The French diplomat Ferdinand Marie de Lesseps (1805-1894) successfully promoted the Suez Canal and made an abortive attempt to build the Panama Canal.

Ferdinand de Lesseps was born on Nov. 19, 1805, at Versailles. After a childhood spent at Pisa--where his father was sometime consul--and then in Paris, his education at the Lycée Napoleon fitted him for entry into the French consular service. From 1825 he held posts of rising importance, usually in the Mediterranean area. In 1849 he went as minister plenipotentiary to the Mazzini Republic in Rome. The unknowing tool of duplicity from the first, he was made a political scapegoat, but he weathered this storm, as he was to ride out future crises, through his political innocence and personal integrity. He soon resigned from the foreign service.

With the accession of Mohammed Said, an old friend, as pasha of Egypt in 1854, Lesseps saw a way to realize...