The Suez Canal as an International Waterway

Abstract

The Suez Canal, opened for general use on November 17, 1869, more than justified the gloomy predictions of its opponents that it would become “un second Bosphore.” Abbreviating by hundreds or thousands of miles the transit distance between important parts of the globe, it wrought a kind of revolution in maritime activities and particularly in strategical concepts of peace and war. Its consummation brought to an end more than a score of years of controversy marked by the efforts of the British Government to quash a project certain to destroy the monopoly of sea access to East Africa and the Middle and Far East via the Cape of Good Hope. Until 1869 the protection of British interests in the East had required only the maintenance of naval supremacy among the European States and a close surveillance of the Eastern Mediterranean with Malta and Constantinople as points of vantage. The cutting through of the Isthmus of Suez instantly destroyed previous schemes of British strategy by giving an almost infinite extension to the shores of the Mediterranean. With a similar projection of the problems of the Mediterranean, fundamental changes in planning and procedure, both by Great Britain and by other European States having maritime interests, were unavoidable.