The Suez Canal Company was frequently accused of serving only its French and British shareholders’ interests, and of ignoring Egypt. With the connecting of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, wares and passengers travelling between Europe and Asia became free from the obligation of passing through Cairo and Lower Egypt. Nonetheless, from its conception in 1854 the fate of the maritime canal depended on the digging of a sweet water canal, designed to bring water from the Nile to the Canal digging sites and future cities. The sweet water canal project nourished in turn high agricultural and commercial expectations. While director of the Company, from 1856 to the middle of the 1880s, Ferdinand de Lesseps did never abandon these projects, though their implementation raised major questions of sovereignty. Two crises followed between the Egyptian government and the Company; both ended with the Company’s retreat. Studying these ambitions and crises sheds a light on the Company’s difficult position amidst the diplomatic relations between Egypt, the Ottoman Empire, France and Great Britain.