History of the archives of
Compagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez in the French National Archives
(abstract)
by
Eliane Carouge-Deronne, conservator at the National Archives

When Egypt nationalised the Suez Canal in 1956, the local administration of the Canal and the relevant archives were handed over to the Egyptian government along with the Canal itself and the buildings. However, Suez Canal Company whose creator and executives were French, was headquartered in Paris, rue d'Astorg, where the head office of Suez Financial Company would be later established. This Company then found that it had inherited of all the archives of the Canal administration. In 1977, Suez Financial Company then submitted them to the "Archives Nationales" where they are listed under collection 153 AQ. This is a significant collection which takes up more than 1500 meters of shelves space. As to documents related to Ferdinand de Lesseps himself and to key dates in the history of the canal, they are still kept in the Association's office.

Although that the collection housed at the "Archives Nationales" comprises fewer individual documents of particular significance, it is nevertheless of great historical interest. It provides details of the day-to-day management of the company, giving us a glimpse into how the Canal was built and how those who worked on it lived.

This is a collection of rare quality as much due to its organisation and completeness as to the history of the canal it reveals. After all, the history of Suez Company is first and foremost the history of the Suez Canal.

The task of operating the Suez Canal was managed through three departments

- technical, transit and property - whose archives contain a great wealth of material.

Thanks to the documents which have been left to us, we can understand in details all the work carried out on the canal, both to construct it and to maintain and subsequently improve it : earthwork, dredging, construction of stone retaining walls, siting of lighthouses and beacons, the digging out of ship basins, straightening the route of the canal, but also those countless minor tasks such as the maintenance of telegraph facilities, the outfitting of a workshop or the fencing off of a watchpost. In discovering what work was done, we also learn what equipment was used, which manufacturers supplied it and how the Company's workshops in Port Said operated.

However, altrhough the Suez Canal was a permanent construction site, its purpose and so its true history was the daily passage of ships making the 170 km long trip separating the Mediterranean from the Red Sea. Here we leave the technical archives and move on to those of the transit department, whose role is to ensure that the ships travelling through the canal do so unhindered and as rapidly as possible. This department is also responsible for business profitability, since each ship pays to it the transit fees due, according to tonnage. These two aspects, of its activities are the basis for the two series of documents which it has built up.

First of all, the navigation rules were constantly amended and developed as the specifications of the Canal andof ocean going vessels changed ; and in light of accidents which inevitably occurred: every accident, no matter how insignificant, was studied, and analysed in reports which were then included in the regular statistics.

The issue of fees was, of course, a subject of ongoing debate with shipowners and governments and is fully covered in the company's archives. At Port Said and Suez, transit personal measured and recorded each ship in order to assess the fee it would be charged to pass through the Canal. The documents drawn up at this stage in the process accurately detail the technical specifications of all the ships that passed through the Canal over a period of hundred years, the route they took, the nature of their cargo, the number of passengers aboard and the name of the shipowner. This statistical information is an invaluable source for the history of international commercial transactions.

Finally it was thanks to the canal that three great urban centres were created on its banks, where formerly was only desert : Port-Saïd and Port-Fouad, its suburbs on the Asian sides, Ismaïlia and Port-Tewfik, and Suez. These towns were developped within the territorial concession agreed by Viceroy of Egypt. In this zone, administration of the land belonged entirely to the Company, with the exception of certain matters which were subject to specific agreements with the Egyptian government. The files of the property department faithfully record the evolution of these towns. The opening of new roads, construction of public buildings and houses for Company employees, maintenance works for buildings and roads, show how a modern and original urban environnement was created from what were inevitably at the start makeshift facilities.

Saved for posterity by wisdom of the Suez Financial Company management, the archives of the first period of the canal are today entrusted to the French Public archives. And it is indeed true that this spendid wealth of information entrusted to French archivists record of a period in the history of both France and Egypt, greatly exceeds the limitations of purely national histories.

In 19xx, the collection of Suez Canal Company was transferred to the "Centre des Archives du Monde du Travail" (Centre for Labour Archives) in Roubaix.