Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"The realization of the Suez project, by which a canal was made linking the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, was the work of one man, visionary former French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps. . . . The Suez Canal continued to enrich Britain and France until it was nationalized by President Gamal Abdul Nasser in 1956." [Furtado: 1001 Days] "The second fact, the strategic situation, attracted the interests of the western powers and their capitalists, especially the British, to whose world position the country became crucial with the construction of the Suez Canal. . . . And when Khedive and pashas could no longer pay the interest on the loans they had accepted with frivolous enthusiasm--in 1876 they totaled almost half of the actual revenue receipts for that year--the foreigners imposed control. . . . The British, whose position was more powerful and whose interests were much more crucially involved, emerged as the new rulers of the country in the 1880s. But meanwhile the unusual exposure of Egypt to the west had created a new elite of landlords, intellectuals, civil functionaries and army officers, which led the nation movement of 1879-82, directed against both the Khedive and the foreigners." [Hobsbawm: Capital, p. 125-6]