The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power

by Daniel Yergin

THE SUEZ CANAL—a narrow waterway a hundred miles long, dug through the Egyptian desert to link the Red Sea to the Mediterranean—was one of the grandest achievements of the nineteenth century. It was the handiwork of Ferdinand de Lesseps, a Frenchman ever after celebrated as “the Great Engineer.” In fact, he was no engineer at all, though he was a man of other considerable accomplishments—as a diplomat, entrepreneur, and promoter. And his talents did not end there. At the age of sixty-four, he married a woman of twenty, and then, forthwith, proceeded to father twelve children. Though long discussed, such a waterway was thought to be impossible until de Lesseps floated a private concern, the Suez Canal Company, which won a concession from Egypt to build a canal and began actual construction in 1859. A decade later, in 1869, the canal was finally completed. The British were quick to recognize a good thing when they saw it, especially when it substantially reduced the travel time to India, the jewel of the empire, and they rued their lack of a direct stake in “our highway to India,” as the Prince of Wales dubbed the waterway. Fortunately, in 1875, Egypt’s 44 percent ownership in the canal came on the market, owing to the insolvency of the Khedive, the country’s ruler. With lightning speed and the timely financial assistance of the English branch of the Rothschilds, Britain’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, engineered the acquisition of those shares. The Suez Canal Company b...