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Biography of Ferdinand Marie de LessepsName: Ferdinand Marie de LessepsBirth Date: November 19, 1805 Death Date: December 7, 1894 Place of Birth: Versailles, France Nationality: French Gender: Male Occupations: diplomat, engineer Ferdinand Marie de Lesseps The French diplomat Ferdinand Marie de Lesseps (1805-1894) successfully promoted the Suez Canal and made an abortive attempt to build the Panama Canal.Ferdinand de Lesseps was born on Nov. 19, 1805, at Versailles. After a childhood spent at Pisa--where his father was sometime consul--and then in Paris, his education at the Lycée Napoleon fitted him for entry into the French consular service. From 1825 he held posts of rising importance, usually in the Mediterranean area. In 1849 he went as minister plenipotentiary to the Mazzini Republic in Rome. The unknowing tool of duplicity from the first, he was made a political scapegoat, but he weathered this storm, as he was to ride out future crises, through his political innocence and personal integrity. He soon resigned from the foreign service.With the accession of Mohammed Said, an old friend, as pasha of Egypt in 1854, Lesseps saw a way to realize an …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…an international conference to determine the course of a lockless ship canal through the Isthmus of Panama. The French Panama Canal Company was formed, capital was raised, and construction began in 1880 in spite of warnings against the proposed type of construction. Lesseps neither understood the engineering and the climatic problems nor realized how his funds were being misappropriated. Work on the canal ceased in 1889. Following a scandal in France and an investigation, Lesseps and others were convicted on charges of graft. Though discharged on appeal, Lesseps had become senile and perhaps never realized he had been tried. He died on Dec. 7, 1894, at La Chânaie (Indre), France. Further Reading Writings on Lesseps are numerous. Charles Robert Longfield Beatty, De Lesseps of Suez: The Man and His Times (1956), is excellent. On the Suez Canal, John Marlowe, The Making of the Suez Canal (1964), offers a recent reassessment based on original work. |