Suez Route
The Suez Route is a shipping route from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean, including the Suez Canal and the Red Sea.
Understand
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Ancient Egypt had a Canal of the Pharaohs, between the Nile Delta and the Lacs Amers, said to have been completed around 500 BC, under the rule of Persian king Darius I. It is unknown whether this canal was ever operational. A similar canal existed from the 9th to 11th century.
Construction of the Suez Canal began in 1859, led by a French consortium known as the Suez Company (Compagnie de Suez). As the Suez Canal opened in 1869, it changed commerce and transportation on a global scale. The British would later take control of the canal after defeating the Ottoman Empire in a war in 1888.
The flat landscape allows the canal to be at sea level, without locks.
The Suez Canal disrupted the Cape Route around Africa, which had been an important sailing route for Europeans since the Portuguese started using it in 1498. While sails are of little use in the canal, steam ships could easily get through, giving them the upper hand on the new route. The Age of Sail continued on other routes, well into the 20th century, with increasingly larger ships.
The 19th century also saw expansion of railways around the world. These feats inspired Jules Verne's 1873 book Around the World in Eighty Days, and real-life voyages, such as Nellie Bly's 72-day circumnavigation completed in 1890.
Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal in 1956, leading to the 1956-57 Suez Crisis, a war over the canal in which it was closed to shipping traffic, causing a major disruption on global trade. A UN resolution in 1957 resolved that conflict by recognizing the canal's Egyptian ownership, and the question was fully put to rest when the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty guaranteed passage of Israeli shipping through the canal.
The Suez Canal was expanded in 2016, allowing even larger vessels.
Today, the Suez Route is mostly used by freighters.
Stay safe
[edit]Around year 2000, piracy in the Gulf of Aden became an international concern. It is such a severe problem as of 2024 that several countries' military forces have gotten involved to try to protect international shipping through the Red Sea and the use of the Cape Route has been revived as a means of avoiding it.