Person
Ferdinand de Lesseps
Ferdinand de Lesseps was a French diplomat and entrepreneur who developed the Suez Canal, opened in 1869. Encouraged by that success, he launched a French company to build a sea-level canal across Panama in 1881, but disease, landslides and engineering problems overwhelmed the project, which collapsed in 1889 after many thousands of workers had died. The bankruptcy caused a great political scandal in France, in which he was convicted, though the sentence was later quashed.
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- APA
- The Epoch Institute. (2026). Ferdinand de Lesseps. In The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/ferdinand-de-lesseps
- MLA
- “Ferdinand de Lesseps.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/ferdinand-de-lesseps. Accessed .
- Chicago
- The Epoch Institute. “Ferdinand de Lesseps.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/ferdinand-de-lesseps.
- Harvard
- The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘Ferdinand de Lesseps’, The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/ferdinand-de-lesseps (Accessed: ).
Last reviewed October 2026Random entry ↻