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Xerox University Microfilms 300 North Z eeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 74-12,304 BRADSHAW, Dan Fred, 1943- A DECADE OF BRITISH OPPOSITION TO THE SUEZ CANAL PROJECT, 1854-1864. The University of Oklahoma, Ph.D., 1973 History, modern University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED. THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE A DECADE OF BRITISH OPPOSITION TO THE SUEZ CANAL PROJECT, 1854-1864 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY BY DAN F. BRADSHAW Norman, Oklahoma 1973 A DECADE OF BRITISH OPPOSITION TO THE SUEZ CANAL PROJECT, 1854-1864 APPROVED BY DISSERTATION COMMITTEE ACKNOWLEDGMENT I would like to thank Dr. William H. Maehl for his patience and guidance and the Oklahoma University History Department for a grant which enabled me to research in England. I l l TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENT.................................................................................................i i i CHAPTER 1............................................................................................................ 1 CHAPTER I I ............................ 45 CHAPTER I I I ........................................................................................................101 CHAPTER IV.......................................................................................................... 143 CHAPTER V.............................................................................................................173 BIBLIOGRAPHY......................................................................................................196 IV CHAPTER I The Suez Canal constitutes a paradox in British history. On the one hand, its value to Britain is uncontested as a short cut to the East and the consequent implications for empire.^ On the other hand, and not as obvious, Ferdinand De Lesseps excavated the canal despite intense and prolonged British opposition. Her Majesty's Foreign Office energeti cally contested the project diplomatically. Politicians h o stile to the scheme exerted th e ir influence within and without parliament to convince Britons the prospective water way threatened national security. Robert Stephenson, son of John Bartholomew, Philip's Chart of the Suez Canal from Admiralty and French Surveys With Descriptive Notes (London: George P h ilip and Son, 1875), pp. 5-6, early pub lished figures which indicated that British trade increased as a result of the canal. He attributed the increase to merchant vigor and organization and to advanced techniques in ship construction. Edward Dicey, The Story of the Khedivate (London: Mac millan, 1902), pp. 28-29, was a noticeable exception. He charged the canal with diverting maritime traffic from Eng land and contributing to England's relative economic decline in the late nineteenth century. Max Ellis Fletcher, "Suez and B ritain , an H isto rica l Study of the E ffects of the Suez Canal on the British Economy" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. University of Wisconsin, 1957), thoroughly refuted Dicey. -2*- Britain's greatest railroad builder and spokesman for the Institution of Civil Engineers, the country's most pres tigious body for such matters, pronounced the canal a techni- 2 cal and commercial impossibility. Travellers, private citi zens, and clergymen, knowledgeable and otherwise, denounced the project in pamphlet and press. Occasionally, condemna tions included richly imaginative alternative projects. One alternative project, for example, advanced the novel idea of 3 ferrying ships across the isthmus by railway. The Admiralty, a department ostensibly abreast of maritime advances, spon sored two publications to convince England and Europe that cutting the isthmus was purposeless and impractical. Final- 4 ly , The Times opposed the p ro jec t. Indeed, to an impressive array of forces the Suez Canal project proved unpopular. 2 The Institution of Civil Engineers continues to oper ate on Great George Street in Westminster. It maintains offices, meeting rooms, exhibitions, and a well-stocked li brary. The Institution's library, rarely visited by histori ans, is a mine of pamphlet sources. ^See below, chapter four. 4 The Times's prestige and circulation, almost twice that of all other morning dailies, was so great that in 1854 it commanded advertising rates forty to fifty per cent higher than the rates of competing newspapers. See James Grant, The Newspaper Press: I ts Origin, Progress and Present Posi tion (2 vols.; London: Tinsley Brothers, 1871), II, 20 and 25. The Tradition Established. 1841-1884, Vol. II of The History of the Times (4 v o ls.; New York; The Macmillan Com pany, 1939), 58-59, 92. For additional insights by contemporaries into The Times ' s paramount position see Walter Bagehot, The English. C o n stitu tio n . the W orld's C lassics edition (rev. ed.; London: Oxford University Press, 1928), p. 20. For an earlier period, see Brougham, Lord, Life and Times (3 v o ls.; New York: Harper & Brothers, 1872), III, 106. -3— This study will consider the extent of British hostility to the Suez Canal during its formative years. It will seek to account for that hostility and to explain why that hostility abruptly softened after a decade even though the canal was far from completion. Moreover, this study will also disprove the notion that British commercial opinion actually favored the project but was thwarted in expression by an unresponsive British government.^ British attitudes toward the Suez Canal developed over a period of years. Initially, some Victorians responded with a moderate interest in an old idea served them afresh by M. Ferdinand De Lesseps in 1854. The British press at that time, however, was more interested in printing war cor respondent reports from the Crimea than visionary notions of driving a canal through the isthmus of Suez. Termination of the Crimean War coupled with Lesseps's bold determination to bring his idea d ire c tly to the B ritish commercial community resulted in 1857 in an ambitious, month-long promotional tour. Lesseps and his lieutenants visited every important English, Scottish, and Irish port city, cities which reason ably might be expected to favor a stimulus to international ^As we shall see, Lesseps was convinced he had the com mercial community's support. Historians have sometimes assumed incorrectly that he was right: see Hugh J. Schonfield, The Suez Canal in Peace and War, 1859-1969 (rev. ed.; Coral Gables, Florida: University of Miami Press, 1969), p. 27; Lt.-Col. Sir Arnold T. Wilson, The Suez Canal Its Past, Present, and Future (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), p. 19. -4- trade. On tour, Lesseps introduced his scheme to local bank ers and merchants who, in turn, had th eir reactions to the project recorded in the local press.^ Examination of that local press suggests mercantile enthusiasm was a great deal less than Lesseps had expected. Lesseps's promotional tour created a considerable amount of commercial and p o litic a l in te re s t in his idea and Close students of British journalism are slightly per plexed as to exactly what the Victorian press did. Did it mold public opinion or did it reflect public opinion? There is no simple answer. At different times and in different places the press did different things. Until the early nine teenth century newspapers served merely as advertising agents because their editors were printers rather than writers. As the fourth estate matured, and particularly after the News paper Stamp Duty was removed in 1855,

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