Suez Canal

The Suez Canal was built by a French Company and opened in 1869.  It reduced the sea voyage from Britain to India by 4,000 miles.  The canal was therefore vitally important to Britain.  In 1875, the British government gained control of it by buying shares in the company from the Egyptian government.  To protect the canal, Britain took over yet another colony, Cyprus.

A Workers Opinion of the Suez Canal

By: Matt

Dear Mother,

            I don’t know if I’ll be alive when you get this letter, but I want you to know of the torments taking place here.  I’m working on the construction of the Suez Canal, and it is horrible.  We have to cut through 3 lakes[1] to get there.  The names don’t matter to me, just the size.  One of the lakes makes up almost thirty kilometers of the total length of our trip.  My colleagues are dying and I am becoming ill as well with Cholera.  There are very few doctors to help us.  Most of the doctors died of cholera[2] also.  Even the sick people have to work.  My bones are continuously aching.  My legs almost collapse form working on my feet the whole day.  The men who don’t die from cholera are dying from exhaustion.  I never thought I would say this, but I wish I were dead.  It would be better than suffering from exhaustion and dying of cholera. Death is easier than shoveling for hours and hours every single day.

            The canal needs to be 100 miles long.  We have to reinforce all the banks[3] to prevent to sides of the canal from erosion, all by hand.  If we don’t reinforce it, the sides of the canal could erode and all of our work would be ruined.  It is too much work.  We need more breaks.  We have to go back to our homeland.  I used to be a goat herder.  We’ll never make it back to our homeland, though.  We will all die before then.  We get little food and the food we get is not safe.  We feel like slaves, trapped to a task that will never be finished.  We know how important this canal is.  It cuts hundreds off miles off a trip from the Mediterranean Sea to Egypt[4].  Instead of having to travel all the way around Africa, they can go straight through this canal.  It is fine to build a huge canal as long as you don’t have to sacrifice human lives for it.  There is a point where it costs too much to build it, especially in peoples lives.  But the French don’t care.  We are living worse than you can imagine.  We have infected cuts, skinny bones, and no strength left to work.  We are still forced to continue our work.  We cannot escape this horrible pain.  Our arms hang at our sides when they are not grasping shovels.  When we fall asleep, no one dreams.  As soon as we lie on the rocky ground that they call “bed” we fall asleep and wake up again to begin another day of torture and torment.                                  

              Sincerely, Your Son