Dark and Deep – 02 – Canal of the Pharaohs
hello and welcome back to ashit pang’s tipping points if it’s your first time here this is a podcast where I talk about historical tipping points that affect me and probably you personally the woods are lovely dark and deep but I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep and miles to go before I sleep this is the next episode of dark and deep a season which delivers to you a unique and cohesive experience on how oil Powers our lives today in the way that it does and how we got here in the last episode we looked at how Napoleon’s failed campaign in Egypt created a ripple effect on the Middle East that reverberates to this day despite an overall British victory in halting Napoleon’s Middle Eastern Ambitions the French will yet achieve their objective of connecting the Mediterranean to Asia what they build the Suz canal built by the Egyptians and French working together is today the second most important artery of the World Behind Only The Straits of malaka near Singapore in 1955 petroleum had accounted for half of the Canal’s container traffic and 2third of Europe’s oil and yes the world has changed significantly since then much more oil goes goes east from the Middle East towards Asia now and Europe has found different supply lines first from Russia and increasingly from the USA but the Suez Canal is still important that oil going to Asia Powers Asia’s economies which make the manufactured goods that get sent to Europe afterwards on container ships that go via the Suz Canal so even though oil may not make up as big a part of it shipments anymore it indirectly still influences what goes through the canal 30% of global container traffic goes through Suez let that sink in nearly one out of every three container ships anywhere on Earth passes through this narrow straight which didn’t even exist 200 years ago if not for the canal Goods would have to move around Africa the oldfashioned way like in the age of Discovery to reach between Asia and Europe or alternatively Goods could go through the Middle East Overland everyone would be a lot worse off for either of those options everything would be a lot more expensive a typical cargo ship might pay a few hundred th000 for Passage through the sus Canal now at first that sounded expensive to me until I found out that the voyage around Africa AFC could cost millions of dollars worth of fuel for ships not to mention the risk of pirates or bad weather conditions or wear and tear on the ships for longer voyages the Suz Canal makes many of the internationally traded Goods we enjoy way faster and way cheaper so which person or people put into action the plan for the canal this wonder of the modern world to my surprise the canal project was put into effect largely via a single childhood friendship this episode is about friendship and the amazing things that it can do here we go [Applause] [Music] the first in our pair of friends is the son of a French diplomat the boy’s name is Ferdinand deip probably pronounced as ferin de but I’m going to say Ferdinand alesp ferdinand’s first years as a child were spent in Italy where his father was occupied with Consular duties during Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt he brought along scientists Scholars and others joining the French contingent were mathematicians a chemist physicist naturalist botanist and engineers and this is another way in which Napoleon’s trip caused a ripple effect across the world the world of science met with the Middle East and its ancient Technologies in a more thorough way than it had before though the original aim of this expedition was indeed to open the SE Canal the group made other scientific discoveries during their time in Egypt for example a French engineer while digging fortifications around the town of Rashid discovered the Rosetta Stone buried underneath the story about how he discovered the stone is not 100% verified but it is generally accepted as the real version that stone went on to being a big reason that the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics can be translated today when the French finally surrendered to the British Navy at the end of the campaign in order to return to France on British ships they handed off many of their tangible discoveries to their enemies including the Rosetta Stone which can still be found in the British museum to this day coming back to the young Ferdinand his father was appointed as commissioner of commercial relations during the French Army’s time in Egypt the leps family became friends with the ruler of Egypt Muhammad Ali Pasha he was the kiv of Egypt in other words a ruler appointed by the Ottoman Empire to rule in their stad Muhammad Ali pasha’s son was morbidly obese and the ruler ordered him to exercise for 2 hours every day the fat child s who would one day rule Egypt as kiv himself was only allowed to visit one household during his struggle to lose weight the house of the LPS the leips of whom the father of the household was the French consul at the time was perceived as a family running a morally righteous household thus safe for the young s to cultivate good values the Young Prince s made a fast friendship with Ferdinand and by historian Pierre kab’s retelling of events quote the young boys reveled in devouring immense quantities of spaghetti this intimacy and his longing for pasta caused Muhammad s to hurry to the French Consulate whenever The Frugal diet of the vice Regal table left a void in his stomach end quote in other words they could Peg out together relatable for all of us I think when the French Retreat from Egypt you’d think that it would be the end of this childhood friendship but fate had other plans both young men s and Ferdinand were sent to Paris to complete their education and in Paris just like in Egypt s frequented the household of the leps eventually the friends parted ways temporarily Ferdinand spent his young adulthood in the French diplomatic service like his father before him serving as Vice Consul of France in Lisbon then as assistant Vice Consul in Tunisia finally he moves back to Egypt as Vice Consul at Alexandria In 1832 The Vessel he travels to Alexandria in was quarantined at a maritime quarantine Center as was normal in many regions of the time to prevent spread of plague during this time his new boss the French consul in Alexandria sent him some books to read something of a for the job that Ferdinand was about to step into an onboarding you could call it one of these books was a memoir written by Jac Marie leer so Jac Marie leer was a civil engineer on Napoleon’s campaign three decades before the book was about the canal of the Pharaohs the ancient predecessor of the Suz Canal that the pharaohs used to connect the Red Sea with the Mediterranean it was much smaller and thinner than the modern suaz of of course because the size of the vessels was smaller and ancient trade was relatively small compared to the trade of the 1800s the canal of the Pharaohs was likely constructed by darush the great of the AED Dynasty and lasted about a thousand years until it was deliberately closed by an Arab commander who wanted to stop supplies reaching Rebel armies so Ferdinand reads this book something like establishing his company’s vision statement for its time in Egypt in 1833 Ferdinand deeps is appointed as the French consul in Cairo and soon afterwards Consul General in Alexandria a position he remained in for 4 years during this time he frequently visits the house of his childhood friend s pasha’s father Muhammad Ali Pasha who was then still the kiv of Egypt on behalf of the Ottomans it’s likely that during this time he ran into s Pasha his friend frequently in 1837 Ferdinand leaves Egypt for other work in his career as a diplomat but his time in Egypt and his friendship with s Pasha still hasn’t run its course just yet in 1849 Ferdinand would retire and moved to his country estate where he found the old reports of the French engineer jacqu Mari Le who wrote of the canal of the Pharaohs and whom he had read before during his time in quarantine this time he was so impressed with what he read and this is a topic that was widely discussed at the time in his circles that in 1852 he had the reports translated into Arabic and sent to the ruler of Egypt Muhammad Ali Pasha only 2 years later in 1854 Muhammad Ali Pasha died and his son s Pasha would take the Reigns of Egypt as its ruler Ferdinand congratulates his childhood friend who responds with sending Ferdinand a personal invitation to Egypt seeing his golden opportunity Ferdinand wasted no time Ferdinand arrives in Egypt on the 7th of November 1854 a week later he goes on an Excursion into the desert and and presents s Pasha with a memorandum on the merits of a canal connecting the two seas and only two weeks after that s Pasha signs a concession authorizing Ferdinand to build the suaz canal and granting the French control over it for 99 years Ferdinand and S set up the international commission for the piercing of the ismus of Suz to assess the feasibility of the canal that commission is quite a mouthful in the commission were British French Dutch Prussian Spanish and Italian experts mostly Engineers you might be thinking why would the British work with the French here and you’d be right to think so Ferdinand spent years trying to get over British political opposition and eventually he did that’s because by the 1850s the British and French weren’t as much at odds with each other as they were during the time of Napoleon they were more competitors rather than mortal enemies let’s take a detour to look at what they’ve been doing in the last 50 years and how they got to this somewhat amicable state so in 1801 the British work with the Ottomans to soundly defeat Napoleon as we covered in the last episode in this season now you might be thinking right the and Brits are Pals now but they were more Enemy of My Enemy type friends so with Napoleon out of the way the Friendship quickly dissolves only a few years later in 1807 the British go to war with the Ottomans who receive support this time from the French and yet again the Ottomans come out Victorious being on home turf as we move through the 1800s a new player enters the foray the Russian Empire the Russian Empire had been expanding for centuries Eastward of no real threat to British or French interests at that time but by the mid 1800s Russian interests have them expanding southwards mostly against the ottoman Empire’s Holdings by 1850 the Russians already had control of aeran Georgia kazakistan and other territories which abut Northern Iran and the Ottoman Empire in this way Iran came to serve as a buffer State between British India which bordered Iran to the East and Russia which bordered Iran to the north this is also going to be an important topic for oil as we go forward by the 1850s the British Empire controls pretty much all of the Indian subcontinent or just India as it was known at the time in the early 1850s the fren French and Russians jostle over which empire had the right to protect Christians in what is today Palestine inside the Ottoman Empire both sides beat their chests the French send a ship to the Black Sea as a show of force which convinces the Ottomans to agree to the French Demand right the French are like we are in charge of protecting the Christians here the Ottomans agree and yes what’s happening in Palestine today goes back to then and even further back and Beyond but I don’t want to take another detour while we’re already on a detour so onward we go after the French show of force the Russians reach out to the British for diplomatic support but to no Veil if the Russians weren’t a threat to the British at all the British might have helped them against the French but at this time the British were more interested in keeping Russia at Bay and were Ally in themselves with France realizing that they were out of options the Russians attacked the Ottomans sounds familiar now I’m skipping over a lot of details in this war but essentially this becomes what’s known as the Crimean War the Russians on one side versus the British French and ottoman Joint Force on the other they fight arguably one of the largest and most deadly Wars of the 1800s for both sides in the end the Allied Forces win and the Russians suffer a major defeat and sign a treaty in 1856 giving back the Ottomans some of their territory Russia would take decades to recover from this defeat and had this war gone differently the world would likely look very different you could even argue that the Ukraine war in some way shape or form is a reverberation of what happened in the first Crimean War something interesting and fun to note is how the Ottoman Empire sort of functions as everybody’s puppet and they are an entity on their own but whenever the Ottoman Empire brushes up against either the French or the British or the Russians it seems like everyone else comes to back them up and then the Ottomans win the ensuing conflict so interesting the middle power role they play but because of their geography they really are indispensable much like how turkey is today though turkey is a little bit less so also in 1856 the British French and Americans jointly defeat the Chinese in the second OPM War so as the 1850s goes on we see more of the familiar angl French American alignment that we take for granted today quite simply there are vast sums of money to be made in exploiting Asia together even if that means selling them drugs and the friendships of the modern world are made on the tears of Asian and other people so now that we’re in the late 1850s I’ll come back to the point of this detour how did the world’s pre-eminent Naval power the British feel about the international commission for the piercing of the ismos of Suz well generally they were still against it according to Keith in the 20 2011 publication Suez Britain’s end of empire in the Middle East British prime minister Palmerston ruthlessly opposed the construction of the Suz Canal the canal was financed jointly by the British and the French and pomon feared that it would threaten British commercial interests such as control of South Africa which European ships had to pass on route to Asia the British government would later publish opposition to the use of slave labor in building the canal you might think well that’s awfully sweet of them but they themselves had used slave labor in building a railroad in Egypt just a couple of years before so it’s more of a political play than a moral one but Ferdinand DPS getting the approval of the engineers from the commission would allow no one to stop him not the British not his critics in France and not not even the weather he nearly went bankrupt in this Pursuit until 1858 when he founded the suaz canal company leips got more than half the money for the construction of the canal in France with the Egyptian government pulling up the remainder of the money needed but in the world of the mid 1800s no one can ignore the British for long sah Pasha ferdinand’s childhood friend passes away in 1863 three only a few years after becoming the kiv of Egypt leaving Egypt to his nephew Egypt would soon fall into Political instability but with all its Wheels in Motion Now The Show Must Go On and the canal project continues until it is finally inaugurated in 1869 attended by the French and Austrian emperors along with the Crown Prince of Prussia among many other notable dignitaries from around the world a British Navy ship HMS Newport was allowed to go through the canal in the first batch of ships to survey the new development there was a panic in 1873 in Britain that Goods would no longer be stored in British warehouses going around the Cape of Africa and while the British held reservations for a few years an opportunity opened up for them the inability of s pasha’s nephew who is now the k of Egypt to pay his bank debts caused him to sell his 44% stake in the canal to the British in 1875 making the Suez a joint French British project then forth sometimes things just work out for the best am I right then a flasho in Egypt would change Egypt and the world’s fate forever in 1881 an Egyptian army officer named Ahmed urabi initi iated a coup against the Egyptian leadership one of his concerns was over disparities of pay between Egyptians and Europeans and I imagine he generally wasn’t too happy about the selling of 44% of the stake in at that time maybe the world’s most important Canal to foreigners now in today’s world we are used to Europeans being paid more than local and we take it for granted to some extent that it’s just a fact of life and for those of you who are not aware of this Europeans who go to developing countries get much higher salaries than the locals even if the work is quite similar they get things called hardship allowances which are essentially bonuses on top of their salaries for living in a country that gives them some kind of discomfort but the same thing doesn’t necessarily apply the other way around Europeans in Europe likely get higher Sal iies than immigrants who do the same job but in the world of the late 1800s the world was still getting used to this new reality especially in the Middle East and Asia so the British and the French joint stakeholders in the Suz Canal send a letter to the Kad declaring their recognition of his authority so they’re like you want to rebel against this guy we have his back and of course they do right he sold his stake to the British in the Suz Canal so naturally the British and the French back the kadif also something preeminent military powers can do even in today’s world the United States often backs parties it sees as favorable to its National interest and that backing carries a lot of weight and usually comes with very sophisticated media manipulation as well on the 20th of May that same year the British and French send warships to the coast of Alexandria to PR event escalation on June 11th a couple of weeks later an anti-christian Riot occurs in Alexandria that kills 50 Europeans soon after the British start bombing Alexandria for 2 days they don’t lose a single ship in this process and much of the city is destroyed the rebel Colonel urabi declares the kadiva traitor and declares war on both the UK and France in the ensuing War the British send 40,000 troops to fight urabi and as was normal at the time the British lose only 57 troops while the Egyptians lose 2,000 the Egyptian Rebels flee and the British capture Cairo and return it to the kiv but they return it in name only in reality the British military forces remain in Egypt a backstab of both the French and the Ottomans who will continue to own their possessions in Egypt legally but not in any real way you know as maong once said power flows from the barrel of a gun the British also take de facto control of the canal its finances and operations too Ferdinand deeps was then in his late 70s and this development must have come as a horror to him as his Life’s greatest achievement falls into enemy hands Frenemy hands maybe this is just the kind of thing the world’s preeminent superpower could do at the time and Ferdinand the leps would die in 1894 seeing the British occupied Egypt another person like many who litter history who likely died with some amount of pain and unfulfilled goals in their heart London would promise 66 times to depart from Egypt and every time they would say we’re going to depart in a few years they kept doing this until 1914 so did they depart in 1914 no they just stopped lying they stopped promising to leave and they took full official control they were like Egypt is now ours also in name thank you and to compound British gains further in 1901 a British Speculator William Darcy received a concession from Iran to to explore oil in the region they discovered oil in 1908 a few years later and a year after that the Anglo Persian oil company was formed so by the 1900s the British Empire controls India from which they have access to hundreds of millions of people in Manpower and vast quantities of resources they control Iran’s resources from where they can get oil they control the Suz Canal which allows them to transport troops and resources through the shortest route to Britain in one way the British Empire was the strongest it had ever been and nothing would shed light on how lucrative an industry oil was more than the Great War to come World War I in a coming episode we’ll look at some of the things that develop as a butterfly effect from the developments that we looked at here in Egypt the rise of the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia World War I changing the face of the Earth and how it shows oil to be a more important resource than anyone could have ever imagined this was Ash pang’s tipping points see you next time [Applause] [Music] n [Music]
A childhood friendship results in the creation of the most important canal of the modern world; The Suez Canal.
Add A Comment