2. David Landes, Bankers and Pashas (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), pp. 85-101.
3. Ibid., pp. 90-100. Story of the iron paving from Nubar Pacha, Mémoires de Nubar Pacha (Beirut: Libraire de Liban, 1983), pp. 153-54.
4. Alexander Scholch, “The Formation of a Peripheral State: Egypt 1854-1882,” and Peter Gran, “Late 18th-Early 19th Century Egypt: Merchant Capitalism,” both in Groupe de Recherches et d’Études sur le Proche-Orient, L’Égypte au XIX siècle; Byron Cannon, Politics of Law and the Courts in Nineteenth-Century Egypt (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1988).
5. Ferdinand de Lesseps, Lettres, Journal et documents pour servir à l’histoire du Canal de Suez 1854-1856 (Paris: Didier, 1875), pp. 1-5. These same letters are translated in Ferdinand de Lesseps, Recollections of Forty Years. Lesseps’s letter to Abbas of April 18, 1853, in CAMT, 1164.
6. Ghislain de Diesbach quotes from a 1931 history of the Saint-Simonians that alleges that Lesseps did get blueprints from Arlès-Dufour, and that is, as the next chapter shows, precisely what the Saint-Simonians accused Lesseps of in 1855. Lesseps’s official biographer, George Edgar-Bonnet, makes the same claim, based on a letter between Lesseps and Arlès-Dufour written in 1855. It is credible given subsequent events, but difficult to establish beyond a reasonable doubt. See Ghislain de Diesbach, Ferdinand de Lesseps, p. 124.
7. This and all subsequent descriptions of Lesseps and Said from Nov. 1854 are taken from Lesseps, Lettres 1854-1856 and Recollections.
8. Lesseps, diary, Nov. 15, 1854, in Lettres 1854-1856, p. 17.
9. Instead, I have used the French original: Lesseps to Muhammad Said, Nov. 1854, in 7836 Fonds Enfantin. Inadequate translation in Lesseps, Recollections, pp. 170-75.
CHAPTER SEVEN: WHOSE CANAL?
1. Ferdinand de Recollections of Forty Years, pp. 178–97; English copy of Lesseps’s letter to Bruce, Nov. 27, 1854, in FO 78/1156 PRO; French copy in 7836 Fonds Enfantin.
2. Text of the concession, Nov. 30, 1854, in Percy Hetherington Fitzgerald, The Great Canal at Suez (London, 1876), pp. 293–96. For tensions between Mougel and Linant, see Nathalie Montel, Le Chantier du Canal de Suez (Paris: Éditions en Forma, 1998), pp. 29–33.
3. Though some have questioned how revolutionary the Crédit Mobilier was, it was nonetheless an innovative banking system. See Niall Ferguson, The House of Rothschild: Moneys Prophets 1798-1848 (New York: Viking, 1998); Niall Ferguson, The House of Rothschild: The World’s Bankers 1849-1999 (New York: Viking, 1999); David Landes, Bankers and Pashas, pp. 50ff; Pierre Miquel, Le Second Empire (Paris: Perrin, 1998), pp. 116–44; Francis Démier, La France du XIX siècle, pp. 258–62.
4. Lucien Jeanmichel, Arlès-Dufour: Un Saint-Simonien à Lyon (Lyon: Éditions Lyonnaises d’Art et d’Histoire, 1993).
5. Lesseps to Arlès-Dufour, Nov. 30, 1854, in 7837 Fonds Enfantin; list of founding subscribers, in 7836 Fonds Enfantin.
6. Lesseps to Arlès-Dufour, Dec. 14, 1854, in 7837 Fonds Enfantin; an abridged copy of the letter is also in Ferdinand de Lesseps, Lettres (1854-1856), p. 57.
7. Lesseps, Recollections, pp. 206–17; see also Bruce Feiler, Walking the Bible (New York: William Morrow, 2001).
8. Lesseps’s instructions to Linant and Mougel, Jan. 16, 1855, in 7836 Fonds Enfantin.
9. Enfantin to Negrelli, Jan. 18, 1855, in 7837 Fonds Enfantin.
10. Lesseps to Arlès-Dufour, Jan. 16, 1855, in 7836 Fonds Enfantin; Lesseps to Madame Delamalle, Jan. 22, 1855, in Lesseps, Lettres 1854-1856, pp. 108–11.
11. Enfantin to Lesseps, Feb. 10, 1855, in 7835 Fonds Enfantin.
12. Enfantin to Negrelli, April 16, 1855, in 7836 Fonds Enfantin; Enfantin to M. Perron, May 4, 1855, in 7837 Fonds Enfantin.
13. Enfantin to M. Garbeiron, June 1, 1855, in 7837 Fonds Enfantin; Lesseps to Arlès-Dufour, June 18, 1855, in 7837 Fonds Enfantin.
CHAPTER EIGHT: THE SULTAN’S SHADOW AND THE ENGLISH LION
1. Russell quotation in Herbert C. F. Bell, Lord Palmerston (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1936), vol. 2, p. 424. For more on Palmerston, see Jaspar Ridley, Lord Palmerston; David Thomson, England in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Penguin, 1978); Charles Webster, The Foreign Policy of Lord Palmerston (London: Bell & Sons, 1951); Roy Jenkins, Gladstone (New York: Random House, 1997); Evelyn Ashley, The Life and Correspondences of Viscount Palmerston; E. D. Steele, Palmerston and Liberalism, 1855-1865 (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Andrew Porter, editor, The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). Much of the more recent scholarship on Palmerston has emended the picture of Palmerston as a gruff jingoist. Revisionism is part and parcel of the writing of history, but while there was far more to England than the attitudes of Palmerston, the earlier picture of him as a staunch imperialist seems more credible to me than recent suggestions that he was a subtle leader enmeshed in a complicated society. Yes, mid-nineteenth-century Britain was a multifaceted society, and recent academic work has demonstrated the complexities. Palmerston remains, in my opinion, a rather straightforward figure.
2. D. K. Fieldhouse, Economics and Empire, 1830-1914 (London: Macmillan, 1984); A. P. Thornton, The Imperial Idea and Its Enemies (London: Macmillan, 1985); Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher, Africa and the Victorians (London: Macmillion, 1961); Bernard Porter, The Lions Share: A Short History of British Imperialism 1850-1983 (London: Longman, 1984); David Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Lawrence James, The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994).
3. Queen Victoria quoted in The Times, May 2, 1851; Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy (London, 1869).
4. Bruce to Lord Clarendon (Foreign Secretary), Dec. 3, 1854, and Lord Stratford, dispatch to the Foreign Secretary, Jan. 11, 1855, both in 78/1156 PRO.
5. Lesseps, “Note pour le vice-roi…,” Feb. 15, 1855, and letters to Lord Stratford, Feb. 26 and 28, 1855, in Ferdinand de Lesseps, Lettres 1854-1856, pp. 117-21, 127-28, 134-38; Stratford to Foreign Office, Feb. 22 and 26, 1855, in FO 78/1156 PRO.
6. Lesseps to M. Hippolyte Lafosse, March 22, 1855, in Lesseps, Lettres 1854-1856, pp. 155-61.
7. Said to Kiamil Pasha, March 31, 1855, in FO 78/1156 PRO.
8. Lesseps to Madame Delamalle, April 21, 1855, in Ferdinand de Lesseps, Recollections of Forty Years, p. 260.
9. Paulin Talabot, “Le Canal de deux mers,” and J. J. Baude, “De l’isthme de Suez and du Canal Maritime à ouvrir de la Méditerranée et la Mer Rouge,” Revue des deux mondes, March 15 and April 30, 1855.
10. Lesseps, note to Said, April 18, 1855; note to Count Walewski, June 7, 1855; and note to the emperor, June 9, 1855, all in Lesseps, Lettres 1854-1856, pp. 184-99.
CHAPTER NINE: HITHER AND YON
1. Ferdinand de Lesseps to Count de Lesseps, June 25, 1855, in Ferdinand de Lesseps, Recollections of Forty Years, p. 269, and in Ferdinand de Lesseps, Lettres 1854-1856, pp. 221-27.
2. Lord Cowley, memorandum, July 2, 1855, in FO 78/1156 PRO.
3. Athenaeum, Aug. 25, 1855.
4. Lesseps to Emperor Napoleon, July 4, 1855, in Lesseps, Lettres 1854-1856, pp. 235-38.
5. Lesseps, statement on behalf of the viceroy to the members of the international commission, Dec. 16, 1855, in Lesseps, Lettres 1854-1856, pp. 319-20; see also Consul Green to Foreign Secretary, Jan. 6, 1856, in FO 78/1340 PRO. Dispatches of the commission are in 06892 CAMT.
6. Second Act of Concession, Jan. 5, 1856; Said, Decree as to the Native Workmen, July 20, 1856; and Statutes of the Company, all in Percy Hetherington Fitzgerald, The Great Canal at Suez, pp. 297-323.
7. Enfantin to Gabeiron, Aug. 4, 1855; Enfantin to the emperor, Sept. 10 and Oct. 24, 1855; official reply to Enfantin, Dec. 15, 1855, all in 7836 Fonds Enfantin. On Stephenson, see Dan Bradshaw, “Stephenson, de Lesseps, and the Suez Canal,” Journal of Trans-port History, Sept. 1978.
8. Lesseps to Barthélemy Saint-Hillaire, April 7, 1856, in Less
eps, Lettres 1854-1856, pp. 377-79. Report of Newcastle meeting, May 28, 1857, in FO 78/1340 PRO. Reports of other meetings in Ferdinand de Lesseps, Lettres, 1857-1858, pp. 72-87.
9. The exchanges between Lesseps and Palmerston and Lesseps and Stephen-son can be found in Lesseps, Lettres 1857-1858, pp. 87-113; some of those letters are also translated in Lesseps, Recollections, pp. 55-69. Speeches of Palmerston and Stephenson in the House of Commons, July 7 and July 17, 1857, in Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates.
10. Lord Cowley dispatch, April 3, 1856, in FO 78/1340 PRO.
11. John Freely, Istanbul: The Imperial City (New York: Penguin, 1996), pp. 221-80; Lord Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire (New York: William Morrow, 1977), pp. 417-507; Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961); Sanford Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, vol. 2 (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1977).
CHAPTER TEN: THE EMPEROR AND THE ENTREPRENEUR
1. The quotation about Napoleon as a man of one idea comes from Philip Guedella, The Second Empire (New York: G. Putnam, 1922), p. 243. The details about Napoleon come from multiple sources: John Bierman, Napoleon III and His Carnival Empire (New York: St. Martin’s, 1988); Fenton Bressler, Napoleon III: A Life (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1999); David Duff, Eugenie and Napoleon III: A Dual Biography (New York: William Morrow, 1978); Louis Girard, Napoleon III (Paris: Libraire Arthème Fayard, 1986); Pierre Miquel, Le Second Empire; Alain Plessis, De la fête impériale au mur des fédérés 1852-1871 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1979); Robert Tombs, France: 1814-1914 (London: Longman, 1996); Roger Williams, The World of Napoleon III, 1851-1870 (New York: Free Press, 1957); Theodore Zeldin, France 1848-1945: Politics and Anger; Roger Price, The French Second Empire: An Anatomy of Power (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Philip Mansel, Paris Between Empires, 1814-1852 (London: John Murray, 2001).
2. The meeting between Ali and the emperor was discussed by Lesseps in a letter to M. Thouvenal, the French ambassador in Constantinople, April 22, 1856, in Ferdinand de Lesseps, Recollections of Forty Years, pp. 294-95. The benediction is from Lesseps, letter of March 21, 1856, Lettres 1854-1856, pp. 351-52, quoted in Lord Kinross, Between Two Seas, p. 95.
3. Cowley to Clarendon, Dec. 26, 1856, in FO 78/1340 PRO.
4. Quoted in multiple sources, including Ghislain de Diesbach, Ferdinand de Lesseps, pp. 161-62, and Charles Beatty, De Lesseps of Suez, p. 175.
5. Bierman, Napoleon III, pp. 175-90; Duff, Eugénie and Napoleon III, pp. 126-38; Herbert C. F. Bell, Lord Palmerston, pp. 180-83.
6. Lesseps to Le Comte de Lesseps, and Lesseps to Negrelli, both April 17, 1858, in Ferdinand de Lesseps, Lettres 1857-1858, pp. 195-203.
7. Report, May 10, 1858, in 1522 CAMT.
8. Debate in the House of Commons can be found both in Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates and in The Times, June 2, 1858. For an example of the many British defenders of the canal, see “Suez Ship Canal,” Dublin University Magazine, May 1858, as well as editorials in Daily News, June 3, 1858. See also “Egypt and the Suez Canal,” Fraser’s Magazine, Feb. 1860. For the continued opposition of Stephenson, see a long letter he wrote to The Times, Aug. 3, 1858. Lesseps quoted in George Edgar-Bonnet, Ferdinand de Lesseps, p. 301.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: A UNIVERSAL COMPANY FOR A MARITIME CANAL
1. Lesseps circulars, in Ferdinand de Lesseps Lettres 1857-1858, pp. 352-58. The circular stated that 150 francs would be due once the allocation had been settled, but it appears that this was subsequently amended to fifty francs.
2. Account of Odessa banquet taken from Journal d’Odessa, Aug. 9, 1858, in Lesseps, Lettres 1857-1858, p. 313. Account of Barcelona meeting taken from Diario, Oct. 1858, in Lesseps, Lettres 1857-1858, pp. 360-65; account of Turin meeting from Lesseps, Lettres 1857-1858, pp. 372-73.
3. Preliminary division of shares, Sept. 1858, in 1164 CAMT. List of shareholders in Lesseps, Lettres 1857-1858, pp. 380-88; list of Egyptian shareholders, in 1164 CAMT. See also Werner Baer, “The Promoting and Financing of the Suez Canal,” Business History Review, Fall 1956, pp. 361–68.
4. Lesseps to Baron Bruck, Dec. 18, 1858; Lesseps to M. Revoltella, April 21, 1859; Revoltella to Lesseps, all in 1164 CAMT. List of shareholders, according to the company’s accounts, included fifty thousand shareholders from Austria, twenty-four thousand from Russia, and five thousand each from the United States and Great Britain. There is some debate about whether a handful of these shares were actually bought in those countries. For the list, see L’Isthme de Suez, Jan. 19, 1859, in 1521 CAMT. For the debate, see George Edgar-Bonnet, Ferdinand de Lesseps, p. 327.
5. Said quoted in De Regny to Lesseps, Jan. 2, 1859, in Ferdinand de Lesseps, Lettres 1859-1860, pp. 16–17. For other accounts of the interaction between Said and Lesseps, see David Landes, Bankers and Pashas, pp. 174ff; Robert Solé, L’Égypte, -passion française, pp. 178–79; George Edgar-Bonnet, Ferdinand de Lesseps, pp. 315–30; Nubar Pacha, Mémoires de Nubar Pacha, pp. 140–90.
6. Notes from the first meeting of the Conseil d’Administration, Dec. 20, 1858, in 1164 CAMT.
7. The Times, Nov. 27, 1858; other newspaper quote in Edgar-Bonnet, Lesseps, p. 327; Palmerston quoted in Lord Kinross, Between Two Seas, p. 115.
8. Once again, the issue of how the West depicted the East has been a source of intense controversy in academic and intellectual circles in Europe and the United States in the past three decades, especially since the publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism.
9. For a discussion of art, see Picturing the Middle East: A Hundred Years of European Orientalism—A Symposium (New York: Dahesh Museum, 1996); Rana Kabbani, Europe’s Myths of Orient (London: Pandora Press, 1986); Christine Peltre, Orientalism in Art (New York: Abbeville Press, 1998); Arthur Danto, “The Late Works of Delacroix,” Nation, Nov. 9, 1998; Anita Brookner, Romanticism and Its Discontents, pp. 80-119.
10. On Flaubert, see Jean-Marie Carré, Voyageurs et écrivains français en Égypte, pp. 83–130; Gustave Flaubert, Flaubert in Egypt, ed. and trans. Francis Steegmuller (New York: Penguin, 1972); Mary Orr, “Flaubert’s Egypt,” in Paul Starkey and Janet Starkey, eds., Travellers in Egypt, pp. 189–200; Geoffrey Wall, Flaubert (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002).
11. This point is very well made in Ruth Bernard Yeazell, Harems of the Mind: Passages of Western Art and Literature (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).
12. Giles Lambert, Auguste Mariette: L’Égypte ancienne sauvée des sables (Paris: J. C. Lattes, 1997).
CHAPTER TWELVE: THE WORK AHEAD
1. Press clipping in L’Isthme de Suez, Nov. 25, 1858, in 1521 CAMT. Lesseps to Said, Dec. 31, 1858, in Ferdinand de Lesseps, Lettres 1857-1858, pp. 408–12; similar but slightly different version, dated Jan. 5, 1859, in 0002 CAMT. Various correspondence between Lesseps and shareholders, in 1164 CAMT.
2. Minutes of the Conseil Supérieur des Travaux, Nov. 1858, in 0692 CAMT.
3. Agreement between the company and Hardon, Feb. 12, 1859, in Ferdinand de Lesseps, Lettres 1859-1860, pp. 20-27. Nathalie Montel, Le Chantier du Canal de Suez, pp. 30-35. Minutes of the General Assembly of Shareholders, with documents, May 15, 1860, in 0002 CAMT.
4. Various correspondence between Consul Green and foreign secretary, Feb. 3 and March 7, 1859, and between Acting Consul Walne and foreign secretary, April 14, May 6, May 25, and June 3, 1859, all in FO 78/1489 PRO. Lesseps to Said, April 9 and June 8, 1859, in Lesseps, Lettres 1859-1860, pp. 67-70, 131-33.
5. Grand Vizier Ali Pasha to Said, c. June 20, 1859, in Lesseps, Lettres 1859-1860, pp. 158-59; Acting Consul Walne to Bulwer, July 6, 1859, in FO 78/1489 PRO.
6. Lesseps to Ruyssenaers, Oct. 24, 1859, in Lesseps, Lettres 1859-1860, pp. 235-39.
7. Report of Consul Colquhoun, April 26, 1860, in FO 78/1556 PRO. Engineer quoted in Lord Kinross, Between Two Seas, p. 146. The Times, May 23 and 24, 1860. For accounts of the engineering challenges, see Jean-Paul Calon, “The Sue
z Canal Revisted: Ferdinand de Lesseps, the Genesis and Nurturing of Macroengineering Projects for the Next Century,” Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, vol. 19, no. 3 (1994); D. F. Bradshaw, “A Decade of British Opposition to the Suez Canal Project, 1854-1864,” Transport History, Spring 1978; J. Clerk, “Suez Canal,” Fortnightly Review, Jan. 1869.
8. Account taken from L’Isthme de Suez, June 15, 1860, in 1521 CAMT; also from George Edgar-Bonnet, Ferdinand de Lesseps, pp. 459-62; Ghislain de Diesbach, Ferdinand de Lesseps, pp. 183-86.
9. Palmerston, address to the House of Commons, Aug. 23, 1860, in Hansard’s, pp.1723-24.
10. Montel, Chantier, p. 41; Pudney Suez, p. 95.
11. Voisin left an extensive record of his years with the company. See Voisin Bey Le Canal de Suez, 7 vols. (Paris: Charles Dunod, 1902-6). He also left a voluminous collection of papers, which are housed at CAMT. See also Jean-Édouard Goby, “Un Grand Ingénieur français: Voisin Bey,” unpublished paper, 1958, in 1180 CAMT.
12. Montel, Chantier, p. 41; Edgar-Bonnet, Lesseps, pp. 452-53; John Marlowe, World Ditch, pp. 134-35.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THE CORVÉE
1. On the corvée and the army under Muhammad Ali, see Afaf Lufti al-Sayyid Marsot, Egypt in the Rieign of Muhammad Ali, pp. 109, 121, 150-51; Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha’s Men; Fahmy, “The Era of Muhammad Ali Pasha,” The Cambridge History of Egypt. See also Lawrence Jennings, French Anti-Slavery: The Movement for the Abolition of Slavery in France, 1802-1848 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
2. Lucy Duff-Gordon quoted in Katherine Frank, A Passage to Egypt: The Life of Lucie Duff Gordon (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), p. 249. On Sufism, see Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975); Ira Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 260–65, 359–65, 615–21; J. S. Triming-ham, The Sufi Orders in Islam (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971). On social history, see Gabriel Baer, “Continuity and Change in Egyptian Rural Society, 1805–1882,” in Groupe de Recherches et d’Études sur le Proche-Orient, L’Égypte au XIX siècle, pp. 231–37; Ehud Toledano, “Social and Economic Change in the Long Nineteenth Century,” in The Cambridge History of Egypt, vol. 2, pp. 252–84; Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
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