The Bible says that Moses miraculously parted the waters of the Red Sea 3,300 years ago, but its reputation as a trade route is much older still. Four hundred years before, Egyptian merchants already sailed its waters to buy and sell; and in 1000 BC. C. it was already used to bring goods from India. All this before the opening of the Suez Canal revolutionized world trade.
On August 18, 1869, the Red Sea definitively joined the Mediterranean Sea with the Indian Ocean. Six thousand guests attended that opening ceremony, including an emperor, an empress, and several kings and crown princes. The occasion was no surprise: thanks to the new passage, the journey between London and Bombay was shortened by eleven thousand kilometers and about ten days, by not having to go around Africa.
Access to the Red Sea was too important for the powers of the time not to want to control it: before the canal existed, the British had already occupied part of northern Egypt to secure a land route. When a mostly French company ended the sea connection, London soon took over 44% of the shares, but also invaded and established a de facto protectorate throughout Egypt. As German Chancellor Von Bismarck would say, for the British the canal was “the spinal cord that connects the brain to the spine”; the metropolis and the colony of India.
And it wasn’t just vital for the British. The Red Sea was going to become the great artery of world trade. In its first year of opening, fewer than five hundred ships crossed the Suez Canal; Within a century, twenty-one thousand a year would do so. Its operation was a major international issue: the treaty that established free navigation through the canal for all countries (the Convention of Constantinople) was signed, in addition to France and England, by Spain, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, Italy, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
In the First World War, the two sides faced each other in the Red Sea: the Ottoman Empire controlled the eastern shore in Arabia, and the British controlled the western shore, from Egypt. However, the Turkish fleet was too busy in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea to threaten the Allied supply lines there, and it also had an almost insurmountable obstacle: British control of the Suez Canal.
Although German, Austro-Hungarian or Ottoman merchants were, in theory, free to continue using the passage, in practice the English were the owners of the Red Sea. Therefore, on February 2, 1915, the Turks launched an attack to take the canal, although they had to withdraw after losing two thousand soldiers in just two days. As the Ottomans had been denouncing, Great Britain had built fortifications around the canal contrary to the provisions of the Convention of Constantinople, and that allowed it to resist.
The Turkish threat forced Britain to have many troops that it desperately needed in Europe stop in Suez, but it could not withdraw them either: keeping the Red Sea open was the key to receiving not only raw materials and supplies, but also to take them to the fields of battle to colonial soldiers and workers, essential for the war effort. In total, more than three million participated in the war on the British side.
The Ottomans continued to harass Suez with small raids, but they also sought to bother the English in other ways, such as favoring a revolt of five thousand Bedouins on the other side of Egypt. The British, for their part, supported an Arab revolt on the other side of the Red Sea for the same reason, and, in the last two years of the war, attempted to strike back at the Suez Canal.
In the Sinai Peninsula, which started right on the east bank of the canal, the great challenge for both armies was to have water. The English began by bombing the Ottomans’ wells, and then began building a train line and pipeline that could feed and water their troops as they advanced. That, in addition to employing 170,000 Egyptians and their 72,000 camels to transport water and other supplies. On January 9, 1917, they managed to expel the Ottomans from the Sinai and secured the Red Sea route until the end of the war.
At the start of World War II, prospects were darker for the Allies in the Red Sea. The British still controlled the Suez Canal, but with their conquest of Ethiopia, Mussolini’s Italy had taken over much of the left bank. At the beginning of the war, he even had a small fleet in Mitsiwa (Eritrea) which, for ten months, gave many headaches to British ships coming from Asia.
In the first weeks after Italy entered the war, in June 1940, the British were forced to almost stop the movement of their ships through the Red Sea. Italian submarines managed to sink a Norwegian tanker and an enemy destroyer. Furthermore, as the months went by, Mussolini’s bombers, ships, and submarines limited the English to just one convoy a month.
Only the arrival by land of Allied troops to take their base at Mitsiwa put an end to the Italian fleet’s campaign in the Red Sea, but not before staging an almost suicidal attempt to destroy the British base at Port Sudan, which left them without ships. . After jumping overboard, many Italian sailors had to take refuge for almost three years in Arabia before returning home.
From that moment on, the vital connection between the British Isles and their Indian colony was not really in danger again until the end of the war. First the Italians and then the Germans invaded Egypt by land from the west to try to take the Suez Canal, but they never got closer than two hundred and fifty miles. The Red Sea route had continued to operate, then, during the greatest confrontation in human history.
The end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War brought changes to the Red Sea. It was a key route to bringing Persian Gulf oil to Europe, but Egypt was no longer willing to accept British tutelage. The Suez Canal, which had managed to remain open during two world wars, began a period in which it would be blocked, sometimes for years.
In 1956, Egyptian President Nasser nationalized the channel. The British were furious, but so were the French, who had the Arab leader cross over his support for Algerian independence. In addition, there was Israel, which had already fought against Egypt as soon as it declared its independence and whose ships Nasser had prohibited from sailing through Suez, in addition to blocking their exit to the Red Sea through the Gulf of Aqaba.
The invasion of the canal by Nasser’s three enemies was a military success, but a diplomatic failure. The US made it clear to its allies that it did not want to risk a global war against the USSR, and they had to withdraw. The canal was closed for six months, but after the next war against Israel, Egypt blocked it for eight years. Since 1975, threats to trade in the Red Sea have had less to do with major international conflicts and more to do with accidents and pirates.
Between 2004 and 2006, two accidents blocked the Suez Canal, but on one occasion it was for just a few hours, and on the other, traffic was reopened after three days. In 2021, the Ever Given cargo ship crisis was more complex: it began to veer while it was crossing the canal and ended up crossing from side to side, interrupting the passage. It took them six days to resume navigation, and, according to the insurance company Allianz, the incident cost the world economy around eight billion euros.
However, perhaps the worst enemy of commerce in the area in recent decades has been piracy. If in the 1st century Pliny the Elder already spoke of a Red Sea infested with pirates, in 2011 there were 32 ships and more than 700 sailors kidnapped, for whom million-dollar ransoms were demanded. Such was the insecurity that the European Union organized and still maintains a specific military mission to secure maritime traffic in the region, Operation Atalanta.
Around 10% of the world’s maritime goods continue to pass through the Red Sea today, although it has lost importance compared to other commercial routes, such as the Straits of Malacca or Hormuz. However, perhaps the best sign that it continues to be a strategic point of the first order are the military bases that crowd its shores: of course, those of the seven countries that are in the sea itself, but also with a US presence. USA, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, Italy, Turkey, Japan, the Emirates and even a Spanish contingent.
