Parting the Desert: The Creation of the Suez Canal

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		Parting the Desert: The Creation of the Suez Canal
		Parting the Desert: The Creation of the Suez Canal

Award-winning historian Zachary Karabell tells the epic story of the greatest engineering feat of the nineteenth century--the building of the Suez Canal-- and shows how it changed the world.

The dream was a waterway that would unite the East and the West, and the ambitious, energetic French diplomat and entrepreneur Ferdinand de Lesseps was the mastermind behind the project. Lesseps saw the project through fifteen years of financial challenges, technical obstacles, and political intrigues. He convinced ordinary French citizens to invest their money, and he won the backing of Napoleon III and of Egypt's prince Muhammad Said. But the triumph was far from perfect: the construction relied heavily on forced labor and technical and diplomatic obstacles constantly threatened completion. The inauguration in 1869 captured the imagination of the world. The Suez Canal was heralded as a symbol of progress that would unite nations, but its legacy is mixed. Parting the Desert is both a transporting narrative and a meditation on the origins of the modern Middle East.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

网友对Parting the Desert: The Creation of the Suez Canal的评论

Writing a history book is one thing, but when you can tell a wonderful story at the same time it's a thing of beauty. Zachary Karabell does such a good job, his style almost reminds me of David McCullough. One of my favorites. While several reviewers wished for more engineering and construction detail, Zachary added just enough to get a clear idea of how it was done. The true story about Suez is in the politics! As a bonus, a tie-in to the Ottoman Empire was a perfect lead into my next book where it was mentioned that the Ottoman's had considered a canal in the 16th century.

Thank you to Zachary Karabell for teaching while entertaining in such a beautiful piece of literature! His name will surely be added to my list of favorites!

Karabell has written the definitive work on how the Suez Canal was built. The political, diplomatic, and jingoist intrigues stretching across several deserts and continents is more interesting than how it was designed, constructed, engineered, and financed, although he tells us about those players also.

Our hero is a French diplomat, thought washed-up due to earlier failures, but given a second chance due to his family and political connections. Perhaps more than any other person in modern history, he was truly the right man in the right place to achieve something that all thought impossible. He invented the modern public stock corporation for financing and then convinced French pensioners to buy shares and French railroad engineers to learn canal-digging. He invented shuttle diplomacy in the days before private jets and Henry Kissinger, and travelled non-stop between Egypt, Turkey, London, and Paris. Recognizing the power of public relations and corporate communications, he started a company newspaper and built the largest displays at the Paris expos where he often gave the tours personally. He cleverly led people to believe that the canal had a lot more influential supporters than it ever did. No one except deLesseps really wanted the canal built but more importantly no one tried hard to stop him. His opponents in Britain seemed more concerned with Monty Python-esque displays of British bravado, and getting the French in a conflict with the Turks and Germans (that would come later).

In the end the canal got built, way over budget (secondary rounds of investment were required) and behind schedule. But on that day the royalty and celebrity of the 19th century world assembled and took a short boat ride, that showed all what French engineering, innovation, and nationalism could achieve if the British and Turks could not reach agreement on how to stop it.

Ultimately the Egyptian backers of the canal were forced into exile, bankruptcy, and foreign subordination. No amount of public relations could make this canal profitable with the exorbitant cost and limited trading volumes of that day. Later requirements to move huge quantities of Arab Gulf oil put the Suez Canal back in the black until scuttled by war and pipelines. DeLesseps went on to failure, trying to build another canal, this time in Panama where the engineering really mattered since the two seas were at very different levels.

So glad I found this. I read it during the sea days preceding our Suez Canal entry. Fascinating history of the politics surrounding this project. de Lesseps was incredibly savvy about how to negotiate between various international factions--all with 'their own axe to grind'. Recommended for anyone on a trip to the area--with some interest in the history of the canal. The descriptions of the efforts required and willingness to risk that it would turn out well (even pressure between the two seas) is fascinating.

Inasmuch as I worked in Ismalia and lived two years on the
Bitter Lake, I was fascinated by the references to them. The back and forth dialogue of the history was a bit wordy.

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