Ferdinand de Lesseps
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Ferdinand de Lesseps | |
---|---|
Versailles, First French Empire | |
Died | 7 December 1894 | (aged 89)
Citizenship | France |
Alma mater | Lycée Henri-IV, Paris |
Occupation(s) | Diplomat, entrepreneur |
Known for | Suez Canal, Panama Canal |
Works | Recollections of forty years (1887) |
Awards | Albert Medal (1870) |
Signature | |
Ferdinand Marie, Comte de Lesseps .
He attempted to repeat this success with an effort to build a
Ancestry
The origins of Lesseps' family are traceable back as far as the end of the 14th century. His ancestors, it is believed, came from
From the middle of the 18th century the ancestors of Lesseps followed diplomatic careers, and he himself occupied several diplomatic posts from 1825 to 1849. His uncle was ennobled by
Early years
Ferdinand de Lesseps was born November 19, 1805, in Versailles. He had a sister, Adélaïde de Lesseps (1803–1879), married to Jules Tallien de Cabarrus (19 April 1801 – 1870); and two brothers, Théodore de Lesseps (Cádiz, 25 September 1802 – Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 20 May 1874), married in 1828 to Antonia Denois (Paris, 27 September 1802 – Paris, 29 December 1878); and Jules de Lesseps (Pisa, 16 February 1809 – Paris, 10 October 1887), married on 11 March 1874 to Hyacinthe Delarue.
His first years were spent in Italy, where his father was occupied with his consular duties. His father then was appointed the first consul of France in Morocco and in 1800 joined the Egyptian army as commissioner of commercial relations. There the Lesseps struck friendship with the local ruler, Muhammad Ali of Egypt. Ali Pasha wanted his fourth son Sa'id to have an athletic body, and to get rid of his obesity, so he ordered his young son to exercise daily for two hours and follow a very simple diet. To safeguard the child's morals, he could visit no other house than that of de Lesseps. The young prince became friend of Ferdinand and "both of them revelled in devouring immense quantities of spaghetti. This intimacy and his longing for pasta caused Muhammad Said to hurry to the French consulate whenever the frugal diet of the viceregal table left a void in his stomach".[4]
After Ferdinand returned to France he was educated at the
Career
Diplomatic
In 1828, Lesseps was sent as an assistant
In 1832, Lesseps was appointed vice-consul at
This work struck Lesseps's imagination, and was one of the influences that gave him the idea of constructing a canal across the African isthmus. Fortunately for Lesseps, Muhammad Ali, the viceroy of Egypt, owed his position in part to the recommendations made on his behalf to the French government by Lesseps himself, who was consul-general in Egypt when Ali was a colonel.[5] Because of this, Lesseps received a warm welcome from the viceroy and became good friends with his son, Said Pasha. 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. The French were able to manoeuvre in Egypt under Ali's graces by playing off the British intervention against Ali in Istanbul.[6]
In 1833, Lesseps was sent as consul to
In 1839, Lesseps was appointed consul at Rotterdam, and in the following year transferred to Málaga, the ancestral home of his mother's family. In 1842 he was sent to Barcelona, and soon afterwards promoted to the grade of consul general. In the course of a bloody insurrection in Catalonia, which ended in the bombardment of Barcelona, de Lesseps offered protection to a number of men threatened by the fighting regardless of their factional sympathies or nationalities. From 1848 to 1849 he was minister of France at Madrid.[5]
In 1849, the government of the French Republic sent Lesseps to Rome to negotiate the return of
Lesseps was created on 30 August 1851 the 334th
Lesseps then retired from the diplomatic service, and never again occupied any public office. In 1853, he lost his wife and his son Ferdinand Victor at a few days' interval. In 1854, the accession to the viceroyalty of Egypt of Said Pasha gave Lesseps a new impulse to act upon the creation of a Suez Canal.[5]
Suez Canal
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. Upon Abbas' assassination in 1854, Lesseps made inquiries with a former, if short-term, acquaintance and successor in Egypt, Said Pasha. On 7 November 1854 he landed at Alexandria; on the 30th of the same month Said Pasha signed the concession authorizing him to build the Suez Canal.[9]
A first scheme, initiated by Lesseps, was immediately drawn out by two French engineers who were in the Egyptian service,
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] The Egyptian government thus subscribed for eighty million francs worth of shares.[5]
The
While in the interests of his canal, Lesseps resisted British government opposition to an enterprise which threatened to give France control of the shortest route to India, he acted favourably towards Britain's interests after Benjamin Disraeli acquired the Suez shares belonging to the Khedive, by admitting to the board of directors of the company three representatives from the government of Britain. The consolidation of interests which resulted, and which was strengthened by the addition in 1884 of seven more British directors, chosen from among shipping merchants and business men, increased, for the benefit of all concerned, the commercial character of the enterprise.[5]
Lesseps steadily endeavored to keep out of politics. If, in 1869, he appeared to deviate from this principle by being a candidate at Marseille for the Corps Législatif, it was because he yielded to the entreaties of the Imperial government in order to strengthen its goodwill for the Suez Canal. Once this goodwill had been shown, he bore no malice towards those who rendered him his liberty by preferring Léon Gambetta. Afterward, Lesseps declined the other candidatures that were offered to him: for the Senate in 1876, and for the Chamber in 1877. 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]
Lesseps accepted the presidency of the French committee of
From 17 November 1899 to 23 December 1956, a monumental statue of Ferdinand de Lesseps by Emmanuel Frémiet stood at the entrance of the Suez Canal.[15][16]
Panama Canal attempt
In May 1879, a congress of 136 delegates (including Lesseps) assembled in the rooms of the
In February 1880, Lesseps arrived in
In June 1880, Lesseps gave a speech in Liverpool where he was able to find support from a Captain Peacock, who felt the canal project was worth supporting as it would provide routes to save time.[18]
Lesseps went with his youngest child to Panama to see the planned pathway. He estimated in 1880 that the project would take 658 million francs and eight years to complete. After two years of surveys, work on the canal began in 1882. However, the technical difficulties of operating in the wet tropics dogged the project. Particularly disastrous were recurrent landslides into the excavations from the bordering water-saturated hills, and the death toll from malaria and yellow fever. In the end, insufficient financial capital and financial corruption ended the project. The Panama Canal Company declared itself bankrupt in December 1888 and entered liquidation in February 1889.
The failure of the project is sometimes referred to as the Panama Canal Scandal, after rumors circulated that French politicians and journalists had received
Second marriage and issue
In Paris on November 25, 1869—a week after the opening of the Suez Canal—Lesseps married his second wife, who was a third his age. Louise-Hélène Autard de Bragard was born on the island of Mauritius in 1848 at Plaines Wilhems and died on 29 January 1909 at Château de La Chesnay in Guilly, Vatan, Indre. She was the daughter of Gustave Adolphe Autard de Bragard, a former Magistrate of Mauritius, and wife Marie-Louise Carcenac (1817–1857), daughter of Pierre Carcenac (1771–1819) and wife Marie Françoise Dessachis. Eleven of her twelve children (six boys and six girls) with Lesseps survived their father:
- Mathieu Marie de Lesseps (1870–1953)
- Ferdinand-Ismaël de Lesseps (1871–1915)
- Ferdinande de Lesseps (1872–1948), married firstly in Paris on 10 May 1890 to Ferdinand de Gontaut-Biron (1868–1898), of the Marquesses of Saint-Blancard, by whom she had a son Ferdinand de Gontaut-Biron (1892–1892), and married secondly François-Joseph de Cassagne de Beaufort, Marquis de Miramon (1867–1932)
- Eugénie Marie de Lesseps (1873–1874)
- Bertrand de Lesseps (1875–1918)
- Marie Consuelo de Lesseps (1875–1944)
- Marie-Eugénie de Lesseps (1876–1958), married in Paris on 11 December 1900 to François du Bouays de La Bégassière (1875–1914), and had issue:
- Jacques du Bouays de La Bégassière, married to Joyce Blaffer,[19] with issue.
- Jeanne Marie Jacqueline du Bouays de La Bégassière (1907–1998), married to Jean de Contades (1902–1977; son of Jean de Contades and Rosa Augusta de los Dolores Guzmán y Zayas-Bazán), with issue:
- Yvonne de Contades (b. 1928), married on 27 January 1951 to Bernard, Count of Harcourt (1925–1958; son of Bruno, Count of Harcourt and Princess Isabelle of Orléans), with issue
- Antoine de Contades (b 1932), married on 15 November 1963 to Daphne Jean Jefferson, with issue. A son Yves de Contades
- Yvonne de Contades (b. 1928), married on 27 January 1951 to Bernard, Count of Harcourt (1925–1958; son of
- Marie Solange de Lesseps (1877–?), married in Paris on 12 January 1910 to Don Fernando Mexía y Fitz-James-Stuart (1881–?), 6th Duke of Tamames, 3rd Duke of Galisteo and 12th Count of Mora, and had issue
- Paul Marie de Lesseps (1880–1955)
- Robert de Lesseps (1882–1916), married February 27, 1902 to Marthe Josepha Sophie Allard (1884–1970), and had issue:
- Nicole de Lesseps
- Robert Martin de Lesseps (1915–1981), married in London on 11 August 1945 to Beatrice Duggan (1922– ), and had issue:
- Claire de Lesseps (1956– ), married to Johann, Graf von Gudenus (1952– ), and has issue, one son and two daughters
- Count Jacques Benjamin de Lesseps (1883–1927), aviator, married Grace McKenzie 1911
- Gisele de Lesseps (1885–1973)
Statue of Liberty
On 11 June 1884, Levi P. Morton, the Minister of the United States to France, gave a banquet in honor of the Franco-American Union and in celebration of the completion of the Statue of Liberty. Ferdinand de Lesseps, as head of the Franco-American Union, formally presented the statue to the United States, saying:
This is the result of the devoted enthusiasm, the intelligence and the noblest sentiments which can inspire man. It is great in its conception, great in its execution, great in its proportions; let us hope that it will add, by its moral value, to the memories and sympathies that it is intended to perpetuate. We now transfer to you, Mr. Minister, this great statue and trust that it may forever stand the pledge of friendship between France and the Great Republic of the United States.
In October 1886, Lesseps traveled to the United States to speak at the dedication ceremony of the Statue of Liberty on the date of the 28th, and attended by President Grover Cleveland.
Death
Lesseps died at Château de La Chesnaye in Guilly, Vatan, Indre, on 7 December 1894. He was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.[20] The grave stands at one of the junctions amongst other large family tombs.
Legacy
On 26 July 1956, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser used de Lesseps' surname as the codeword to Egyptian personnel designated to seize the offices of Suez Canal Company. Nasser used the codeword repeatedly in a public address in Alexandria that was broadcast to the nation via radio, and minutes later announced that he had issued a presidential decree nationalising the Suez Canal Company. The statue of Lesseps at the entrance of the Suez Canal was removed from its pedestal, to symbolize the end of European control of the waterway. The statue now stands in a small garden of the Port Fuad shipyard.
In popular culture
Lesseps was portrayed by Tyrone Power in the 1938 film Suez, with Loretta Young, a film which provoked complaints and legal action from Lesseps' family and the Egyptian government.[21]
In addition, Manuel Soto played the part in a 1944 Spanish feature film,
Lesseps appears as a great engineer in the game Civilization V.
Lesseps is also discussed extensively in the David McCullough book The Path Between the Seas.
Lesseps' descendant
See also
- Lesseps metro station in the Barcelona Metro
- Fort De Lesseps, a U.S. military base in Panama was named in his honor
References
- ^ McCullough 1977.
- ^ Blowitz 1911, p. 494.
- ^ Blowitz 1911, pp. 494–495.
- ^ ISBN 9781351340144. Retrieved 3 January 2024.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Blowitz 1911, p. 495.
- ISBN 0-375-40883-5.
- ISBN 0-375-40883-5.
- ISBN 0-375-40883-5.
- ISBN 0-375-40883-5.
- ^ a b Mustafa, Marie (25 April 2022). "April 25, the day excavation began for Egypt's historical Suez Canal". Egypt Today. Retrieved 2024-06-06.
- ^ Blowitz 1911, pp. 495–496.
- ^ The Inland African Sea. The report. The New York Times. 16 September 1877
- ^ a b Blowitz 1911, p. 496.
- ^ "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter L" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 23 September 2016.
- ^ Ferdinand de Lesseps statue Archived 2009-03-31 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ The Destruction of the statue of de Lesseps[permanent dead link]
- ^ Parker, Matthew. Panama Fever: The Epic Story of One of the Greatest Achievements of All Time – the Building of the Panama Canal. New York: Doubleday, 2007. pp. 81–84.[ISBN missing]
- ^ Lesseps, Ferdinand de (June 1880). "Address on the Inter-Oceanic Canal Scheme". Foreign and Commonwealth Office Collection.
- ^ Obituary of Joyce Blaffer de La Bégassière von Bothmer, Dodge-Thomas Funeral Home.
- ^ Cimetières de France et d’ailleurs
- TCM.com
- ^ "Ferdinand de Lesseps (Character)" on IMDb
Sources
- public domain: Blowitz, Henri (1911). "Lesseps, Ferdinand de". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 16 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 494–496. Blowitz concludes with an assessment of Lesseps' personality. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
Further reading
- de Lesseps, Ferdinand. Souvenirs de quarante ans. Translated by Pitman, CB.
- Karabell, Zachary (2003). Parting the Desert: The Creation of the Suez Canal. New York: Knopf. ISBN 978-0375408830.
- The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal 1870–1914. Simon and Schuster.
- Parker, Matthew. Panama Fever: The Epic Story of One of the Greatest Human Achievements of All Time – the Building of the Panama Canal. New York: Doubleday.
- Simon, Maron J. (1971). The Panama Affair. Charles Scribner's Sons.[ISBN missing]
- Smith, G Barnett (1893). The Life and Enterprises of Ferdinand de Lesseps. London.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
External links
- Works by Ferdinand de Lesseps at Open Library
- Ferdinand de Lesseps (1887). Recollections of forty years. Volume 1. Volume 2. From Internet Archive.
- André Gill (1867). "Ferdinand de Lesseps", caricature painting of Ferdinand de Lesseps.
- The Delesseps Family Archived 2010-11-23 at the Wayback Machine: This page focuses on Viscount de Lesseps' family
- The A.B. Nichols archival collection Archived 2011-07-27 at the Wayback Machine of documents and materials related to the Panama Canal includes a number of references to the French project, including photographs of de Lesseps and his house in Panama.
- Associació de Veïns i Comerciants de la Plaça Lesseps, Gràcia, Barcelona, Catalonia
- Works by Ferdinand de Lesseps at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Newspaper clippings about Ferdinand de Lesseps in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW