Creator of the Suez Canal. Born in Versailles, into a family raised to the nobility in 1777, son of Mathieu de Lesseps, French Consul, and nephew of Barthélemy de Lesseps, one of the members of the La Pérouse expedition and subsequently French Consul General in St Petersburg during the First Empire. Ferdinand, who was schooled at the Collège Henri-IV and then studied law, took up a career in the diplomatic service in his turn. He was made Vice-Consul in Alexandria in 1832 and Consul in Cairo the following year.
During this first period of residence in Egypt, Ferdinand de Lesseps read the Description of Egypt by the engineer Le Père, who had accompanied Bonaparte on his campaign in this country. On looking at Le Pèreâ??s construction projects, de Lesseps was inspired with the idea of a canal linking the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.
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