Ferdinand de Lesseps

Ferdinand de Lesseps was born in Versailles, France, on November 19, 1805. His family had been ennobled in 1777; his father, Mathieu de Lesseps, was a French consul, and his uncle Barthélemy de Lesseps had sailed with the La Pérouse expedition and later served as consul general in St. Petersburg. He studied at the Collège Henri-IV and then read law.⁠[1][2]

In 1832 Lesseps became French vice-consul in Alexandria and in 1833 consul in Cairo; he later served as consul in Rotterdam and then in Barcelona. During the Barcelona uprising of 1842 he protected civilians and was made an officer of the Légion d’honneur.⁠[2][3]

In 1848 Alphonse de Lamartine appointed Lesseps French minister in Madrid. In 1849 he was sent to Rome to negotiate between the leaders of the Roman Republic and the French troops under General Oudinot; when the Legislative Assembly decided to suppress the Republic, he was recalled and repudiated. He then withdrew to semi-retirement in the Indre for nearly five years, ending his diplomatic career.⁠[2][1]

In 1854, after Mohammed Saïd became viceroy of Egypt, he granted Lesseps a concession to form and direct a universal company to cut a canal across the Isthmus of Suez, subject to the approval of the Ottoman sultan; in 1855 Lesseps failed to obtain that approval in Constantinople. A second act in 1856 gave the canal company the right to operate the canal for 99 years after its completion.⁠[3][4]

In 1858 the Universal Company of the Suez Maritime Canal issued shares, raising about 100 million francs from some 20,000 investors, half of the capital coming from French investors; it was incorporated as an Egyptian joint-stock company with its head office in Paris. In 1859 construction began at Port Said.⁠[2][1][4]

At first the digging was done with picks and baskets by Egyptian peasants drafted as forced labor; dredgers and steam shovels later took over.⁠[4][5]

Saïd died in 1863 and was succeeded by Isma’il, who ordered work halted in 1864; on July 6, 1864, an arbitration award by Napoleon III saved the company. The Ottoman sultan issued a firman approving the project in 1865, and Britain officially recognized the company in 1866.⁠[3][2]

The waters of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea met in the canal on August 15, 1869. The canal was officially inaugurated on November 17, 1869, with Empress Eugénie aboard the Aigle. Construction had taken 10 years rather than the planned 6.⁠[3][4]

In 1878 Lesseps obtained a concession from the Colombian government to build a canal across Panama. In 1879, at 74, he became president of the Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interocéanique; the Linda Hall Library exhibition notes that he was a diplomat, not an engineer. He arrived in Panama on December 30, 1879, to turn the first shovel of earth, and the French began excavating in 1880.⁠[2][6][7]

In the summer of 1881 the French workforce in Panama numbered just over 800 laborers; it peaked at 19,000 in 1884, mostly from the West Indies. By the summer of 1885 investigators suspected that costs were higher than stated and that excavation records were exaggerated. In 1886 Lesseps made his second and only visit to observe construction and still insisted on a sea-level canal rather than one with locks. In 1887 Gustave EiffelGustave EiffelGustave Eiffel (1832–1923) was a French civil engineer and entrepreneur known for his metal bridges, the Eiffel Tower built for the 1889 Paris World’s Fair, and the internal framework of the Statue of Liberty; in later life he devoted himself to meteorology and aerodynamics.Open the full entry’s company took on the contract to build locks for the canal.⁠[6][8]

The canal company was liquidated on February 4, 1889, devastating its investors. The French attempt went bankrupt after nine years, and about 20,000 workers died, with diseases such as malaria and yellow fever contributing.⁠[8][6][7]

In 1884 Lesseps was elected to the Académie française. On July 4 that year, as president of the Franco-American Union committee, he chaired the ceremony in the yard of the Gaget & Gauthier foundry in Paris at which he presented the Statue of Liberty to Levi P. Morton, the U.S. minister to France, calling it “the eighth wonder of the world”; his speech touched on Franco-American friendship and the Panama Canal and thanked collaborators including Frédéric Auguste BartholdiFrédéric Auguste BartholdiFrédéric Auguste Bartholdi (1834–1904) was a French sculptor who designed the Statue of Liberty (“Liberty Enlightening the World”), France’s gift to the United States, unveiled in New York on October 28, 1886; his other works include the Lion of Belfort.Open the full entry and Gustave Eiffel, and he signed the deed of presentation on behalf of the committee.⁠[2][9]

The failure of the Panama project led to a financial and political scandal in 1888–1892, in which members of the French government were accused of taking bribes. Lesseps, his son and Gustave Eiffel were indicted for fraud, and in 1893 Lesseps, then 87, was sentenced to five years in prison. BritannicaEncyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopædia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopedia first published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768; the name also refers to its publisher, Chicago-based Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (which presents itself as The Britannica Group). The print edition ended in 2012, and the company’s main businesses since then have been the online encyclopedia Britannica.com, digital education products for schools and libraries, and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.Open the full entry’s summary states that he was cleared of the charges of misappropriating funds.⁠[2][1][8][5]

Lesseps died on December 7, 1894, at La Chenaie, near Guilly, France.⁠[1]

A reorganized French company offered its rights and equipment to the United States for $109,000,000, a price later reduced to $40,000,000; on June 19, 1902, the U.S. Senate approved the Panama route and the purchase of the French company. On November 18, 1903, Philippe Bunau-Varilla, a French engineer who had worked on the Lesseps canal, and Secretary of State John Hay signed the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty; on May 4, 1904, an American delegation took possession of the French storehouses and the Ancon hospital, ending French involvement. The United States completed the Panama Canal in 1914.⁠[6][7]

The Linda Hall Library’s “Scientist of the Day” essay describes Lesseps as dying “a broken man.”⁠[5]

Statue of Liberty National Monument: Official website: https://www.nps.gov/stli/ (opens in a new window).⁠[10]