French diplomat, engineer and builder of canals. From 1825 to his resignation in 1849, he worked in the French consular and diplomatic service, serving as minister to Spain 1848–1849.
While serving in Egypt a few years later, he conceived the idea of a Suez Canal, and on 30 November 1854, obtained from Said Pasha, viceroy of Egypt, the concession to open a passage through the isthmus of Suez. He was the chief figure in organizing the canal company and raised, by popular subscription in France, over half the capital needed. He supervised the actual construction (the first blow of the pickax was given by Lesseps at Port Said on 25 April 1859); and ten years later, on 17 November 1869, the Suez Canal was officially inaugurated. Lesseps achieved world renown when the venture proved successful.
In 1878, at age 74, he reluctantly accepted the Presidency of a French company to build the Panama Canal and work was begun in 1881. Lack of funds forced the project into bankruptcy seven years later, amid charges of corruption. Lesseps was brought to trial for misappropriation of funds and was convicted of Panama fraud 9 February 1893. Together with his son, he was sentenced to prison by the French government when he was aged 87. The sentence, however, was not carried out, and most objective observers, then and since, have held Lesseps to have been guilty only of negligence. He and died the following year on 7 December 1894 in La Chenaie, France.
Lesseps is the author of “The Isthmus of Suez Question,” 1855, “The Suez Canal: Letters and Documents Descriptive of its Rise and Progress in 1854-1856,” 1876 and “Recollections of Forty Years,” 1887.
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