Société d'Études du Canal de Suez

The Société d' Études du Canal de Suez ( correct: Société d' Études de l' Isthme de Suez ) was founded by the Saint -Simonians Prosper Enfantin in Paris 1846 Society for the Study of the isthmus of Suez and the opportunities to build a Suez Canal.

Prehistory

Since about 1820, the Saint -Simonians had to deal with the idea of ​​creating a channel connection between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. Enfantin had traveled among others for this purpose in 1833 with some of his followers to Egypt. He was only the viceroy Muhammad Ali Pasha not interested in his ideas, but discuss his ideas among others, the French consul Lesseps, the Linant active in the Egyptian channel management de Belle Fund and the court with his Overland Route British Lieutenant Waghorn. After some of his followers had died north of Cairo in the Nile River embankment work on the plague, he returned in 1836 to Paris. Enfantin was disappointed by this failure, but also ten years later still not discouraged.

The Company

Members of the society was the French Enfantin, Arles- Dufour, Jules, Lon and Paulin Talabot, the British Robert Stephenson and Edward Starbuck, the Austrian Alois Negrelli, Inspector General of Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway, and as representatives of the German interests Messrs. Feronce and Sellier from Leipzig. The company's headquarters was located in the home of Prosper Enfantin. It is said to have less been a purely private matter, but rather a semi-official Commission, supported by the Viceroy and his senior ministry officials Linant -Bey.

In September 1847, the company sent three groups of engineers and surveyors to Egypt. The led by Negrelli and Stephenson groups explored in particular the corresponding stretches of coastline, while that of Talabot commissioned Paul -Adrien Bourdaloue with his group a complete survey of the isthmus undertook and thus refuted the prevailing since the survey work of Jacques- Marie Le Père at Napoleon's Egyptian expedition theory that there was a more than 9 m large difference in level between the two seas.

As a result of the revolutions of 1848, the growing importance of the railways, the disinterest of the English participants and the death of Muhammad Ali Pasha, the Company had then set other activities.