Parting the Desert


Book Description

Award-winning historian Zachary Karabell tells the epic story of the greatest engineering feat of the nineteenth century--the building of the Suez Canal-- and shows how it changed the world. The dream was a waterway that would unite the East and the West, and the ambitious, energetic French diplomat and entrepreneur Ferdinand de Lesseps was the mastermind behind the project. Lesseps saw the project through fifteen years of financial challenges, technical obstacles, and political intrigues. He convinced ordinary French citizens to invest their money, and he won the backing of Napoleon III and of Egypt's prince Muhammad Said. But the triumph was far from perfect: the construction relied heavily on forced labor and technical and diplomatic obstacles constantly threatened completion. The inauguration in 1869 captured the imagination of the world. The Suez Canal was heralded as a symbol of progress that would unite nations, but its legacy is mixed. Parting the Desert is both a transporting narrative and a meditation on the origins of the modern Middle East.




The Maritime Canal of Suez


Book Description




Italy and the Suez Canal, from the Mid-nineteenth Century to the Cold War


Book Description

Conceived in the 1850s and opened to navigation in 1869, the Suez Canal's construction coincided with Italy's path to unification and its first foray into nineteenth-century globalization. Since then, the history of Italy and the Canal have intertwined in many ways, throughout peace and war. This edited collection explores the fundamental technical, diplomatic and financial contributions that Italy made to the production of the Canal and to its subsequent development, from the mid-nineteenth century to the Cold War. Drawing from unpublished public and private archival sources, this book is the first comprehensive account of this long and multifaceted relationship, providing innovative perspectives on Italy's diplomatic, economic, social, colonial and cultural history. An insightful read for those studying maritime, diplomatic or Italian history, this book contributes to a growing body of research on the Suez Canal, which has largely emerged from international business, labour and social history, and offers new insights into the Euro-Mediterranean region. Barbara Curli is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Turin, Italy. She is an editorial board member of Italia Contemporanea and is on the Scientific Board of the Fondazione Leonardo - CiviltĂ  delle Macchine.




Ninety Percent of Everything


Book Description

Revealing the workings and dangers of freight shipping, the author sails from Rotterdam to Suez to Singapore to present an eye-opening glimpse into an overlooked world filled with suspect practices, dubious operators, and pirates.




The Suez Crisis 1956


Book Description

In July 1956 Egyptian President Gamal Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, causing immediate concern to Britain and France. They already opposed Nasser and were worried at the threat to maritime traffic in the Canal. This book traces the course of subsequent events. Together with Israel, Britain and France hatched a plot to occupy the Canal Zone and overthrow Nasser. Israel attacked Sinai, and Britain and France launched offensives throughout Egypt, but strategic failures overshasdowed tactical success. Finally, Britain, France and Israel bowed to international pressure and withdrew, leaving the Suez Canal, and Egypt, firmly in the hands of President Nasser.




Port Economics, Management and Policy


Book Description

Port Economics, Management and Policy provides a comprehensive analysis of the contemporary port industry, showing how ports are organized to serve the global economy and support regional and local development. Structured in eight sections plus an introduction and epilog, this textbook examines a wide range of seaport topics, covering maritime shipping and international trade, port terminals, port governance, port competition, port policy and much more. Key features of the book include: Multidisciplinary perspective, drawing on economics, geography, management science and engineering Multisector analysis including containers, bulk, break-bulk and the cruise industry Focus on the latest industry trends, such as supply chain management, automation, digitalization and sustainability Benefitting from the authors’ extensive involvement in shaping the port sector across five continents, this text provides students and scholars with a valuable resource on ports and maritime transport systems. Practitioners and policymakers can also use this as an essential guide towards better port management and governance.




The Geography of Transport Systems


Book Description

Mobility is fundamental to economic and social activities such as commuting, manufacturing, or supplying energy. Each movement has an origin, a potential set of intermediate locations, a destination, and a nature which is linked with geographical attributes. Transport systems composed of infrastructures, modes and terminals are so embedded in the socio-economic life of individuals, institutions and corporations that they are often invisible to the consumer. This is paradoxical as the perceived invisibility of transportation is derived from its efficiency. Understanding how mobility is linked with geography is main the purpose of this book. The third edition of The Geography of Transport Systems has been revised and updated to provide an overview of the spatial aspects of transportation. This text provides greater discussion of security, energy, green logistics, as well as new and updated case studies, a revised content structure, and new figures. Each chapter covers a specific conceptual dimension including networks, modes, terminals, freight transportation, urban transportation and environmental impacts. A final chapter contains core methodologies linked with transport geography such as accessibility, spatial interactions, graph theory and Geographic Information Systems for transportation (GIS-T). This book provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the field, with a broad overview of its concepts, methods, and areas of application. The accompanying website for this text contains a useful additional material, including digital maps, PowerPoint slides, databases, and links to further reading and websites. The website can be accessed at: http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans This text is an essential resource for undergraduates studying transport geography, as well as those interest in economic and urban geography, transport planning and engineering.




Channelling Mobilities


Book Description

The history of globalisation is usually told as a history of shortening distances and acceleration of the flows of people, goods and ideas. Channelling Mobilities refines this picture by looking at a wide variety of mobile people passing through the region of the Suez Canal, a global shortcut opened in 1869. As an empirical contribution to global history, the book asks how the passage between Europe and Asia and Africa was perceived, staged and controlled from the opening of the Canal to the First World War, arguing that this period was neither an era of unhampered acceleration, nor one of hardening borders and increasing controls. Instead, it was characterised by the channelling of mobilities through the differentiation, regulation and bureaucratisation of movement. Telling the stories of tourists, troops, workers, pilgrims, stowaways, caravans, dhow skippers and others, the book reveals the complicated entanglements of empires, internationalist initiatives and private companies.




The History of the Suez Canal


Book Description

The History of the Suez Canal by Monsieur Ferdinand De Lesseps, first published in 1876, is a rare manuscript, the original residing in one of the great libraries of the world. This book is a reproduction of that original, which has been scanned and cleaned by state-of-the-art publishing tools for better readability and enhanced appreciation. Restoration Editors' mission is to bring long out of print manuscripts back to life. Some smudges, annotations or unclear text may still exist, due to permanent damage to the original work. We believe the literary significance of the text justifies offering this reproduction, allowing a new generation to appreciate it.