Early Suez Canal

So with a POD of lets say 1500, what is the earliest a Suez Canal can be build? And what would be the problems with building one (political or economical as well as technical)?

The reason I ask is because I have this idea for a potential timeline in which a colonial power (France) decides to secure North Africa and Egypt to create an easier route to India. So I was wondering could a Suez Canal be build earlier (it doesn't matter if France builds it or even controls it) and why my idea wouldn't work (people on this site often bring realism to ideas that look cool, but actualy won't work).
 
the problem is not building it. That can be done by any empire with access to lots of slave/corvee labour. If Egypt can build pyramids, the Suez Canal would be a snap.

The real problem is two-fold: 1) why? It's expensive, and there just wasn't that much shipping to justify it at the time, really. Also, canals are a lot more effective with steamships. Without steamships, you need it either to be wide enough that sailing vessels can tack, or you need the ships to be towed, either by animals on a towpath beside the canal (which would be tough for ships) or by oared tugs - which would be very expensive to run.
2) maintenance. A major canal like that needs maintenance. One civil war or foreign invasion, and you have to do a bunch of the excavation all over again - except this time, you can't have peasants digging a huge ditch that then gets filled, you have to have dredgers. Somehow.
 
An early water connection between Mediterranean and Red sea was achieved at least 3 times in antiquity (Egyptians, Persians and Arabs). Obviously it did not follow the route of the modern Suez canal, but rather made use of Nile branches and (most likely) short artificial canals to reach the Red sea. It was certainly expensive in terms of maintenance, and from time to time it was necessary to move to a different branch of Nile and to dredge some portions of it.

A canal following a route similar to the modern Suez canal (but obviously much more shallow and narrow) could probably have been built even in antiquity, but the logistics required to feed the construction manpower would have been daunting, and the constant dredging required to avoid silting would have been a bitch. IIRC a major canal linking the Euphrates and the Tigris was built in antiquity. I would suspect that in the case of Egypt going through the Nile delta was much more convenient.

Towing barges along a canal is quite convenient and has been successfully implemented for thousands of years.

IMHO a canal linking the Mediterranean and the Red sea was always considered a convenience rather than a necessity at least as far as the commerce between the Mediterranean basin and India was concerned. The alternative solution most commonly practiced was to ship goods from India to Berenice on the Red sea coast (and viceversa) following the monsoon cycle.
From Berenice the goods were moved by caravan to the Nile (some 100 km west) and loaded on barges to be delivered in the Nile delta (navigation on the Nile is not a problem: the prevailing winds are from N to S, while the current flow is from S to N).

A canal is required to move at will warships from Mediterranean to Red sea and back, but IOTL it was never a real issue until the arrival of the Portuguese in the Indian ocean.
 
A canal is required to move at will warships from Mediterranean to Red sea and back, but IOTL it was never a real issue until the arrival of the Portuguese in the Indian ocean.


I also wonder how this would even work. Imagine the logistics of feeding the rowers on galleys in the Red Sea!
 
Towing barges along a canal is quite convenient and has been successfully implemented for thousands of years.
....
A canal is required to move at will warships from Mediterranean to Red sea and back, but IOTL it was never a real issue until the arrival of the Portuguese in the Indian ocean.
Towing barges is 'easy', sure. Towing full sized warships or merchantships, less so. But barges are only a half way measure: if you have to unload from a merchant ship onto a barge and then back onto another merchant ship at the other end, the cost savings over unloading to camels is a lot less.

The real cost savings and strategic advantage is if you can move whole ships. But, of course, that requires a much more ambitious (and expensive) canal.
 
Just my five cents:

There was a dry-canal (diolkos) built across the Isthmus of Corinth to accommodate trade, so that ships didn't have to go all the way around Cape Malea (notorious for the number of ships that sank there, and hence the saying: let him who sails around Malea forget his home/first make his will.) Nero considered building an actual canal in AD66 across the isthmus. I don't know how the isthmus compares to Suez but it could be the inspiration for the canal in Egypt.
 
I also wonder how this would even work. Imagine the logistics of feeding the rowers on galleys in the Red Sea!

All Egyptian regimes kept some warships in the upper Red sea. I suppose it was not so much of a power projection tool but rather to suppress piracy. Feeding the rowers was not such a big issue: one can do it pretty easily from the Nile delta or by going upstream on the Nile and then caravans to Berenice. In a way it would be more of a chore to move timber and naval supplies from the Mediterranean coast to the Red sea, but certainly nothing insurmountable. The Mamelukes sent a contingent of large galleys and supply ships to India in the first decade of the 16th century when they and the Ottomans (aided and abetted by Venice) tried to contest the Portuguese penetration in India. It failed miserably, but I would suspect that it was more a matter of the clear superiority of naos and caravels as gunnery platforms than a logistical issue (not to mention that it was a kind of half-assed attempt: neither the Mamelukes nor the Ottomans considered India a priority theatre).
 
Towing barges is 'easy', sure. Towing full sized warships or merchantships, less so. But barges are only a half way measure: if you have to unload from a merchant ship onto a barge and then back onto another merchant ship at the other end, the cost savings over unloading to camels is a lot less.

The real cost savings and strategic advantage is if you can move whole ships. But, of course, that requires a much more ambitious (and expensive) canal.

As a matter of fact, caravans were always extensively used to move goods from the southern Read sea ports (mainly Jeddah) to Egypt. In the end it is always a matter of choosing the safest and cheapest alternative.
There is also the problem of the prevailing wind, which in the Red sea blow from N to S, same as on the Nile. It is not too difficult to cope with, and since ancient times Arab feluccas and Indian sailing ships could tackle. Obviously the cruder the sailing arrangement is the longer is the trip.

As far as towing goes, most warships in the late 15th - early 16th century were less than 100 t in displacement (the Portuguese ships that traveled to India were of this size). It would not be too difficult to tow, and worst case one can always unload the guns and the ship stores to lighten it.
Loading and unloading is not too difficult, in particular if there are docking facilities, piers and cranes.
 
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