Ferdinand de Lesseps

Ferdinand Marie Vicomte de Lesseps ( born November 19, 1805 in Versailles, † December 7, 1894 in La Chesnaye at Guilly, Indre ) was a French diplomat and entrepreneur. He is known as a successful builder of the Suez Canal ( 1854/59-1869 ) and then an unsuccessful first builder of the Panama Canal ( 1879/81-1889 ).

Life

De Lesseps came from a French diplomat family. He spent his early years in Italy, where his father worked as a diplomat Mathieu, the Lycée Henri IV in Paris visited and studied commercial law as a preparation for his diplomatic career. He seems to have riding lessons preferred to the lectures, at least later he made in Egypt so that impression.

His mother Catherine was of Spanish descent. Ferdinand was with his cousin, the Comtesse de Montijo, a guest, where he met their daughter Eugénie in 1853 as the wife of Napoleon III. Empress of France was. His uncle, Jean Baptiste Barthélemy de Lesseps, was also a diplomat.

He joined in 1825 in a diplomatic career as attaché at the Consulate General in Lisbon, worked from 1827 to 1828 in the Trade Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and went in 1828 as Attaché Consulate to Tunis. In 1832 he was seconded as Vice Consul to Alexandria. To shorten his quarantine period on arrival, the General sent him several books, including the report of Jacques- Marie Le Père, member of the Egyptian expedition of Napoleon, on the explorations in the isthmus of Suez and the possibility of canal construction. In 1833 he was appointed consul in Cairo and soon after consul general in Alexandria, where he remained until 1837.

During this time he was often in the house of the viceroy Muhammad Ali Pasha to guest who had been supported by de Lesseps ' father in his time when Napoleon's General Commissioner in Egypt by benevolent reports to the French Government in its ascent to the Viceroy. Lesseps there influenced the education of the young Muhammad Said, who later kindly reminded himself as he himself had become viceroy. In addition Lesseps learned the occurred in the Egyptian construction administration Linant de Belle funds and know its reports on the exploration and survey of the Isthmus of Suez and met Thomas Waghorn who successfully ran a new, shorter transport route via Suez with his Overland Route.

End of 1837 Lesseps returned to France and married Agathe Delaware malls, with whom he had five children; she died in 1853 along with a child with scarlet fever.

From 1838 he managed the succession consulates in Rotterdam, Malaga and Barcelona and was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary of the Republic of France in Madrid in April 1848. Beginning of 1849 he was sent on Extraordinary Mission to the incurred through the revolutions of 1848 /49 and the Risorgimento Roman Republic. There he sought an amicable agreement between the local provisional government of France and to pave the way. The French government decided to violent subjugation of Rome under papal rule, called him away, and he retired from the diplomatic service of.

Lesseps retired to his country seat Manoir de la Chesnaye, where he again came the reports of Jacques- Marie Le Père de Belle and Linant funds on hand in its old files. He was at this period generally discussed idea of ​​the Canal des deux mers (Channel of the Two Seas ) so impressed that he in 1852 even a memorandum about it wrote, translate it into Arabic and let the out the former viceroy Abbas transmit I, however, without further consequences. 1854 Lesseps learned that Abbas died and I. Muhammad Said was appointed viceroy, and congratulated Said Pasha immediately, who answered him with an invitation to Egypt. Lesseps arrived in Alexandria on 7 November 1854. In one of the trips to the desert he submitted to him on November 15, 1854 a memorandum on the merits of a canal through the Isthmus. Already on November 30, 1854 Lesseps received from Said Pasha the concession, with the to be established universal Compagnie du canal maritime de Suez ( Suez Canal Company) to build the canal and operate for 99 years.

After three years of efforts to overcome the political opposition of Britain and the business community in Europe for investment in the project to gain what brought him to the brink of bankruptcy, he called the end of 1858 for the subscription of shares and founded the Suez Canal Company. On April 25, 1859 came to the groundbreaking ceremony. After overcoming a variety of technical, financial and diplomatic difficulties, he was able to celebrate the opening of the canal on 17 November 1869. At the end of this three-day celebrations, he married in Ismailia Louise Hélène de Autard Bragard (* 1849), with whom he had 12 children.

In 1879, he settled for Président du comité français pour le percement d'un canal interocéanique en Amérique centrale (President of the French Committee for the construction of an inter- oceanic canal in Central America ) select and adopted the system of the Panama Canal in the hand, where he however failed ( the channel was later completed by the U.S.).

He was awarded the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour; of Queen Victoria, he received the Grand Cross of the Star of India and was appointed freeman of the City of London. In 1873 he became a member of the Académie des Sciences and in 1885 a member of the Académie française.

It is sometimes claimed that the actual planners of the Suez Canal, the Austrian Alois Negrelli of Moldelbe was whose services had been carefully concealed by Lesseps life. Negrelli died but already on October 1, 1858, before the establishment of the Suez Canal Company and about half a year before the start of construction. When planning the Suez Canal, it was at that time primarily to the measurement of the isthmus and to the creation of correct route. For both Linant de Belle Fund and its employees Eugène Mougel have done basic preparations that were also recognized by Lesseps in his books. Negrelli 1847 was active in the Société d' Études du Canal de Suez and after the grant of the concession to Lesseps convened the International Commission of this over the puncture of the Isthmus of Suez. The proposals made ​​to him from there ( shift of the input channel to the west, no locks, installation of the port from Timsahsee to the channel mouth ) were included in the final version.

Works

• Ferdinand de Lesseps, the emergence Suezkanals.Faks. outp. d ed Berlin, gen. Association for Dt. Literature, 1888. Einf. to Faks outp. by Wilhelm loyalty, Dusseldorf: VDI - Verlag, 1984 ISBN 3-18-400642-5 (Vintage Art)
• The Isthmus of Suez Question, Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, London; and Galignani and Co., Paris, 1855. digitized on Google Books.
• Percement de l' isthme de Suez: exposé et documents officiels, par M. Ferdinand de Lesseps, Ministre plénipotentiaire. Paris, Henri Plon, Éditeur, 1855 digitized on Google Books ( French, starting with Exposé Lesseps, followed by various documents, with plan of the future Suez Canal on the path on which it was built, and Document N ° 11:. Excerpt from a publication in the Moniteur Universel of M. Bonneau: Avantages you tracé direct sur ​​le tracé indirectly ).
• Percement de l' Isthme de Suez, meetings anglais en faveur du Canal de Suez. Documents publiés par M. Ferdinand de Lesseps. quatrième série. Paris, aux bureaux de l' Isthme de Suez, Journal de l' Union des deux Mers, et chez Henri Plon, Éditeur, 1857. Digitized on Google Books ( French, reports Lesseps ' meetings in the UK).
• Percement de l' isthme de Suez. Rapport et Projet de la Commission Internationale. Documents Publiés par M. Ferdinand de Lesseps. Troisième série. . Paris aux bureaux de l' Isthme de Suez, Journal de l' Union des deux Mers, et chez Henri Plon, Éditeur, 1856 digitized on Google Books ( French; foreword by Lesseps, full report of the International Commission, without the content of the original maps, profiles, etc. )
• Lettres à l' histoire journal et documents du canal de Suez ( 1875-79, 4 vols )