Société d'Études du Canal de Suez

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The Société d'Études du Canal de Suez (correct: Société d'Études de l'Isthme de Suez ) was a society founded in Paris in 1846 by the Saint-Simonist Prosper Enfantin to study the Isthmus of Suez and the possibilities of building one Suez Canal .

prehistory

Since around 1820, the Saint-Simonists had been concerned with the idea of ​​creating a canal connection between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea . For this purpose, among other things, Enfantin traveled to Egypt in 1833 with some of his followers. Although he was not able to interest Viceroy Muhammad Ali Pascha in his ideas, he could discuss his ideas with the French consul Lesseps , Linant de Bellefonds , who works in the Egyptian canal administration, and the English Lieutenant Waghorn , who deals with his overland route . After some of his followers died of the plague while working on the Nile dam north of Cairo, he returned to Paris in 1836. Enfantin was disappointed with this failure, but ten years later it was still not discouraged.

Society

Members of the society were the French Enfantin, Arlès-Dufour, Jules, Lon and Paulin Talabot , the British Robert Stephenson and Edward Starbuck, the Austrian Alois Negrelli , inspector general of the Kaiser-Ferdinands-Nordbahn , and as representatives of the German interests Messrs Feronce and Sellier from Leipzig. The seat of the company was in the house of Prosper Enfantin. It is said to have been less a purely private matter and more a semi-official commission supported by the Viceroy and his senior ministerial official Linant-Bey.

In September 1847 the company sent three groups of engineers and surveyors to Egypt. The groups led by Negrelli and Stephenson explored the corresponding stretches of coast in particular, while Paul-Adrien Bourdaloue, commissioned by Talabot, carried out a complete survey of the isthmus with his group , thereby refuting the theory that had prevailed since the survey work by Jacques-Marie Le Père during Napoléon's Egyptian expedition that there is a level difference of more than 9 m 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 to cease further activities.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Arnold T. Wilson: The Suez Canal . 2nd edition, Oxford University Press, London 1939, p. 9 f (PDF; 12.1 MB) Digital copy on archive (English)
  2. ↑ Le Père Enfantin et la Société d'études de l'isthme de Suez in France Diplomacy (French)
  3. ^ Cover page of the report of the French group
  4. ↑ The Bulletins de la Société d'Études Historiques et Géographiques de l'Isthme de Suez, e.g. Cairo 1.1947 (1948), were published by another study society that deals with the traces of antiquity in the isthmus.