Since its excavation took off in 1859 in Ottoman‐Egyptian territory, the Suez Canal has conveyed much more than armies or cargoes. This essay dives into the currents and stoppages in the historiography of the Suez Canal and its brand‐new cities between 1859, when the project began, and 1956, when the Egyptian government nationalized this waterway. Writings on the 19th and early 20th‐century history of the Suez Canal have followed a course of their own, quite divergent from mainstream historical scholarship on modern Egypt. The Suez Canal has funneled political aspirations ranging from the colonial to the semicolonial and the nationalist, ideas on its built environment, utopias about a cosmopolitan society, and experiences of actual social dystopias. This essay suggests that scholars need to pay attention to labor and migration in order to people the history of the Suez Canal and its surrounding region, for this waterway not to remain the hollow ditch it has been so far in most of its pre‐1956 historiography.

中文翻译：

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苏伊士：需要人流的空心运河。史学中的潮流与停滞，1859年至1956年

自1859年在奥斯曼帝国埃及领土发掘以来，苏伊士运河的运输能力远不止军队或货物。本文探讨了苏伊士运河及其全新城市在1859年项目开始至1956年埃及对这条河道进行国有化之间的历史动向和停滞状况。关于苏伊士运河19世纪和20世纪初的历史的著作沿袭了自己的历程，与现代埃及的主流历史学者大相径庭。苏伊士运河汇集了从殖民地到半殖民地和民族主义者的政治愿望，关于其建造环境的想法，关于世界主义社会的乌托邦以及实际的社会反乌托邦的经历。