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CAIRO, April 24 (Xinhua) -- April 25 marks the 165th anniversary of the groundbreaking of Egypt's Suez Canal.
"You ask me what this canal means, and what I want to tell you is that that's where my family and friends are buried. ”
On the outskirts of Cairo, under the warm sun, octogenarian Wael Kadur sits at his window, his thoughts drifting to the river he has guarded for nearly half a century. "In the eyes of others, the Suez Canal may be just a trade route, but for the Egyptians, there is blood and tears, and that is part of our lives. ”
The history of the Suez Canal is a history of the Egyptian people's anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggle, which is full of conspiracy and calculations of Western countries such as geopolitical games and debt traps, and also witnesses Egypt's struggle to seek independence and strengthen South-South cooperation.
"Cutting off the UK's blood vessels"
The British historian George Kirk once commented on the importance of the Middle East in world geopolitics: it is the only way to interact between "the two main regions of the world where people and power are concentrated". Whoever dominates the Middle East has the power to "unimped, close or force the reopening of the channels of direct exchange" between East and West.
Egypt is located at a key location at the junction of Europe, Asia and Africa, so it has become the focus of geopolitical games.
At the end of the 18th century, Britain and France, which had entered a capitalist society, competed to expand their colonies around the world. By plundering resources and dumping goods in the rich cities of India and Southeast Asia, Britain gained the upper hand in this "Game of Thrones". The vast amount of resources seized from the East was continuously repatriated and became the lifeblood of the continuation of the empire's hegemony.
Due to the isolation of the Isthmus of Suez, Britain and the Eastern colonies could not carry out direct transportation by sea, and sailing ships loaded with Oriental goods had to sail along the African continent and around the Cape of Good Hope. The long sea voyage was fraught with dangers, and it is estimated that as many as 600 British ships were wrecked at sea each year.
The French set their sights on the British "seven inches". Charles Magalion, then Consul General of France in Egypt, wrote to French Foreign Minister Talleyrand: "[The opening of the Suez waterway] will cut off Britain's Indian blood vessels...... The impact (on Britain) was comparable to the devastating blow to Genoa and Venice after the opening of the Cape of Good Hope route. ”
At that time, Egypt was still under the control of the Ottoman Empire. In the letter, Magalion proposed a bold plan: to occupy Egypt. "If France were to have sovereignty over Cairo, the result would be comparable to that of a European country occupying the Cape of Good Hope right now. ”
Magalion's suggestion was adopted. In 1798, a legion of more than 30,000 French soldiers and more than 300 ships led an expedition to Egypt led by Napoleon, who was 29 years old at the time.
On July 21, 1798, the French, armed with new guns, encountered the Egyptian army 6 kilometers south of Cairo. The Egyptian cavalry drew their scimitars and charged. Pointing to the pyramids not far away, Napoleon said to the soldiers: "You have come to this country to save the inhabitants from barbarism and bring civilization to the East...... and then he ordered his troops to open fire.
Cannons roared, muskets erupted, and the charging Egyptian cavalry fell off their horses. The Egyptian historian Abdul Rahman al-Jabalti, who witnessed the battle, described the scene as follows: "The smoke from the gunpowder turned black, the world was shrouded in dust and smoke, and people seemed to feel the earth shaking and the heavens collapsing. In this battle, the French army won a complete victory. The Egyptian army suffered about 6,000 casualties, while the French suffered only about 300 casualties.
Napoleon then occupied Cairo. He wrote to his brother Joseph: "The land of Egypt is rich and rare...... But when it comes to the Egyptians, they are all uncivilized barbarians. ”
Marx once made this comparison between the colonized who were called "savages" and the colonizers who claimed to be "civilized": "The semi-barbarians insist on moral principles, while the civilized people oppose them with the principles of selfishness." The result of the colonial expansion carried out by the West under the banner of "civilization and education" is to "subordinate the uncivilized and semi-civilized countries to the civilized countries, the peasant nation to the bourgeois nation, and the East to the West."
In the end, Napoleon's desire to dig a canal in the Suez Isthmus was not fulfilled due to the measurement errors of engineers and the military intervention of Britain and the Ottoman Empire.
At this point, the 100-year history of humiliation of the Egyptians surrounding the canal has just begun.
"Egypt is nothing more than collateral for public debt"
For Kadur, who has worked for the Suez Canal Authority for most of his life, what really motivated Egyptians to go to the desert a century and a half ago to dig canals was the desire for modernity.
In the mid-19th century, Egypt, which had been bullied by foreign powers, was determined to make the country rich and strong through Western-style reforms. The French, who had previously failed to occupy Egypt by force, saw a new opportunity.
Ferdinand de Lessep, who served as Deputy Consul General of France in Alexandria, Egypt, repeatedly told the Governor of Egypt, Mohammed Said, the importance of the excavation of the Suez Canal for Egypt's development.
On November 15, 1854, Lessep rode along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea with Said, and saw "a rainbow that stretched from east to west across the land and sea." Lessep pointed to the rainbow and told Said that if he supported the canal's plan, his exploits would be like a rainbow that would "shine so brightly in history."
Lysup later recalled in his autobiography that Syed had "a friendly smile on his face, and he held my hands tightly and solemnly made a promise of agreement."
Soon after, Said signed an agreement with Lessep to dig the Suez Canal, and Egypt transferred the right to dig the canal and the management right to the International Suez Canal Company established by Lessep, and provided the land and four-fifths of the labor required for the project free of charge.
In order to raise the 200 million francs needed for the construction of the canal, the International Suez Canal Company offered 400,000 shares, but only sold more than half in France. With the exception of Egypt, which bought less than 100,000 shares, the rest of the shares reserved for the United Kingdom, the United States, Austria and Russia were unattended because many did not believe the project would succeed. The French then tried to force the Egyptians to buy all the remaining shares.
To pay for this huge sum, Said had to borrow large sums of money from Britain and France at extremely high interest rates. As a result, Egypt has stepped into a debt trap set by the West.
On April 25, 1859, Lessup waved a shovel in Port Said, and the excavation of the Suez Canal officially began. Over the next 10 years, Egypt paid a terrible price in the lives of some 120,000 workers, excavating 74 million cubic meters of earth to build a 164-kilometer-long and 52-meter-wide waterway connecting the Red Sea to the Mediterranean.
After the completion of the canal, the distance from London to Mumbai, India, was shortened from 10,700 kilometers to 6,250 kilometers, and the cost of travel between Britain and France and the Eastern colonies was greatly reduced.
But for Egypt, the nightmare has only just begun.
Due to the soaring costs during the construction of the canal, Egypt had to borrow from Britain and France again and again. Egypt's railways, land, and even future canal revenues were all pledged to the Europeans. By the time the canal was built, Egypt's finances were on the verge of bankruptcy.
Looking back on this period of history, the German Marxist thinker Rosa Luxemburg pointed out: "European capital almost swallowed up Egypt's agricultural economy, and large tracts of land, labor, and the fruits of labor were eventually accumulated little by little and transformed into European assets." ”
In the 10 years between the construction of the canal and the mid-70s of the 19th century, Egypt's external debt increased 23 times, while the country's revenue increased only 5 times, and debt repayment accounted for two-thirds of the country's total revenue. In 1876, Egypt could no longer afford to pay its snowballing debts and declared bankruptcy. The British took the opportunity to buy more than 40% of the Suez Canal, which was owned by Egypt, at a low price.
With the help of financial means, the "civilized people" easily pocketed the canal built by the "barbarians" on their own land with ten years of blood and sweat and more than 100,000 bones. "It was an unbearable page in Egyptian history. Kadur grimaced.
But the appetites of the colonists were not satisfied. In 1882, in order to completely control the Suez Canal, the British sent troops to occupy the whole of Egypt.
The French scholar Jacques Belk said of this part of Egypt's history: "Egypt is nothing more than a collateral for the public debt, and at the bottom are the ancient and impoverished people of Egypt...... At the top of the hierarchy were the central bank powers and canal management agencies shared between the British and French financial circles and diplomatic consuls, which systematically transferred the wealth, production and surplus of the country to London, Paris, Vienna and Berlin through frequent transfers, bonds and the Suez Canal...... An impregnable (colonial) edifice was erected in just a few decades. ”
"Disappeared" Egyptian laborers
An exquisite French courtyard in Ismailia, in the middle of the Suez Canal, was once the headquarters of the International Suez Canal Company in Lessep during the construction of the canal. Today, it is a museum dedicated to the Suez Canal.
The museum houses many historical relics from the time when the canal was excavated, some of which are images of the construction site preserved by the participants in the canal excavation project.
In each picture, you can see the advanced steam dredging boats, the large lifting equipment, and the chatting white overseers, but there are few ordinary laborers. Where did all the workers who dug the canal go?
Muhammad Jamalaldin, a scholar at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in the United States, found that Egyptian laborers were deliberately excluded from the archives by the recorders of the canal's history.
Almost all of the laborers used in the excavation of the canal were Egyptian farmers. In the 10 years between the start of construction and the opening of navigation, Egypt recruited a total of 1.5 million people to participate in the construction, which is 15 times the labor requisitioned by the ancient Egyptian pharaohs to build the largest pyramid of Khufu. In order to meet the requirements of the French for the construction period, the Egyptian governor Saeed even ordered the size of the army to be reduced from 60,000 to 10,000, and let the demobilized 50,000 soldiers go to build the canal.
The reason for such a huge investment is the lack of machinery and equipment. In contrast to the museum's pictures, which show the ubiquity of large machinery and equipment on the construction site, in fact, most of the excavation of the canal was done by workers with primitive tools such as shovels.
Colombian writer Luis Carlos Barragán, who lived in Egypt, believes that European colonizers sought to erase Egyptians from the memory of the canal's history. "The images without Egyptians not only vividly illustrate how colonialism interpreted, tampered with, and controlled the image of Egypt, but also confirmed the (Euro)centrism of Europe's marginalization of the less developed countries. ”
Due to the canal's location in the heart of the desert, lack of drinking water is a major problem for workers. According to the agreement between the International Suez Canal Corporation and the Egyptian government, the project should first build a fresh water canal to divert water to the construction site before starting the canal excavation. However, in order to complete the project as soon as possible, Lessep started construction on the freshwater canal before it was completed. Workers rely on camels to carry water or dig wells in the desert, but this is far from enough to feed the tens of thousands of people, and people die of thirst almost every day on the site.
Harsh living conditions, combined with intense manual labor, led to plague epidemics becoming the norm. Infectious diseases such as smallpox, cholera, hepatitis and tuberculosis are frequent. In a cholera epidemic in 1865, a large number of workers died, and the bodies were strewn all over the construction site.
Such poor working conditions belong only to Egyptians. In her book The Suez Canal Construction Site 1859-1869, the French scholar Natalie Montel described two very different scenes around the canal site: on the one hand, foreigners enjoying their own banks, bakeries and bars, and on the other hand, starving workers toiling in agony under the scorching sun.
On the eve of the inauguration of the canal, the French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi visited Egypt. He proposed erecting a statue modeled after an Egyptian peasant at Port Said at the northern end of the canal. Bartholdi also sketched the statue: an Arab woman in a robe, holding a torch in her hand, hoisting it alof, symbolizing "Egypt bringing light to Asia."
However, the romantic sculptor did not read the minds of politicians. His proposal was rejected on the grounds of "insufficient funding". After the canal was completed, a statue of the Frenchman Lessep was erected in Port Said.
"The Suez Canal is a canal for the Egyptians"
Despite the deaths of many of his family and friends in the war that led to the repossession of the canal, Kadur remains proud of Egyptian President Nasser's decision to "change the fate of Egypt" 68 years ago.
After World War II, as the strength of the old colonial empires such as Britain and France plummeted, the tide of independence struggles arose in the colonies of Asia and Africa, which had long been exploited and oppressed.
In 1952, Egyptian military officers led by Nasser organized a revolution to overthrow the pro-Western Farouk dynasty. The following year, the Republic of Egypt was established.
On July 26, 1956, 100,000 Egyptians gathered in Tahrir Square in Alexandria to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the revolution. "100 years ago, Lessep told the Egyptians, 'I am your friend, and I have come to benefit you and to dig a canal between the two seas for your benefit'...... But the result of this 'friendship' and 'commitment' was the total British occupation of Egypt in 1882. ”
"The Suez Canal is a canal for the Egyptians...... We will never let imperialism and exploiters dominate us again, and we will never allow history to repeat itself!" Amid loud cheers and applause, Nasser announced that he had signed a decree officially taking the Suez Canal into Egypt's possession.
The Egyptians have gone through nearly a century from trying to get rid of poverty and backwardness through reforms that emulate the Western model, digging canals at all costs in the illusions carefully crafted by the colonizers, to breaking illusions about the West, driving out the colonizers, reclaiming the canals, and seeking independence.
Nasser's decision to nationalize the Suez Canal affected its core interests in the eyes of Britain and France. After the coercion and inducement failed, Britain and France decided to unite with Israel, which was at odds with Egypt at the time, to overthrow the Nasser government and regain control of the canal by waging war.
On October 29, Israel launched an undeclared war on Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. Subsequently, Britain and France intervened on the pretext of "maintaining the safety of navigation in the canal" and dispatched a large number of ships and warplanes to bomb Egypt indiscriminately. This is the Second Middle East War. Thousands of Egyptians, including relatives and friends of Kadurdo, were killed in the war. "It's a memory that can never be erased. Kadur's voice choked.
The Nasser Museum in downtown Cairo chronicles this history. Nestled among the trees, this small, unassuming-looking gray building was where Nasser lived from the time he started the revolution until his death.
Staff member Ehab Khalil took reporters to the conference room used by Nasser before his death. There are dozens of portraits of leaders in the room, including former Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, and in the center is a photo of Premier Zhou Enlai. "These are our friends, all of whom have provided important support to the cause of Egyptian independence. Carlil said.
The anti-colonial and anti-aggression struggle of the Egyptian people has resonated strongly in other countries that have also suffered from Western oppression. Thousands of miles away, the People's Republic of China also joined in the solidarity: Beijing citizens held a march to express their support for Egypt, the Chinese government donated 20 million Swiss francs in cash to the Egyptian government, and the Red Cross Society of China donated medical supplies worth 100,000 yuan......
To express his gratitude, Nasser wrote to Zhou Enlai: "Your support for our struggle for freedom and independence has strengthened our confidence in our just cause." We are determined to crush ...... Imperialist attempts to encroach on Egypt's sovereignty. ”
In order to prevent the Suez Canal from falling into the hands of imperialist countries again, Egypt sank dozens of ships in the Suez Canal, completely cutting off navigation. In the face of the determination of the Egyptian people and the pressure of strong condemnation from the international community, the aggressors finally withdrew from Egypt.
In 1967, at the instigation of the United States and Britain, Israel launched the Third Middle East War, invaded Egypt and occupied the Sinai Peninsula, forcing Egypt to block the Suez Canal again for eight years.
On September 28, 1970, Nasser, who had fought all his life for the independence of Egypt and the Arab world, died of a heart attack at the age of 52. At his funeral, almost all Arab leaders were present. More than 5 million Egyptians took to the streets to bid farewell to the leader who led Egypt out of colonial rule.
"Nasser is the father of all our Egyptians. With him, Egypt is what it is today. Carlil said.
Guy Laren, a scholar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, summed up this history in his book The Origins of the Suez Canal Crisis: The nationalization of the Suez Canal rejoiced the Egyptians and people in other Arab and colonized countries, because Nasser's move transformed himself, Egypt, and the entire "non-white world" from the object of the historical process to the subject of the historical process, the former colonized began to control their own destiny.
"Our friends are in the East!"
Today, the Suez Canal is a choke point for global trade. At its peak, the world's average of about 30% of containers and more than 1 million barrels of crude oil passed through it every day to be sent around the world. Walking on the bank of the canal, I often meet tourists of different colors, taking pictures in groups of three or two, and huge ships full of goods slowly pass by. The breeze is warm and the sun is warm, the sea is blue and the sky is blue, and the smoke of history seems to have dissipated with the wind.
However, under the surface of calm, Egypt's struggle to free itself from Western control did not end.
Since the early 90s of the 20th century, the international financial institutions dominated by the United States and Europe have induced Egypt to carry out neoliberal reforms through large amounts of aid and loans, completely opening the door to Western capital. More than a century ago, Britain and France used this kind of financial game to take the Suez Canal for themselves. In his 1981 book Global Fragmentation: The Historical Process of the Third World, the American scholar Leften Stavros Stavrianos noted that the West "cannot tolerate Egypt's political and financial independence."
The Egyptians, who have been victimized by the West again and again on the road to development, are thinking about how to get rid of the century-old curse of development.
In Kadur's view, history has already given the answer. "Think about the past, who oppressed us, who helped us, who empathized with the suffering we went through, and our friends were in the East!"
After China proposed the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, Egypt became one of the first countries to join. On January 1, 2024, Egypt officially joined the BRICS cooperation mechanism. Today, on both sides of the Suez Canal, the tree of equal and mutually beneficial cooperation has borne fruit.
In the Ismailia section of the canal, a double-wing horizontal railway bridge built by a Chinese company has completed various application tests and is in the final stage of project handover. With the activation of the huge mechanical rotating device, the two wings of the 15,000-tonne, 640-meter-long bridge slowly rotate, like two giant arms, holding each other firmly in the middle of the canal, connecting Asia and Africa. After the official opening of the bridge, it will become the core passage for Egypt's development and construction of the Sinai Peninsula.
In the desert less than 50 kilometers south of the canal, a new modern industrial city has begun to take shape: the China-Egypt TEDA Suez Economic and Trade Cooperation Zone, which is jointly funded by Chinese enterprises and the China-Africa Fund. As a demonstration project of the Belt and Road Initiative jointly built by China and Egypt, the cooperation zone has attracted more than 140 enterprises to settle in, involving new building materials, petroleum equipment, high and low voltage equipment, machinery manufacturing and other industries, driving more than 50,000 local jobs. The production chain brought by some Chinese enterprises has directly filled the technological gap in Egypt's related industries. Egyptian Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouli praised the zone as "an ideal model for the development of industrial parks in Egypt."
On the other side of the canal, in the southern Sinai Peninsula, a new desert city is being built in partnership between Egypt and Saudi Arabia. According to the plan, the initial construction of the new city will be completed in 2039 and become an important tourism, business, and technology center in the Middle East. In Egypt's new administrative capital, the Red Sea coastal tourist attraction and other places, Egypt and BRICS countries have more and more economic and trade cooperation projects.
As of 2023, Egypt's total trade with the BRICS countries already accounts for more than one-third of the country's total foreign trade. At present, Egypt is also actively promoting the establishment of a local currency trade settlement system with BRICS countries to reduce its dependence on the US dollar.
"[Egypt] is looking forward to working with the BRICS members...... to jointly raise the voices of countries in the Global South and promote the rights and interests of developing countries. After being invited to join the BRICS mechanism, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi immediately expressed his gratitude.
After a hundred years of vicissitudes, the Suez Canal is witnessing the opening of a new chapter in the history of ancient civilization.
Kadur, who now lives in Cairo, still returns to the canal from time to time to see where he once worked. "That's where our dream of independence came true. I believe that it will also be a place where our development dreams will come true. ”
【Expert Opinion】Nasser Mandol, Rector of Suez Canal University
The excavation of the Suez Canal is a thousand-year-old dream of the Egyptians. Egypt incurred almost all the costs of digging the canal, and as a result, it was saddled with huge debts, for which millions of Egyptian sons and daughters sacrificed.
The British and French colonizers took advantage of the dream of the Egyptians to occupy the canal for a long time after the canal was dug and imposed colonial rule on Egypt and seized Egyptian resources, making the Suez Canal and Egypt both subordinate to the colonial powers.
President Nasser led the Egyptian people to reclaim the canal, which is a milestone in Egypt's modern history. In order to prevent the Egyptians from taking back the canal that belonged to them, Britain and France did not hesitate to go to war against Egypt, but through the fearless struggle of countless Egyptian sons and daughters who risked their lives, we finally succeeded, which is the glory of the Egyptians.
Today, the Suez Canal has become an important trade route that boosts the economic development of Egypt and the world. We will not let the past become a burden on development, and on the road of independent development, we will not forget the history of colonization, oppression, and plunder. As educators, we will share this history with the next generation so that they can remember it.
Egypt is one of the developing countries. We have a deep friendship and similar civilizations with developing countries, especially China, which was also invaded by colonizers. We are stepping up cooperation with China and other developing countries to push Egypt into a new stage of development. It is precisely on this expectation that we joined the Belt and Road Initiative and became a full member of the BRICS this year.
Today, the fruits of cooperation between Egypt and developing countries can be seen everywhere in the China-Egypt-TEDA Suez Economic and Trade Cooperation Zone along the Suez Canal, in Egypt's new administrative capital.
An Egypt with a strategic location and well-developed infrastructure is opening its arms to all the countries of the Global South. Developing countries should join hands more closely, take advantage of each other's advantages and huge markets, learn from each other's strengths, and jointly realize their development vision.
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Director: Yuan Bingzhong
Planner: Ni Siyi, Ban Wei, Mao Lei
Producer: Feng Junyang, Zhi Linfei
Co-ordinator: Zhao Zhuoyun, Yan Junyan, Xu Chao
Chief reporter: Chen Mengyang, Zhao Wencai, Yao Bing
Participating reporters: Liu Pinran, Yang Yiyi, Wang Dongzhen, Zhao Manjun
Video: Yang Yiyi, Yu Fuqing, Zhao Wencai
Editors: Qiu Xia, Song Ying, Zhu Ruiqing, Wu Baoshu, Wang Shen, Shen Haoyang
Produced by the International Department of Xinhua News Agency