Napoleon gets his numbers right

As many people will be aware IOTL Napoleon was a big fan of the construction of the Suez Canal.
However he obviously cut back on funding for surveyors and as a result was told that one side was 10m higher than the other- meaning the canal would need locks and would be really rather expensive.

WI though- the surveying is not so fragmentary and the correct numbers are returned. The construction of such a canal becomes a very popular idea amongst French society and so it accordingly spreads across Europe.

Would Britain or a post-Napoleonic France build the canal decades ahead of time? What impact would come of this?- bare in mind this is in the days before the Indian Empire...
 

Thande

Donor
If the French can do it, and hold on to Egypt (this probably requires Napoleon to do a spectacular campaign in Egypt and then die before he can overextend himself or return to France to take over), then this gives them an advantage over the British in India if they can keep a monoply on the canal. Say this canal is operating by 1803 or something, the French could send troops through to support the remaining Maratha states against the EIC...

OTL Napoleon wanted to march overland through Russia to India. This, while not quite as dramatic, is a little more realistic.
 
France didn't have the funds to build a canal at that point; and anyhow, they, Britain, and the other European powers will be busy at war for the next decade and a half.

WI: Pasha Mehmet Ali decides to build it without foreign investment? Say by 1820, as part of his plan to modernize Egypt. Could the Ottoman Empire keep the British from taking it afterwards?
 
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