the 400 ships still waiting to pass through the Suez Canal would doubtless agree.  A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We

are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an important contribution to make, one that’s needed now more than ever, and we need your help to continue

publishing throughout the pandemic. So please, make a donation._