How a 19th-century infrastructure project reshuffled the winners and losers of global trade and what it tells us about our own age of disruption
In November 1869, the world witnessed the inauguration of one of humanity's most ambitious engineering feats. The Suez Canal, cutting through 120 miles of Egyptian desert, promised to revolutionize global commerce by eliminating the treacherous voyage around Africa. Ships traveling from London to Bombay would save nearly 4,400 miles - roughly 40 percent of their previous journey.
But as a fascinating new draft research paper by Albert Schram demonstrates, the canal did far more than simply shorten distances. It fundamentally reordered the commercial geography of an entire region, creating unexpected winners, surprising losers, and patterns that would persist for generations. The parallels to our own era of technological disruption and geopolitical upheaval are striking.
