The Suez Canal: why do we care? 

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. 

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