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- Title
The High Road to India: The P&O Company and the Suez Canal, 1840-1874.
- Authors
Harcourt, Freda
- Abstract
The fortunes of Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation (P&O) were closely connected with British imperial policy until at least the end of the third quarter of the nineteenth century. This was illustrated by the company's involvement with the transit from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea from the beginnings of long-distance steam shipping to the opening of the Suez Canal. Both the British government and P&O had strong interests in the transit while it was still overland, and P&O played an important role in developing it. The government's interest stemmed from the Great Power rivalry over Egypt and the importance of the route to India, while P&O's grew from the fact that the transit formed the link between its two fleets, which plied between Britain and the Mediterranean and Suez and India (and beyond). As a result, government policy and P&O's business strategy pulled in the same direction in relation to the transit during this period, although not without friction. Around the time of the opening of the canal in 1869, however, more serious tensions arose. Powerful voices in government were hostile both to the canal project and the subsequent use of the waterway for the carriage of mails to and from the East. But the opening of the canal was a potential disaster for P&O, rendering its two fleets redundant by making direct steam communication between London and the East possible for the first time. For this reason it was particularly important for the company to persuade government to subsidize mail carried via the canal to help meet the cost of the necessary new ships and to see off competition. This essay explores this history.
- Subjects
SUEZ Canal (Egypt); EGYPT; UNITED Kingdom; PENINSULAR &; Oriental Steam Navigation Co.; POSTAL service; MARITIME shipping; BRITISH foreign relations; VICTORIAN Period, Great Britain, 1837-1901
- Publication
International Journal of Maritime History, 2010, Vol 22, Issue 2, p19
- ISSN
0843-8714
- Publication type
Essay
- DOI
10.1177/084387141002200203