The Suez Canal: Why It Was Built and How It Works
The Suez Canal is a sea-level waterway through Egypt that links the Mediterranean and Red Seas, opened in 1869 so ships could avoid the long voyage around Africa.
The Suez Canal is a sea-level waterway across Egypt that links the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea. It is about 193 kilometers (120 miles) long and opened on 17 November 1869. By letting ships travel between Europe and Asia without sailing around Africa, it became one of the busiest shipping routes in the world, carrying roughly 12 percent of global trade, by common estimates.
Why was the canal built?
Before the canal, ships travelling between Europe and South or East Asia had to round the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa. The voyage was long and exposed to storms. The idea of a shorter link across the Isthmus of Suez is very old. Rulers in antiquity, including the Persian king Darius I, dug canals connecting the Nile with the Red Sea, and these later silted up.
In 1854 the ruler of Egypt granted a concession to the French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps, and the Suez Canal Company was formed in 1858. Digging began in 1859. Much of the labor came from Egyptian workers under a forced labor system, and many of them died from disease and accidents. Historians still dispute the total. Lesseps is often credited as the canal's originator, but the project drew on earlier surveys and on Egyptian labor, and historians debate how to share the credit.
How does the canal work?
The canal has no locks. Water flows freely at sea level, so ships pass through a dredged channel rather than being raised or lowered. Port Said sits at the Mediterranean end, and the southern entrance lies near the city of Suez on the Red Sea. Along the route, the Bitter Lakes and Lake Timsah, two natural bodies of water, were incorporated into the channel. The Great Bitter Lake gave ships a place to pass one another. A freshwater canal fed from the Nile supplies drinking water to the cities along the route.
The first canal was narrow and had few passing places, so ships often moved in convoys. Over the following decades it was widened and deepened. In 2015 a new parallel channel about 35 kilometers long opened, adding a second lane on part of the route to reduce waiting times. Pilots guide ships through, and canal fees are charged largely according to a ship's size rather than the distance it travels.
What events shaped the canal?
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1869 | The canal opens on 17 November |
| 1875 | Britain buys a large stake in the company from Egypt's ruler, the khedive |
| 1956 | Egypt nationalizes the canal, which leads to the Suez Crisis |
| 1967–1975 | The canal is closed after the Arab–Israeli war of 1967 |
| 2021 | The container ship Ever Given blocks the canal for six days |
The 1956 nationalization started a military crisis. In October and November, Britain, France and Israel invaded Egypt. Under strong pressure from the United States and the United Nations, they withdrew. The canal had been blocked by sunken ships and reopened in 1957. The crisis is often seen as a turning point in the standing of Britain and France as world powers.
Why does the canal still matter?
On many routes between northern Europe and South Asia, the canal saves thousands of kilometers compared with the route around Africa. Its role grew with steamships and with the trade in coal, oil, and manufactured goods that followed the Industrial Revolution. Earlier, overland routes such as the Silk Road had carried goods across Eurasia. The canal moved much of that long-distance trade onto the sea. Ocean routes had been tying distant regions together since the late 1400s, a process described in the Columbian Exchange.
Because so much traffic passes through a single narrow channel, a blockage has wide effects. During the 2021 blockage, estimates of the trade held up ran into billions of dollars a day. In 2024, after attacks on ships in the nearby Red Sea, many shipping lines avoided the canal for months and sailed around Africa instead. The episode showed how much global trade still depends on this one waterway, and how much the choice of route depends on security as well as distance.
Tags
economic history history navigation trade
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