Nubar’s arguments were then recycled by Lord Palmerston in Parliament. “It is very much to be regretted,” he stated, “in the interest both of England and of France that when both countries are much in need of cotton, 30,000 or 40,000 people who might be usefully employed in the cultivation of cotton in Egypt are occupied in digging a canal through a sandy desert and making two harbours in deep mud and shallow water. I should hope that so useless an occupation will soon be put to an end.”7
Each move by one side brought a riposte. In early February 1864, Prince Napoleon hosted a banquet for Lesseps to celebrate the completion of the Sweet Water Canal, which had finally been extended to the Red Sea. The affair took place, appropriately enough, in the Palace of Industry, off the Champs-Élysées, and it was an unbridled demonstration of support for the company, for the board of directors, and especially for Lesseps. A panorama of the isthmus had been created for the occasion, and two dozen tables were joined to form one vast communal dining area. Lit with the latest gaslight technology, the hall was a glowing international assemblage of shareholders and friends. Senators, clergymen, magistrates, bureaucrats, diplomats, industrialists, bankers, lawyers, doctors, and artists, as well as members of the press corps, gathered to listen first to music played by the gendarmes of the Imperial Guard and then to toast after toast. It was the type of evening that the critics of bourgeois culture detested. Men of society stood and portentously hailed Lesseps and the great venture of Suez. During dessert, the head of the Paris Chamber of Commerce rose. “Gentlemen! In the name of the Banquet Commission, I have the honor of presenting a toast. To His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor! To the Protector of noble and grand enterprises! … To the piercing of the Isthmus of Suez. Gentlemen, let us thank the Emperor…. To the health of the Emperor, and to the health of Her Imperial Majesty the Empress, and to the Prince Imperial!”
Then Plon-Plon himself lumbered to the podium. “To the company!” he began, and proceeded to talk in his crude, rambling way for nearly two hours. “Our enemies want to portray our success as a moral failure, and it is to respond to these attacks that we are gathered here this evening.” He had visited Egypt and witnessed a French company creating a monument in the desert to rival those of the pharaohs. When the canal was completed, the whole world would be forced to agree that it benefited not just its shareholders, or France, but Egypt and all of humanity. The prince parodied the motives of Nubar and Ismail. They claimed that they weren’t against progress, that they respected the “pride of France, the grand Polytechnic School.” They said that they only wanted to defend the poor fellahin and the rights of the viceroy. But they were hypocrites. Nubar was the servant of an absolute master who was in turn the servant of another absolute master, the sultan. They did not care for freedom or for the rights of man, and they did not live in a culture that had ever cared for those freedoms. But, the prince continued, for all the calumny, the truth was that the company treated the fellahin better than any Egyptian or Turk had ever treated them or paid them. “The Company says to the viceroy: The corvée existed in your land long before the company showed up. The Company didn’t create it. We profit from it because you have allowed it. You want us to abandon it. We’re happy to, but not as an act of philanthropy. If you want us not to use the corvée, you must compensate us. And if you want to abolish slavery in your land, you have our blessing.”
Finally, Plon-Plon sat down, and Lesseps rose to thank him. Not wanting to detain the restless audience, he spoke briefly. He reiterated that the canal would reunite two civilizations, and to illustrate that point, he told of how the Egyptian workers had celebrated when the Sweet Water Canal reached the Red Sea. Hand in hand with the foremen, who were mostly French or European, the workers chanted, “The Christians are also children of God. They are our brothers.” Lesseps spoke once again of progress and humanity. He made a toast to the memory of Said; to the current viceroy, Ismail; and to everyone present in the hall that evening. True or not, the story of Muslims saluting their Christian foremen played to the hope and desire of the audience that they were engaged in something greater than an engineering project. Lesseps told them that the canal lay at the end of a centuries-old continuum, stretching from the pharaohs and then the New Testament, and through history to the present. Not only was it the fulfillment of ancient ambition, it was also the junction where Christian and Muslim would end their long conflict and join hands for the betterment of mankind.8
Nubar and Morny had trouble countering this rhetoric. In theory, they could have used the corvée as the centerpiece of a florid attack on the company, but that would have backfired. The Egyptian government depended on the system, and it would have been snared by the same arguments. Rather than focus on the morality of forced labor, Nubar and Morny restricted themselves to challenging the company’s legal rights.
In March, the contending parties officially submitted their grievances to an arbitration commission appointed by the emperor. The commission would assess the 1856 statement issued by Said about the corvée, and address the issue of an indemnity for the company. It also would examine the land grants. It planned to conduct hearings, and to make a final recommendation to the emperor by the end of June.
As the commission started its work, Lesseps, recognizing that the emperor now had ultimate power to determine the fate of the company, increased the frequency of his letters to Eugénie. In public, he announced that the company was eager to end the corvée, but that, in light of Said’s promise to furnish the canal with laborers, it had the right to be compensated. Nubar contended that in the absence of the Porte’s approval, none of the prior agreements had the status of contracts. Therefore, the company had no right to compensation if the current viceroy, Ismail, changed his mind and made a decision that honored universal notions of morality.9
But the opponents of the canal were at a disadvantage. They were allies only because they shared an enemy. Morny’s motive was greed; Ollivier wanted to gain influence in France; Ismail hoped to gain control of the company; and Nubar sought to enhance the power of Egypt. They did not have a coherent ideology. Meanwhile, Lesseps and the company had a philosophy that simultaneously reflected the ideals of nineteenth-century society and yet was compatible with the drive for profit, the quest for fame, the love of country, and the hunger for technological innovation. Until the emperor rendered his decision, both sides wondered anxiously about the outcome. In truth, it was never a fair fight.
On July 6, 1864, Napoleon issued his ruling. It was an absolute victory for Lesseps and the company. The commission had made its final recommendations several weeks earlier, and though it was purportedly a neutral body, it did not deliver a neutral assessment. Nor did the emperor. He accepted the company’s argument that the concession of 1856 had the status of a binding contract, and he agreed with the company’s contention that Said’s promise to supply workers also constituted a contractual commitment. Even though the viceroy had the authority to alter the terms of the concessions granted by his predecessor, the company had the right to an indemnity.
According to the imperial sentence, the Egyptian government would have to pay the company thirty-eight million francs in order to compensate it for ending the corvée. Though the sum could be paid out over several years, it was still an enormous amount of money. The other half of the award covered the lands on either side of the Sweet Water Canal, which had originally been promised to the company. The idea in 1856 had been that the newly irrigated lands would generate an income that would offset the expense of digging the Sweet Water Canal. Napoleon ruled that if Ismail wished to revoke that promise he would have to pay the company thirty million francs, in annual installments. The government was required to give the company a bulk payment of ten million francs, and another six million for navigation rights. The total amount: eighty-four million francs.
The contestants were informed of the decision, but it was more than a month before the full text was released. During that time, there was some uncertainty about what
the award actually meant. The payout schedule was complicated, and the language of the decision was legalese. For several weeks, shares of the company traded lower on the Paris Bourse, because at first blush it seemed as if the company would lose its land rights. But once it became clear that in return for those rights there would be a substantial monetary payment, the shares recovered. By the end of summer, there was no longer any doubt about the company’s victory. Nubar was bitter. He believed that the elites of Europe had once again found a way to profit at Egypt’s expense, just as they had throughout the Near East and Asia. For his futile efforts, Nubar was awarded the Legion of Honor by Napoleon, on Morny’s urging. “It is a heavy price to pay for a medal and it weighs me down,” he told Morny. He was right to be dispirited. Eighty-four million francs equaled the entire annual budget of the Egyptian government.10
Yet Ismail did not seem quite so troubled. Having placed himself in the hands of Napoleon, he agreed to abide by the decision, even though the English government urged him to contest the settlement and argued that the emperor of France had overstepped his authority by intervening in the sovereign affairs of the Egyptian viceroy and the Ottoman sultan. Ismail believed that the canal, more than ever, belonged to Egypt. He was the largest shareholder. As a result of the arbitration award, he now had ownership of the Sweet Water Canal and its lands, and he was entitled by earlier agreements to 15 percent of the profits once the actual canal was opened to ship traffic.
In addition, Egypt was still enjoying the benefits of high cotton prices, and Ismail felt that he would be able to meet the financial demands of the settlement. Cotton wealth had led to inflation in Egypt, and Ismail was confident that would enable his treasury to fund both the indemnity and the public works he had authorized. Optimistic about his future, he took a public loan, negotiated with the Oppenheim brothers, for nearly one hundred million francs (4.8 million British pounds plus a healthy 15 percent commission for the Oppenheims). With interest, this would ultimately cost Egypt twice as much. It seemed a reasonable, though onerous, commitment at the time. But it was the first step toward European control of Egypt’s finances, and the first of many loans that Ismail incurred. Bit by bit, Egypt slipped out of his hands and into the pockets of European bankers and businessmen.11
In public, Lesseps did not exult. Ismail, Nubar, and Morny had been dealt a conclusive defeat, but there was no reason to humiliate them. The company still needed the cooperation of Ismail, and Lesseps respected hierarchy. Ismail was the viceroy, and as such deserved deference. In the statements Lesseps issued announcing his satisfaction with the emperor’s decision, he stressed that there was much work left to be done and that it was now time to turn away from disputes over contracts and toward the formidable task of completing the canal.
Just before Lesseps returned to Egypt that fall, Maxime Du Camp, Flaubert’s traveling companion years before in Egypt, took a short trip outside of Paris to visit an old, frail man who was on the verge of death. Prosper Enfantin had lived a peculiar life. He had become richer than most, and he had left his mark even on those who had rejected him. Now, looking back, he had come to accept his limitations. “In my hands,” he told Du Camp the week before he died, “the canal affair was a failure. I did not have the necessary flexibility to deal with all of the adversities, to fight simultaneously in Cairo, London, and Constantinople…. In order to succeed, one must have, like Lesseps, a devil’s determination and ardor that doesn’t know fatigue or obstacles. By the grace of God, it is Lesseps who will marry the two seas…. It matters little that the old Prosper Enfantin was defeated by deception; it matters little that his children had their hopes betrayed. But it matters greatly that the Suez Canal will be pierced, and it will be. And for that reason, I thank Lesseps, and I bless him.”12
It had been a good summer for Lesseps. With Napoleon’s ruling, he defeated his last and most serious challenge. But with Enfantin’s blessing, he achieved his most improbable victory. Now all that remained between his vision and reality was sixty million cubic meters of sand.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
MEN AND MACHINES
IT WOULD TAKE another year and a half for the company, the viceroy, and the sultan to arrive at a final agreement. The emperor’s decision had only established the overall framework. Though the ending of the corvée was straightforward, many details were unresolved. Ismail and the company promised to honor the imperial arbitration, but they were far apart on exactly which acres would be returned to the Egyptian government, when they would be transferred, what lands the company could draw revenue from and until what date, and how long the company could enjoy tax-free use of the Sweet Water Canal. To complicate matters, England remained hostile. Even the most truculent British official realized that the completion of the canal was a foregone conclusion, but having opposed its creation for so long, they were unwilling to concede defeat. Unable to halt progress, they could still make the process difficult.
The diplomatic focus shifted to Constantinople. Ismail had all along intended to alter his legal status in the Ottoman Empire. He wanted the right to pass his mantle to his eldest son, and he wanted more autonomy. The imperial arbitration provided the opportunity to win these concessions from the sultan. Lesseps and the company directors felt that it was symbolically important to obtain the sultan’s consent in writing. The canal was, after all, in the Ottoman Empire, and it would change the commercial and strategic balance of the eastern Mediterranean. Though the silence of the sultan could not prevent the canal from being opened, it could hurt the company in the future. What if a new sultan came to power and tried to assert control over the canal? Large companies do not like political uncertainty, or even the prospect of it. It was better to get the sultan’s approval sooner rather than taking the risk of not being able to secure it later.
Once again, Ismail relied on Nubar as his emissary. Frustrated by the outcome in Paris, Nubar welcomed the challenge of Constantinople. He knew the terrain, and he enjoyed the delicate indirectness of negotiations. He also understood the culture of bribes, and he was given wide latitude by Ismail to spread the wealth. The company was less adept at this game, but it was in a much stronger position than it had been in years past. Lesseps and Ismail were more or less on the same side. Though they still disagreed about certain details, they both wanted to see the 1864 arbitration ratified by the sultan. The company also enjoyed the explicit support of the French government. Lesseps and his representatives no longer needed to insinuate that the emperor favored the canal: he did, and everyone knew it. The goal for both the company and Ismail was to get the sultan to agree to a change in the viceroy’s status and then sign off on the arbitration. The British, interested only in obstruction, could not match the combined efforts of the company, the French government, and Nubar.1
In the fall of 1864, the final outcome of these maneuvers was unclear. At various moments, the situation seemed to be reaching a new crisis, but all the while, work on the canal accelerated. The outstanding issues were not settled until February 1866, but during that interval of eighteen months, Lesseps expended less energy on diplomacy than at any point in the previous decade. Instead, he focused on building the canal as quickly as possible.
That was imperative, because for all of the talk, the physical work had barely begun. At the end of 1863, Hardon was finally eased out of his position as general contractor. He had spent tens of millions of francs with not much to show for it. He also presented the company with a large bill, in excess of half a million francs, and he was fortunate that Lesseps preferred to pay him to go away rather than try to penalize him for the many false starts. By the time the general assembly of shareholders was asked to endorse the settlement reached between Hardon and the company, new contractors had been hired, and their success removed the sting of Hardon’s failure. At best, the mistakes made on his watch led to the innovations that allowed the canal to be built; at worst, he had wasted time and money and jeopardized the entire endeavor.
As Hardon r
eceded, Voisin Bey took over. He inherited a haphazard organization of isolated stations in the isthmus and transformed it into a modern company, with a clearly defined chain of command. He also helped find two contractors who made the subsequent completion of the canal possible. By early 1864, the company was beginning to lessen its dependency on human labor. In part, that was a logical response to Ismail’s stated intention to end the corvée. Even with an indemnity, the cost of tens of thousands of noncorvée workers would be prohibitive. The company would have to provide salaries and incentives to get laborers to the isthmus, and it might even need to pay for some of the transport. But even without the tumult surrounding the corvée, the company realized that the canal could not be completed at anywhere near its original budget if it relied on thousands of fellahin digging by hand. This was not because the fellahin were incapable. It was simple arithmetic. Unless the number of workers was doubled or tripled, they could only remove so much sand so quickly.
The solution was to mechanize. By the middle of the nineteenth century, engineering projects throughout Europe, the United States, and Latin America were increasingly relying on a combination of men and machines. Steam and coal-powered contraptions helped carve out tunnels, deepen mines, dredge harbors, and remove debris. There were entire businesses and factories devoted to the production of machines, but most of these new tools were designed and developed piece by piece and tailored to the task at hand. In France, it was common to produce heavy, mechanized equipment to specification; mass production of machine tools was several years off. As a result, when the Canal Company decided to make the transition to mechanical dredgers and elevators, it had to find someone who could both oversee their installation and use, and actually design and construct them in the first place.
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