2024-08-17 19:09:24+00:00
Highlights
- He attempted to repeat this success with an effort to build a Panama Canal at sea level during the 1880s, but the project was devastated by epidemics of malaria and yellow fever in the area, as well as beset by financial problems, and the planned Lesseps Panama Canal was never completed. (Location 39)
- United States, which solved the medical problems and changed the design to a non-sea level canal with locks. It was completed in 1914.[1] (Location 43)
- His father then was appointed the first consul of France in Morocco and in 1800 joined the Egyptian army as commissioner of commercial relations. (Location 70)
- There the Lesseps struck friendship with the local ruler, Muhammad Ali (Location 71)
- In 1832, Lesseps was appointed vice-consul at Alexandria. (Location 96)
- Politically, the British were allied with the Ottoman government in Istanbul (doing so in order to prevent the Russians from gaining access to the Mediterranean) and had also assisted in repelling Ali’s attempt to capture Istanbul in 1833. (Location 106)
- In 1849, the government of the French Republic sent Lesseps to Rome to negotiate the return of Pope Pius IX to the Vatican. He tried to negotiate an agreement whereby Pope Pius could return peacefully to the Vatican but also ensuring the continued independence of Rome. But, during negotiations, the elections in France caused a change in the foreign policy of the government – Alexis de (Location 127)
- Lesseps had corresponded at least once with the Société d’Études du Canal de Suez during the reign of Abbas I in Egypt, but Abbas had closed off most of Egypt to foreign influence. (Location 149)
- slightly modified, the plan was adopted in 1856 by the civil engineers constituting the International Commission for the piercing of the isthmus of Suez. Encouraged by the engineers’ approval, Lesseps no longer allowed anything to stop him. (Location 158)
- Lesseps succeeded in rousing the patriotism of the French and obtaining by their subscriptions more than half of the capital of two hundred million francs which he needed in order to form a company,[5] but could not attract any substantial capital contribution from the general public in British or other foreign countries.[10] (Location 166)
- The Egyptian government thus subscribed for eighty million francs worth of shares.[ (Location 168)
- In 1873, he became interested in a project for uniting Europe and Asia by a railway to Mumbai, with a branch to Beijing. The same year, he became a member of the French Academy of Sciences.[11] He subsequently encouraged Major Roudaire, who wished to transform a stretch of the Sahara into an inland sea to increase rainfall in Algeria.[12] (Location 189)
- Lesseps was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1879.[14] (Location 199)