chapter 34 The Conference (1885) ‘L’Europe Pacifique et Prévoyante’

34.1 A Time-Honoured Dream

On 17 November 1869, at the solemn invitation of Ismail, Khedive of Egypt, Empress Eugénie of France aboard the imperial yacht Aigle ceremoniously opened the . It was a historic moment. Modern science had achieved what had been the fascination of France from the days of Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign (1798–1801). Archaeological evidence had first triggered its ambition to relive that dream of old, to elude the perilous, costly and time-consuming circumnavigation of the African Horn, bridge the hundred odd miles from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea by a ‘Highway to India’, and crank up commerce between Asia and Europe.The fascination was not without its precedent. It had mesmerised humanity from the days of the first Egyptian pharaohs, as ancient sources from Herodotus to Strabo to Pliny amply document.1 Legend has it that the dream originated with Pharaoh Sesostris in the 19th c. B.C. He may have been the first, but was by no means the last of pharaohs to aspire at taming the desert. Persian King Darius (5th c. B.C.) and the Hel- lenist King Ptolemy II Philadelphus (3rd c. B.C.) were no less obsessed by the idea. Modern research has established that were effectively operational in various phases of antiquity, and along different routes. Still, time and again, the silting and dwindling Nile and the receding Red Sea had frustrated ambi- tions in the long run. The project was rekindled in the days of Umar the Great (7th c. A.D.) and actuated by Caliph Al Hakim (11th c. A.D.). In the end, his water- way, like all its predecessors, had been choked in the sands. Napoleon’s engineers had ambitiously revived the canal project, only to abandon it when their calculations proved incorrect. In 1830 the British briefly tossed with the idea. Realizing in time that a canal might affect their exclus- ive Indian trade, they construed a railway instead, linking Alexandria to Cairo to Suez. Apparently, the French never lost interest. In 1856 a French diplomat, (1805–1894) obtained a concession from the Khedive and launched his Commission internationale pour le percement de l’Isthme des Suez.

1 Herod., Hist. 2.158; Strab., Geogr. 17.1.25–54; Plin., Nat. Hist. 6.33.165; cf. also Arist., Meteor. 1.15.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004397972_042 the suez canal conference (1885) 1067

In 1858 the Suez Canal Company was founded The canal took ten long years in digging (1859–1868) by forced labour and at great cost of life. Its haul was some hundred miles.2The project suffered from British opposition and sabotage, and from wide-spread disbelief in the enterprise in the world of finance outside France. The opening of the Suez Canal in the same year the Great American Transcontinental Railway was completed dramatically affected world trade and had huge political, financial and commercial consequences. The canal opened up worlds that, up to then, had been impenetrable to European col- onisation. Having been unable to beat the project, the British decided to join it. Capitalizing on the Khedive’s chronic shortage of funds and calling in the Rothschildts London bought out the Egyptian ruler to secure itself a foothold in De Lesseps’s Suez Canal Company.

34.2 The Principles of Neutrality and Free Navigation

In 1838, when French engineers had first approached him on the project, the Ottoman Khedive had wisely consulted Prince Metternich.3 This eminent Aus- trian diplomat impeccably pointed out that, one way or the other, the neutrality of the international waterway should be guaranteed, preferably by interna- tional agreement. Asser recalls the incident in the opening lines of his review of project and conference in the Revue of 1888.4 This paper must keenly interest us. It presents Asser’s version of his role and record at the Paris Conference of 1885, which had met with stern reproof from the Ministry in The Hague. As Asser points out in his paper, in Art. 14 of De Lesseps’s concession from 1856 it was solemnly stated that the canal would be a neutral passage open to the merchant fleet of all nations.5 In the context, Asser also referred to an interesting parallel. The wish to guarantee neutrality had also been the ground for the bilateral agreement the U.K. and the U.S.A. had concluded in 18506 with regard to that other huge canal-project man envisioned at the time, the

2 The original version of the Canal was 102ml. (164km.) long and 26ft. (8m.) deep; its present- day length is 130ml. (193km.), its depth 79ft. (24m.). 3 Prince Klemenz von Metternich (1773–1859) served the Hapsburg Empire as Chancellor (1821– 1848). 4 T.M.C. Asser ‘La Convention de Constantinople pour le libre usage du canal de Suez’, in: RDILC XX (1888), pp. 529–558, at p. 529. The incident was referred to in the paper of Asser’s colleague of the Institut, Sir Travers Twiss, in Annuaire IDI III (1879–1880) I, p. 119. Asser’s paper was reprinted in Studien 1889, pp. 507–542; we will refer to this reprint. 5 Studien 1889, p. 510. 6 The reference is to the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, signed in Washington on 19 April 1850.