The Suez Canal, a Key Piece of the Maritime Imperial Puzzle

The suez canal opened in 18 69 and became fully operational in 18 71. It was enormously important to british and french imperial ambitions because of their contestation in europe itself and in the mediterranean. There is very little written about the workers who built the canal in english. But what becomes clear is that there were around a million peasants that were pressed into corvey labor, and to force labor to build the canal.