Suez Canal, How Early?

[Ioannes]

How early can you feasibly dig a Canal at the site of TTL's Suez Canal?

Assumptions:
I don't care about the politics of it, presume that a technologically oriented, affluent culture has total control of a relatively prosperous and very stable Egypt and Levant and hence politics are irrelelevant. For our purposes it doesn't matter whether it's a even better British Empire, or a revived Byzantine Empire, or the Alien Space Bat Collective.

Technological progress is more or less identical to TTL's.

The economics ARE interesting -- I presume that the Suez Canal is primarily going to be of interest to a Meditteranean or Atlantic-oriented power who has strategic interests in the Indian Ocean and probably colonies, the economic benefits would be significant, but the strategic implications are more so. Am I understanding the situation correctly?

 

[Polish Eagle]

The Persians had a sort of canal between the Red sea and the Nile. Of course, it only went partway, but I think that's the best you can do without steam-powered dredging. Or millions of slaves.

 

[SavoyTruffle]

The Persians had a sort of canal between the Red sea and the Nile. Of course, it only went partway, but I think that's the best you can do without steam-powered dredging. Or millions of slaves.

The Pyramids are a very advanced architectural effort not done with slaves, so it all depends on how enthusiastic the regime is in making a canal.

Of course, slave labor is cheaper...

 

[MNP]

The Pyramids are a very advanced architectural effort not done with slaves, so it all depends on how enthusiastic the regime is in making a canal.

Of course, slave labor is cheaper...

Isn't silting or whatever the desert equivalent is, a huge problem?

 

[SavoyTruffle]

Isn't silting or whatever the desert equivalent is, a huge problem?

Indeed - keeping it from overrunning the canal is the big issue.

 

[wolf_brother]

Well, IOTL the Canal of the Pharaohs was in operation on-and-off for hundreds of years, and repaired several times by various empires that controlled the region.

 

[Earl_of_Somerset]

Higher sea levels? Medditerainian "Splills over into the red sea. The Resulting flood either makes a canal outright or dredges out a ton of land and makes it easy to make a canal

 

[Don Lardo]

How early can you feasibly dig a Canal at the site of TTL's Suez Canal?

With the political issues waved off and technological progress assumed to be the same, the earliest a Suez-type canal can be dug is roughly 15-20 years before the OTL canal was finished. That's when the machinery would be first available.

So, we're looking roughly at 1844-49 which ties in nicely with a certain gold rush.

De Lesseps got the survey he needed in 1854, began rounding up investors soon afterward, formed the company by 1857, got permission from the Khedive by 1858, started digging in 1859, and finished digging in 1869. Things could have gone a little faster in the OTL with Crimean War holding up the necessary survey, investment, and permission prerequisites for various reasons.

The economics ARE interesting...

They're not only interesting, they're the primary determining factor for the construction of a Suez canal rather than the Nile-to-Great Bitter Lake/Red Sea varieties which the Pharaohs, Ptolemys, Romans, and Arabs all constructed, operated, and eventually abandoned.

You only need a Suez canal if you have a large Europe-Asia trade regime carried out by large ships which travel directly between supply and demand. If the amount of trade is small or if it can left to middlemen so there is no need for point-to-point shipping, you have no economic need for a canal.

Whether you have a million slaves or thousands of steam engines, you're not going to dig the thing on a whim. It has to pay.

 

[Monty Burns]

If it is to be at the same site as OTL, Don Lardo's post seems very reasonable to me.

If it is about the general possibility of sea trade between the Med and the Red sea, the Pharao-channel could be dug anytime since BC. Since earlier ocean-going boats were smaller, what types were able to cross the Med, the Nile plus channel and the Red sea?

Even if no such ships exist (and I think Zheng He's ships should be able to do this), transportation is massively improved if smaller vessels take over the goods between the Med and a then easily-supplied harbour on the Red sea.

 

[Don Lardo]

If it is about the general possibility of sea trade between the Med and the Red sea, the Pharao-channel could be dug anytime since BC. Since earlier ocean-going boats were smaller, what types were able to cross the Med, the Nile plus channel and the Red sea?

None actually.

That's the primary difference between the several Nile-Great Bitter Lake/Red Sea canals of the classic and medieval eras and the Suez canal of the modern era.

In the case of the prior canals, you didn't sail from Athens or Ostia, go up the Nile, pass through the canal, sail down the Red Sea, and cross the Indian Ocean to reach Aceh or China any more than the Erie Canal allowed you to sail from London or Brest, go up the Hudson, pass through it, and then sail on Great Lakes to reach Cleveland or Chicago.

The earlier canals were built for transhipment of goods because a galley or barge can carry much more than a mule or camel. Aside from the owning powers using the earlier canals to shift war galleys between the Med and Red Sea, vessels working on one body of water rarely traveled to the other. The goods they held made the journey instead.

Putting it another way, the earlier canals linked ships working in the Mediterranean with ships working in the Red Sea/Indian Ocean while the Suez Canal linked ports in the Mediterranean with ports in the Red Sea/Indian Ocean.

The benefits of this limited transhipment ability waxed and waned thanks to a myriad of factors including political stability, the amount of trade carried, and the cost of maintaining the waterway. Long term geological changes like the Nile shifting in it's bed or changes in the shoreline of both the lakes and Red Sea closed some of the earlier canals too. We should remember that all of the earlier canals were eventually abandoned because the benefits they brought weren't worth the costs they required.

Contrast that with the Suez Canal. Unlike the previous transhipment canals, the Suez canal is a vitally important piece of world trade infrastructure. While it's been closed or it's use limited for relatively brief periods due to political issues, an abandonment of the canal would require humanity abandoning oceanic transport.

 

[Joseph Solis in Australia]

Had the Pharaohs or the Romans wanted to trade with Asia more then they could build a canal to ship their products instead of relying on horse transport of crossing the Arabian desert with is more time to spend to reach China and India. Earlier canal would reduce the Constantinople earlier and secures the Egypt's economic and political survival for more many years.

 

[Don Lardo]

Had the Pharaohs or the Romans wanted to trade with Asia more then they could build a canal to ship their products instead of relying on horse transport of crossing the Arabian desert with is more time to spend to reach China and India. Earlier canal would reduce the Constantinople earlier and secures the Egypt's economic and political survival for more many years.

What the...

Did you even read the thread? The Pharaohs, Romans, and others did exactly what you're suggesting and for the same reasons you listed.

Maintaining that maintaining those transhipment canals eventually cost more than the trade they carried and all were abandoned after decades or even centuries of use.

 

[corditeman]

Gave me an idea...

...New OP for The Sinai Island.

Hope it helps.

 

[MNP]

Contrast that with the Suez Canal. Unlike the previous transhipment canals, the Suez canal is a vitally important piece of world trade infrastructure. While it's been closed or it's use limited for relatively brief periods due to political issues, an abandonment of the canal would require humanity abandoning oceanic transport.

While I disagree with the last sentence, the first few are really key. In a lot of water trade, the boats were made, shipped stuff and then broken up and sold at the end because you couldn't sail them up the river very easily for a number of reasons. Even allowing that you could sail up and down the Nile in galleys (which is possible) the kind of ships that could get lots of trade goods from the Med to the Red via water are not the kind of ships you want to take into the Indian Ocean. You had bigger ships of course, but you are not going to fit say a galleon across the old canals.

Plus I know that geological changes meant they had to dig in new spots after a period of time. So basically you need technology to move to faster equivalents of 1850s to get a Suez canal usable for ocean going ships.

 

[Don Lardo]

While I disagree with the last sentence...

While I have my suspicions, I'd be very interested to know why.

Why would someone go to the trouble of constantly dredging the Suez Canal if there were no large vessels to use it?

 

[Blackfox5]

While I have my suspicions, I'd be very interested to know why.

I think the disagreement is that if the Suez Canal disappeared it would not mean humanity abandoning oceanic travel. That's just silly.

No Suez Canal means the economics of transportation is greatly changed and trade patterns would alter, but people are still going to using ships to transport things. Japan is still going to send stuff across the Pacific to the US, and vice versa. The US and Europe are still going to trade. There will still be ocean ships from East Asia to Europe and back around Africa, although other modes will be used and the difference in transportation costs are going to affect economies and competitive advantage.

 

[mrmandias]

I read it that way at first, but then I realized what he meant: humanity isn't going to *abandon* the Suez canal unless they are also *abandoning* ocean transport. Still debatable, but not absurd.

I think the disagreement is that if the Suez Canal disappeared it would not mean humanity abandoning oceanic travel. That's just silly.

 

[Tyr]

I've always been fond of a Egypt (Crusader maybe) digging the canal as a side effect of fortifying its eastern border, a sort of uber moat whit large.
More rule of cool than probable and it would of course probally not be suitable for ocean going ships but meh. Sometimes its nice to not go in for the most likely outcome and instead go for the coolest.

 

[The Kiat]

The Pyramids are a very advanced architectural effort not done with slaves, so it all depends on how enthusiastic the regime is in making a canal.

Of course, slave labor is cheaper...

Conscripts, not slaves. It was built with corvee, which is a tax system that's paid with labor instead of money (did they even have currency when the Pyramids were built?). I'm not saying there weren't any slaves, just that monuments were just the people doing their part to allow their god-king immortality.

 

[Don Lardo]

I think the disagreement is that if the Suez Canal disappeared it would not mean humanity abandoning oceanic travel. That's just silly.

Not silly, just very poor wording on my part.

What I was trying to say was that the canal is now so important we'd have to see oceanic shipping superceded by some other method in order for the canal to be abandoned as it's smaller predecessors were.

If I'd been more clear in my post you would have understood what I meant.