WI no Suez Canal built before 1900?

[Galba Otho Vitelius]

The Suez Canal is in the news. What if the Suez Company was not able to get its project of building a canal between the Red Sea and Med completed?

I am putting the question this way because there seem to have been other waterways connecting the Red Sea and Mediterranean in ancient times, and other projects for building the canal. And a failure of the mid nineteenth century Suez company does not preclude something similar being built in the twentieth century. However, the factors that would have caused the failure, such as inability to secure financing, successful sabotage by the British, or withdrawal of co-operation by whoever is ruling Egypt, probably would have prevented another serious attempt in the nineteenth century, if they had not been overcome in the 1860s.

Failure of the Suez Company would have had a good deal of geopolitical and financial implications, affecting France, Britain, and Egypt.

 

[Vahktang]

Ooh.
A competition between Panama and Suez.
Or, better yet, the International Canal Corporation, doing both at once.
And the open the same day:
28 June 1914
😁😏

 

[RedKing]

Would Egypt be as important to England without the Suez?

 

[Nelson Mikeson]

Britain with or without France would build it after WW1 at the most.

 

[TrickyApe]

The Suez Canal, being a sea-level connection, wasn't especially difficult to construct. The only long term barrier to completing it in the second half of the 19th century would be a political one.

Without a Suez Canal, world trade would probably become more dependent on rail connections. There was already a rail link across Suez and it would presumably become more important. One could envision plans for other railways bridging Europe and the Indian Ocean, for example an earlier Berlin-Baghdad Railway (with connections to the Gulf) or a Trans-Iranian railway. If things went on long enough that the Trans-Siberian Railway were built before a Suez Canal things could really get interesting.

 

[raharris1973]

Interesting OP - What if the Egyptian Khedive at the time just didn't want to do it at the time the French were interested, and feared getting over-leveraged and attracting too much unwanted western interest?

Could the French or other westerners made "him an offer he couldn't refuse" to get it done in the 19th century, or did the Khedive have genuine veto power?