Having fought against Lesseps, Ismail now treated him as an ally. For Lesseps, however, the khedive was no longer a concern. In the space of a few years, Ismail had gone from a crucial determinant of the canal’s outcome to one of many powerful and influential people vying for a prominent role in its future. Lesseps did not snub Ismail, but he did not go out of his way to cultivate him either. Instead, he attended to more pressing issues. Work on the canal was far from over. The cities of the isthmus were burgeoning, and Lesseps was becoming the de-facto monarch of a small realm. The company had to set rates for passage and then convince shippers that the route was more viable than the existing alternatives. And though the completion date was almost two years away, Lesseps was already envisioning the inaugural ceremony. The project had begun quietly in Said’s tent; it would end with a festival to rival the Parisian exposition.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE FINAL STAGES
AT THE END of 1867, less than half of the excavation was finished. A maritime canal existed between Port Said and Lake Timsah, and flat-bottomed ships and barges regularly made the transit. But the channel was not nearly deep or wide enough to accommodate larger vessels, and millions of cubic meters of earth still had to be dredged. The average final width was supposed to be three hundred feet at the top, though in certain spots it would be as narrow as two hundred feet, while the minimum bottom width would be seventy-two feet. The depth would also vary, though the goal was to have a minimum of twenty-six feet, which would be just enough to allow passage for the latest steamships. The northern half of the canal was almost complete, but in many spots the depth was only ten feet. South of Lake Timsah and Ismailia, the work was even less advanced. The six miles of the Serapeum ridge remained untouched and kept the waters of Lake Timsah from flowing into the dry bed of the Bitter Lakes, while the rocky Chalufa ridge still stood between the Bitter Lakes and Suez. The Bitter Lakes themselves required little excavation or preparatory work. They were below the level of the canal, and the plan was to inundate them once the two ridges on either side were pierced. But the dry lake-beds posed dangers to the workers. They were dotted with large crevices that appeared unexpectedly and could kill camels and horses. While the work on the jetties of Port Said was proceeding smoothly, tons of cement still had to be mixed, poured into molds, baked in the sun, and then put in place.1
These logistical problems did not threaten the actual completion. Voisin, the Dussauds, Borel, and Lavalley had solved the technical issues, but now they confronted a different challenge: time. The completion date was set for October 1869. The company guaranteed its shareholders that the work would be finished by then, and it claimed that if the various contractors failed to adhere to that schedule they would be fined as much as five hundred thousand francs for each month of delay. As he had a decade earlier, when trying to gain support for the nascent idea, Lesseps suddenly seemed to be everywhere. He went from city to city, and spoke about the progress of the canal. He was asked to represent Marseille in the Legislative Corps. Lacking the time but honored by the request, he reluctantly agreed and then lost the election. The fact that he was asked, however, was a sign of how illustrious he had become.
At event after event, he appeared confident and relaxed, yet there was a race going on, one that he would have preferred not to run. The company was spending money at an astonishing pace. The completion date was not the product of a careful calculation of how long the remaining work would take; it was when the company would exhaust its funds. The work schedule was calibrated to the rate at which these funds were diminishing. The shares were down, trading more than 20 percent below par value, at about four hundred francs. The loan was taking longer than anticipated to be finalized. Lesseps once again was part juggler and part confidence man. He presented a bold face, with the sweat never visible. He had faith that the bulk of the work would be completed before the money ran out, but it was no sure thing.
As the work sped up, the cities along the canal grew. People arrived daily, some to operate the expanding number of machines, some for the tedious digging between Chalufa and Suez. They came from across Egypt and the Near East. Bedouin tribes arrived, led by their shaikhs, looking to be hired. Groups of men from Nubia crossed the hundreds of miles of desert to find work. Thousands more came from Europe, drawn by the prospect of a new life and quick wealth. In 1865, the canal zone had a population of ten thousand; in 1866, that grew to eighteen thousand; in 1867, twenty-six thousand; and by 1868, thirty-four thousand, almost evenly divided between Europeans and non-Europeans. By 1868, Port Said and Ismailia each had a population of about ten thousand. Only a few years before, nearly everyone in the canal zone had been employed by the company, but many of the new arrivals didn’t work on the canal at all. Instead, they set up businesses or found jobs as servants, storekeepers, clerks, lawyers, gardeners, cooks, blacksmiths, and telegraph operators. They became merchants or agents for merchants and competed for an early advantage in what promised to be a lucrative future. The cities took on their own life, inextricably bound to the canal and the company, but with their own urban rhythms and their own municipal needs.
The inhabitants were all immigrants, and they spoke a variety of languages. The canal zone became known as a latter-day “Tower of Babel.” One observer joked that in Port Said “you speak bad Italian to the Arabs, even worse Greek to the French, and an impossible Arabic to the Dalmatians.”2 Lesseps boasted that the ethnic mix of the isthmus lived in harmony, freedom, and liberty. The company made the region sound as if it embodied the precepts of the French and American Revolutions, and that in the canal zone people could pursue their dreams unfettered by unjust laws. That was partly true. Much like the American West in these same years, or the pampas of Argentina, Suez was a raw area that hadn’t yet developed the layers of established society. But with that freedom came a good deal of conflict, and violence.
In 1868, the company began another struggle with the Egyptian government over customs duties and jurisdiction. The canal zone was in many ways lawless. Neither the company nor the government had been able to keep up with the population growth. Though the company was superbly organized, it didn’t have the staff to run small cities. Egyptian officials administered the native populations of the isthmus, but they were sent from Cairo and depended on the good will of the company for such basic needs as telegraph communication, food, and supplies. The government, naturally enough, contended that it alone had the authority to adjudicate disputes and punish those who broke the law. That raised a crucial question: what laws applied to whom? If a Greek canal-worker stole from a Serb, would he be tried in an Egyptian court? Would he be brought in front of a company disciplinary committee and subjected to the Napoleonic Code of France? Or would his own consul handle the dispute, as consuls had done in the Ottoman Empire for centuries under the system of capitulations?
Scornful of “Oriental justice,” European governments wanted simply to extend the old system of capitulations and establish legal structures that would prevent foreign nationals from being tried in Egyptian courts. In the past, however, the capitulations had only covered the few hundred foreigners living in Alexandria. With the influx of thousands to the isthmus, the same system would have made a mockery of Ismail’s claim to govern all of Egypt. If a majority of the people living in the canal zone were foreign-born, and if none of them were subject to Ismail’s authority, then the government would have minimal control over the area. It had only the right to police and tax Egyptians living there, and not even that when an Egyptian had a dispute with a European. There was no way Ismail could accept the de-facto loss of sovereignty over the canal zone, even if he personally had a large stake in the company.3
As Ismail understood, a state—especially an autocratic state—maintains control with armies and courts. A government that cannot create and enforce laws is no government at all. Ismail fought for the right to determine the laws of Egypt and to enforce them, but the very fact that he had to fight at all showed just how t
enuous his independence had become. Having gained autonomy for Egypt within the Ottoman Empire, Ismail immediately found that autonomy compromised by a hungry and expanding Europe, with the Suez Canal Company in the vanguard. Contrary to the hopes of Said and the promises of Lesseps, the closer the canal came to completion, the further the dream of an Egyptian renaissance receded. Lesseps could promise a renewal of Egypt, but he could not change European attitudes that saw Egypt as backward. One journal stated that consular courts should be the only system of justice, one that Ismail ought to embrace because such courts would be “an excellent school for the Orientals.” Ismail and Nubar could legitimately argue that Egyptians, Arabs, Ottomans, and Muslims in general had a longer, more sophisticated tradition of jurisprudence than any European state, but in a world increasingly dominated by the power of Europe, such arguments carried little weight. More common was the belief that the canal was reversing a pattern established by Islam. “In the 14th century,” said one Catholic journal, “Muslim fanaticism closed off commerce between Europe and Asia, which forced the peoples of Europe to discover new routes to India. In the 19th century, thanks to a most extraordinary revolution of ideas and a most amazing enterprise, the pashas of Egypt reopened the doors of the East to the West.” Though the legacy of Muhammad Ali was honored, centuries of Arab and Muslim culture were denigrated and distorted.4
The question of jurisdiction was not resolved until the middle of the next decade, and then only after years of complicated negotiations led primarily by Nubar Pasha. In the end, a new system of “mixed tribunals” was established that replaced the capitulations with hybrid courts, composed of both European and Egyptian judges, to try disputes between different nationalities.
The company took an interest in the capitulations, but it did not truly care who had jurisdiction over a Bulgarian accused of a crime in Port Said. It did, however, care greatly about customs duties. Lesseps had always promised that the canal would be a neutral waterway, accessible to all navies, but Ismail expected to collect taxes on goods that entered or left Egypt via the canal. Goods transported through the canal on their way, for example, from Marseille to Calcutta, would not be taxed, because they would not technically be imported into Egypt. But the company and the government would still profit from the fees charged to use the canal.
The logistical arrangements between the company, which would operate the canal, and the government, which would collect duties, had never been mapped out. Until the canal was near completion, there had been no need to. In 1868, however, much to the government’s surprise and dismay, Lesseps broke a long-standing tacit agreement and claimed that the canal should be a duty-free zone. Writing to Ismail in April, he said that, because the government would collect 15 percent of the net profits of the canal, no goods imported and consumed in the canal zone should be subject to customs. It was an apples-and-oranges argument born of hubris rather than reason. The 15 percent reserved for the government had nothing to do with customs on goods imported into Egypt at Port Said, or Ismailia, or Suez. Lesseps also said that the original concession, by granting the company the right to import construction materials for the canal duty-free, extended to goods consumed by the inhabitants of the towns along the canal. Not surprisingly, Ismail disagreed.
The company and the Egyptians took their dispute to an arbitration panel composed of consuls. In 1869, the panel ruled that the government did have the right to collect taxes, but that the company should have wide latitude to import materials, classify them as construction-related, and not pay any duties. This was not an issue that would go away, nor was it one that the company and the government were able to resolve conclusively before the canal opened. But by even suggesting that the canal zone should be duty-free, the company put the Egyptian government and the world on notice that it thought of itself as much more than a commercial venture.5
In the eighteenth century, the British and Dutch had chartered semi-sovereign entities to undertake commercial exploration. Firms like the East India Company were chartered by the crown, set up their own armies, and then conquered and governed territory. In similar fashion, the Universal Company of the Maritime Canal of Suez had grander ambitions than simply ferrying ships from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and paying dividends to its shareholders.
Though it was now a vast and complex organization, the company retained the indelible mark of its founder. From the positions he took, the letters he wrote, and the speeches he gave, Lesseps seemed to have the following interpretation of what was right and just: With the exception of a few Bedouin tribes who sometimes paid taxes to the Egyptian government and often did not, the isthmus had been a vacant desert before 1860. Now lands were cultivated, and recently settled towns were thriving, and there was a contest over who would administer the region. Who should it be? On the one hand, the canal was within the territory of Egypt. On the other hand, the company had built the canal and the towns, and it was the sole economic attraction for the tens of thousands who had relocated to the isthmus. Lesseps had made all of it possible, and though others might have shared his dream, only he had been able to translate that vision into reality. Why shouldn’t his company administer the isthmus, in addition to building and running the canal? The company had as much right to govern the area as an Egyptian monarch who had paid the region scant attention until recently. Even without direct jurisdiction, Ismail would make far more money than if the canal had never been created. So why, Lesseps reasoned, should the khedive object? Why shouldn’t the Egyptian government be content with the fact that the canal would make Egypt more wealthy, more powerful, and more significant in world affairs than it had been for centuries?
Until the canal was actually opened, however, Lesseps did not press the point. Instead, he compromised with the khedive to ensure that payments continued to flow. The company faced a cash squeeze throughout 1868 and 1869, and the khedive was a reliable source of emergency funds. Ismail might have extracted more concessions in return, but his attitude at this juncture, like that of Lesseps, the company’s directors and shareholders, and most who were involved, was simply to get the thing finished.
One of the remaining decisions was what to charge for passage. In 1867, the company had already begun to set rates. It had also started to transport goods from Port Said to Suez, but it was a makeshift system. The canal between Port Said and Ismailia could accommodate midsize barges, and from there, smaller barges could float down the Sweet Water Canal, which ran roughly parallel to the line of the maritime canal. Though ships could not yet pass through the isthmus, this was still a significant improvement over any other trans-shipment of goods from Europe to Asia via Egypt. Over the next three years, the route generated several million francs in annual revenue, but that was a fraction of what the actual maritime canal could produce.
In May 1867, the company announced its preliminary fee structure. Depending on the type of cargo, ships would be charged between twenty and twenty-five francs per ton. Annually, about ten million tons of goods were shipped between Europe, Asia, and America around the Cape of Good Hope. The company based its calculations on the assumption that half of that would soon pass through the canal. As it turned out, the company aimed too high, and in response to complaints, prices were lowered to as little as ten francs per ton (which was actually the rate that Lesseps had initially planned in 1856) and ten francs per passenger, which would mean approximately sixty million francs a year in revenue. Unfortunately, these predictions of initial use substantially overestimated how quickly world trade would adjust to the opening of a new route.6
Aware that simply building the canal would not guarantee that people would use it, Lesseps and the company began an extensive public-relations campaign. There was, as yet, no established industry for promoting companies and ventures, but the principle, then as now, was the same: get people excited, make them enthralled, and spread the word.
To begin with, the company installed the diorama from the Universal Exposition as a permanent exhibit n
ear an entrance to the newly opened Bois de Boulogne in Paris, and a painter was hired to keep it up to date. Lesseps himself stopped by the exhibit when he was in Paris, surprising visitors with an impromptu update on the remaining work.7 He and other company officials took every opportunity to link French national honor to the canal’s success. Though this would do little to induce English merchants to use the canal, it would at least solidify the company’s place in France. If the anticipated revenues did not materialize as quickly as hoped, the company would need the generosity of the French bourgeoisie if they were called on for additional loans. In order to inspire enthusiasm in England, the company tried to generate favorable press. Journalists always need new stories, and several high-profile visits, one by Lord Mayo at the end of 1868, and the other by the prince and princess of Wales, gave them a reason to write about the canal.
Parting the Desert Page 30