The Suez Canal Opens
A hundred-mile channel links the Mediterranean and Red Seas and reshapes global shipping overnight
Quick facts
- Engineer
- Ferdinand de Lesseps
- Opened
- 17 November 1869
- Length
- About 100 miles (160 km)
- Egyptian shares sold to Britain
- 1875, for 4 million pounds
What happened
French engineer and former diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps secured an agreement in 1854 with the Ottoman governor of Egypt to build a canal connecting the Mediterranean and Red Seas, financed partly by Egyptian government shares and built with Egyptian corvee labor alongside foreign investment. The canal, roughly one hundred miles long, opened to navigation on 17 November 1869 in a lavish ceremony attended by French Empress Eugenie. When it opened the canal was only twenty-five feet deep and seventy-two feet wide at the bottom, far narrower than later expansions would make it, but it immediately cut the sea route between Europe and Asia by thousands of miles. Heavy debts from the canal's construction and other spending eventually forced the Egyptian ruler, the khedive, to sell his government's canal shares to Britain in 1875 for four million pounds, handing effective control of the waterway to a foreign government just six years after it opened.
Why it matters
The canal transformed Egypt from a peripheral Ottoman province into one of the most strategically important pieces of territory in the world, since it now controlled the fastest sea route between Europe and its colonies in Asia. The 1875 share sale to Britain set up the deeper British intervention in Egyptian finances and politics that would follow within a decade, culminating in outright military occupation.
How we know
The canal's construction history and 1869 opening are documented by History, and the 1875 sale of Egyptian shares to Britain and the canal's later role in British and Egyptian politics are detailed in the World History Encyclopedia's history of the canal.
Sources
- History (A&E Television Networks). Suez Canal opens · Reputable sourcehistory.com · The domain "history.com" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- World History Encyclopedia. Britain and the Suez Canal: 75 Years of Colonialism & Crisis · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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