Suez Canal Opens
Suez, Egypt
The Suez Canal connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez, and construction lasted from 1859 to 1869. Forced labour was used until 1864, and some sources estimate that tens of thousands of labourers died, many of them from cholera and similar epidemics, though estimates of the number of deaths vary widely. The canal reduces the journey from the Arabian Sea to London by approximately 8,900 km, and it had an immediate and dramatic effect on world trade. President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the canal in July 1956, which led to the Suez Crisis, and around 8% of world sea trade is now carried via the canal.
The Suez Canal connected the Mediterranean and Red Seas, transforming global trade patterns and becoming a strategically important waterway subject to competing European imperial interests in the following decades.