Forced to labor on the Suez Canal, the fellahin brought their culture with them into the desert of the isthmus. They did not try to fight against the injustice of the corvée. Instead, they bided their time, tried not to work too hard, and trusted that it would soon be over and they would return to their homes. And almost to a man, they did. Though they were made to dig and shovel and haul earth for this strange new trench through the sands far away from the Nile, they were paid a few piastres a day (in the form of promissory notes redeemable only after their service was completed), fed adequately, and soon back home, worse for wear but at least not dead. True, Hardon was accused of mistreating the native workers, by failing to provide them with enough food and by allowing foremen too free a hand in doling out physical punishment. But even as the corvée came under attack, there were surprisingly few allegations of violence. The fellahin knew they would be whipped if they tried to escape and treated roughly if they shirked. All in all, it was safer to follow and obey.
In addition, partly to head off charges of abuse, the Canal Company had an extensive team of doctors trained in public health. Egypt was frequently beset by cholera breakouts, and given the vagaries of the water supply to the isthmus, cholera was an ongoing concern. But these doctors also monitored the health of the fellahin to ensure that they were receiving enough nutrition. Though some of the attentive-ness to the health of the laborers was motivated by a desire to avoid bad publicity, the result was that most of the workers arrived in good health and left in good health. Lesseps was adamant that the workers be treated with respect, and he was reported to have told one of the foremen, “Treat the natives well; they are men.” The moral implications of forced labor notwithstanding, the corvée used for the building of the canal was not marked by rampant brutalization of the workers.
In fact, life in the canal zone was shaped by the routine of the fellahin as much as by the needs of the company. Each encampment of workers had a representative from the Egyptian government as well as officers of the Canal Company to make sure that disputes were settled peacefully, and the fellahin’s customs were honored. In Port Said, the local imam demanded that the company build a mosque and a Koran school for the children of the longer-term workers. Some of the fellahin who were brought via the corvée chose to stay, and they established their own communities next to the European-style towns designed by Lesseps and the company. On one side of the Rue de Lesseps in Tousounville, at Lake Timsah, for instance, there might be a modest single-story wooden house inhabited by two senior engineers from France. They would drink their wine in the evening, sit down to dinner, and then write reports. Nearby, a few hundred yards away, several dozen fellahin might be camped in tents, eating dates and dried chick-peas while listening to someone playing the ney pipe and someone else banging on a simple drum. And for the most part, these two worlds sat peacefully side by side, with only sand and a cultural divide separating them.3
Still, however civil the interactions were, forced labor was forced labor. No matter how carefully doctors inspected them and how many piastres they were promised, the fellahin were not removing millions of cubic meters of sand and dirt because they shared the ambitions of Lesseps, Said, and several thousand of the French bourgeoisie. As expected, the British seized on the corvée and used it to condemn Lesseps and the company. Before Said authorized the use of forced labor, members rose in the House of Commons to excoriate the company for even contemplating the corvée. By the middle of 1862, anti-canal sentiment was once again cresting in Britain. “It is clear,” claimed Darby Griffith in Parliament, “that a great evil is being perpetrated by that company in an unblushing manner.” He reminded his colleagues that the sultan himself had, in that edict of 1856, declared that “the lives, property and honour of every subject in the Ottoman dominions should be held secure.” Did not the corvée violate the stated policy of the Ottoman Empire? Griffith asked. And was it not England’s duty as a civilized nation to do its part to stamp out slavery throughout the world?4
As the British government prepared its next salvo, Said went on a summer tour of Paris and London. Several months earlier, he had inspected the progress of the canal with Lesseps as his guide, and he now hoped that the diplomatic nightmare was safely behind him. In England, he was treated politely, and in France, he took full advantage of the pleasures of food and high society. That fall, he was invited by Lesseps for another visit to the isthmus, which Lesseps hoped would become an annual event on a par with the annual shareholders’ meeting as a symbolic celebration of the canal’s progress. The rigole, the narrow access canal extending roughly fifty miles from Lake Manzala to Lake Timsah, was nearly complete. The El-Guisr plateau was the final obstacle, and it had been surmounted.
The viceroy, suffering from stomach problems, declined to make the trip. But he sent a party of notables in his stead. To mark the occasion, Lesseps had the small settlement at Tousounville brushed and shined. Ceremonial arches were erected next to the lodge that had been built to house the viceroy. A special train took the deputation from Cairo to Zagazig, and from there they followed the Sweet Water Canal until they reached Lake Timsah. The party included the grand mufti of Egypt, the Catholic bishop of the region, and the viceroy’s delegate and nephew, Ismail.
Never one to forgo a symbolic gesture, Lesseps had the viceregal party assemble on the morning of November 7 on a recently constructed pavilion. The event had been carefully planned. At eleven o’clock, he raised his hand and shouted, “In the name of His Majesty Muhammad Said and by the grace of God, I command the waters of the Mediterranean to flow into Lake Timsah!” Then workers broke through the temporary earthen sluice, and the water began to stream into a lake bed that had been dry for centuries.
Of course, a banquet followed. It had been arranged at great expense, since most of the food had to be shipped across the desert. After prayers by Catholic priests, Muslim clerics blessed Said, Lesseps, and the canal. “In the name of God the compassionate and the merciful,” the mufti of Cairo intoned, “who has permitted the waters from the sky to descend to the earth… and who has made possible these great discoveries which make it easier for the peoples of the earth to communicate with one another.” For the finale, a telegram of congratulations from Napoleon was read aloud. Lesseps glowed in the victory of the moment, relieved that, after years of uncertainty, the canal was taking physical form. He wrote a long letter to his brother-in-law heralding this latest success.5 He did not realize how short-lived it was to be.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE NEW VICEROY AND HIS MINISTER
IN JANUARY 1863, Muhammad Said Pasha was only forty-one years old, but his body was breaking down. He had suffered from one ailment after another, and nothing his physicians prescribed did any good. Trips to Europe, long periods of rest, and a restricted diet only made him weaker. Lavish parties, such as the one he threw for himself on his birthday in December, no longer cheered him. In years past, he had rarely exhibited outward signs of stress. Rather than grapple with difficult issues, he looked for activities to take his mind elsewhere. But this time, he could not. People began to notice that something was wrong. He looked pale and exhausted, and he smiled less.
The physical changes were reflected in his mood. Meeting with the British ambassador to the Porte, Sir Henry Bulwer, in early January, Said was depressed and pessimistic. The Egyptian economy was booming, thanks largely to a significant surge in cotton exports. Some of that good news was offset by Said’s decision to secure a public loan in order to finance both the purchase of the canal shares and numerous other public-works projects. Yet all of these undertakings promised more economic activity and a brighter future for Egypt and for the viceroy. His advisers, not the most candid group but loyal to a fault, praised him and spoke soothingly of how his name would be immortalized by the great projects he had overseen. Talking with Bulwer, however, Said confessed that it all seemed pointless. He worried that the canal would become a French fiefdom, and that it would undermine Egyptian soverei
gnty.
By mid-January as his health rapidly deteriorated, courtiers began to prepare for the worst. Overtures were made to his nephew and successor, Ismail, who lived on an estate in the delta. One ambitious French gentleman employed at the viceregal court managed to plant himself in the palace telegraph office so that he could be the first to tell Ismail of Said’s death. It had long been customary in Egypt for the new ruler to reward the bearer of such news with wealth and rank. Unfortunately for the ambitious courtier, Said was slow to die. After many days of little sleep, the courtier bribed a telegraph clerk to bring him the news and then went home to bed. But when the announcement of the viceroy’s passing was transmitted, the clerk decided to inform Ismail himself. In return, he was granted a title and an income, while his erstwhile sponsor came away with nothing.1
For different reasons, Lesseps shared Said’s fear of being undermined. On the night of January 17, Said died in his sleep. Ismail, as the oldest surviving male in the family, was proclaimed the new viceroy, though only provisionally. Until the sultan ratified the line of succession, Ismail could not officially claim the title, and he left for Constantinople three weeks later to secure the sultan’s approval. But within days after his uncle’s death, he set a markedly new tone for the country, one that alarmed the partisans of the Suez Canal. For all of his vacillations, Said had been a staunch advocate of the project. No matter how grim things looked, Lesseps had always been able to strengthen Said’s resolve or persuade him to support the company. In a country where the will of the sovereign meant almost everything, that personal bond had been the difference between success and failure. Now, with Said gone, Lesseps and the canal had lost the only Egyptian patron they had. Regardless of the concessions that Said had granted, unless those guarantees were renewed by Ismail they would be worthless.
Ismail had been the heir apparent since 1858, after his older brother was killed when a train plunged off a bridge and into the Nile on the way from Alexandria to Cairo. In January 1863, he was thirty-two years old, almost the same age Said had been when he assumed power eight and a half years before. He was the son of Ibrahim Pasha, and he had spent time with his father in the Syrian desert during the campaign against the Ottomans in 1839 and 1840. Though hardened to realities of military life by a father who instilled in him a respect for the art of war, Ismail did not grow up to be a military man. But whereas Said had been mercurial and expansive, Ismail was deliberate and reserved. Bulwer, with a whiff of condescension, called him “parsimonious, careful, and methodical, and with abilities rather solid than brilliant.” He predicted that Ismail’s administration “would be orderly, safe, and respected.”
Ismail was even more at home in Europe than his uncle had been. He graduated from St. Cyr, the French military academy, and he had spent months in various European capitals mingling with the aristocracy. His manners were impeccable, as was his dress, which was thoroughly European save for the occasional red tarboosh. Otherwise, he was usually found in polished leather boots, tapered pantaloons, a tailored buttoned frock coat adorned with military epaulets, trimmed hair, and a groomed beard. Stocky, he shared with Said a tendency to overeat, but he never approached his uncle in size.
During the previous years, Ismail had avoided attention. Though no one contested his right of succession, court intrigues could be unpredictable and potentially dangerous. Abbas had been murdered; Ismail’s brother had been killed unexpectedly in an accident; and Ismail himself had no wish to share either fate. Instead, he avoided the court and quietly bought land. His low profile served him well. By the time he inherited Said’s mantle, he was one of the largest landowners in Egypt, and his estates were so profitable that he had become one of the richest men in the country. He read the latest books on land use in Europe and throughout the world, and he hired consultants to advise him on how to maximize crop yields. He was an inventive overseer. Using his prerogatives as a member of the ruling family, he decided not only what would be grown on his estates, but how they would be farmed. He concentrated on cash crops, cotton as well as sugar cane. He sampled different strains of seed, redesigned irrigation, and experimented with nitrates, old-fashioned guano, and innovative fertilization techniques. Frugal yet willing to invest in new technologies, he was a shrewd manager of his finances—a skill that deserted him when he became Egypt’s ruler.
Yet Ismail did more than tend his estates. He thought ahead, and by the time he became viceroy, he had a detailed agenda and a plan to carry it out. Like many rulers of his generation, he was both an ardent nationalist and an eager modernizer. He admired Europe and wanted to emulate it, and he loved Egypt and wanted it to be powerful. That meant following the path of his grandfather Muhammad Ali and his uncle Said. He once remarked, “Egypt must become part of Europe,” and he meant it. He intended to increase the pace of reform; rationalize Egyptian agriculture; streamline and centralize the government and its bureaucracy; improve and strengthen the military; and enhance Egypt’s reputation as a country of ancient wonders and modern marvels.
That entailed spending more on trains, telegraphs, and waterways; building factories; reforming the judicial system; and transforming Cairo from a relic of past greatness into a metropolis filled with gardens, museums, palaces, and parks on a par with London, Paris, and Vienna. It also meant increased military spending, in order to equip the army with the latest weapons being produced by the Krupp munitions factory in Germany and with French and British armaments. To train soldiers how to use the new weapons, Ismail authorized the construction of military academies for specialized studies in artillery and cavalry. To house the new army, he continued work done by Said on an immense barrack in Cairo, at Qasr al-Nile, and he commissioned a new palace just to the west of the walled old city. Abdin Palace, sprawling and huge, was a perfect copy of a nineteenth-century Victorian building, and since the materials were imported along with the workmen, it was even more costly. Ismail himself, reputation for parsimony notwithstanding, spared few expenses in outfitting his court. For him, his family, and his retainers, he purchased only the finest china, the most elegant carriages, and the latest baubles, from ivory-tipped walking sticks to porcelain figurines to engraved crystal trays resting on the arms of sculpted cherubs.
These ambitions required large sums of money. Ismail had two solutions: expand the production of cotton, and decrease the power of the Suez Canal Company. In 1861, worldwide cotton supply plummeted because of the Civil War in the United States. Though the Southern states were able to maintain production for the first months of the conflict, shipments became erratic when the North instituted a blockade. For textile businesses in England and the continent, the Civil War presented a problem, and Egypt became the answer. In 1860, average cotton exports from Egypt amounted to about one million pounds sterling a year. By 1862, the figure was six million, and by 1865, it reached nearly eleven million pounds. In the words of one observer, “Practically every available acre in the Nile Valley was devoted to cotton…. The fields were covered with white bulbs and every fellah dreamed in terms of cotton.” Blessed with this sudden windfall, Said had taken a loan in 1862 to finance new projects, and Ismail followed suit. Believing that the cotton revenues would be permanent, Ismail authorized hundreds of new ventures. Had the cotton boom continued, he might have been able to pay for them.2
Ferdinand de Lesseps (1805-1894) (Courtesy of Getty Images)
Napoleon and his army in Egypt, by Jean-Léon Gérôme (© Christie’s Images/CORBIS)
Muhammad Ali Pasha, father of modern Egypt (© Bettman/CORBIS)
Père Enfantin in his usual eccentric clothes (Granger Collection)
A group in the slave market of Cairo, by David Roberts (Author’s collection)
The Death of Sardanapalus, by Eugène Delacroix (© Philadelphia Museum of Art/CORBIS)
Muhammad Said Pasha, ruler of Egypt (1854-1863) (Reprinted by permission of the Association de Souvenir de Ferdinand de Lesseps et du Canal de Suez)
Lord Palmerston, prime m
inister of Great Britain (1855-58, 1859-65) (© Hulton-Deutsch Collection/’CORBIS)
Emperor Napoleon III of France and his wife, Empress Eugénie (The Illustrated London News Picture Library)
Caricature of Ferdinand de Lesseps, separating the two continents (Reprinted by permission of the Association de Souvenir de Ferdinand de Lesseps et du Canal de Suez)
Lesseps and the leading engineers of the Suez Canal (© Bettman/CORBIS)
Ismail Pasha, ruler of Egypt (1863-1879) (Reprinted by permission of the Association de Souvenir de Ferdinand de Lesseps et du Canal de Suez)
Ismail’s palace on the shores of Lake Timsah, next to the Suez Canal (Re-printed by permission of the Association de Souvenir de Ferdinand de Lesseps et du Canal de Suez)
Ismail Pasha receiving the consuls general on the occasion of his accession to the pashalic of Egypt (The Illustrated London News Picture Library)
One of the dredges designed specifically for work on the canal (Reprinted by permission of the Association de Souvenir de Ferdinand de Lesseps et du Canal de Suez)
The villa of Ferdinand de Lesseps in Ismailia (Courtesy of the de Lesseps family)
The Suez Canal works: excavation at El-Guisr (The Illustrated London News Picture Library)
The opening of the Suez Canal: blessing the canal at Port Said in the presence of the imperial and royal visitors (The Illustrated London News Picture Library)
Parting the Desert Page 23