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Experts without communities Internationality, impartiality, and the Suez Canal Abstract How and why has expertise become such a central component of modern global governance? Neither of two dominant IR takes on the topic—functionalist approaches to epistemic communities, and poststructuralist perspectives on governmentality—have offered satisfactory answers to this arguably urgent question. This is because, respectively, epistemic communities emphasise cohesion at the expense of disunity prior to formation; and because governmentality primarily applies to neoliberal polities. Neither travels well in time. To overcome these limitations and constructively bridge the two approaches, this paper suggests a conceptual rethinking based on a surprisingly neglected but pivotal case: the 1855 International Commission on the Isthmus of Suez. Based on original archival research, the paper showcases how modern expert-based global governance emerged in practice. It argues that expert-based global governance should be understood as a practice that constructs “internationality” as a categorical claim to impartiality. What made modern global governance possible was a notion of the international as a depoliticised category. This authorised experts as central agents of international order. Consequently, expert authority is not epistemic by default: the 1855 case shows that political favour can endow experts with authority, a nexus which internationality is then able to mask as impartiality. The nineteenth-century rise of the middle class, scientific internationalism, and informal empire made such masking more desirable than the open admission of political aims. The article thus offers a corrective to existing accounts and a new avenue toward historicising a central practice of modern global governance. Keywords expertise, global governance, epistemic communities, governmentality, Suez Canal Introduction It hardly needs pointing out today that global governance is rife with deference to experts. From the WHO to the World Bank to the IMF, most challenges of international politics are met, at some point in the process, with the help of experts. Today, this practice seems obvious. An ever more complex, globalised world requires specialists who can bring their knowledge to bear on global governance. This is the optimist view, stressing the positive potential of expertise for improving international cooperation on technical issues. A pessimist view sees experts as often unaccountable technocrats imbued with a blind faith in science—the legitimate targets of populist reaction. In the International Relations (IR) discipline, the optimist view has a rough equivalent in functionalist approaches such as the epistemic communities framework, whereas the pessimist view tends to be reflected more strongly among poststructuralists who study
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expertise through the lens of governmentality. 1 Bueger suggests that across several
generations that have studied expertise in global governance, two normative
interpretations stand out: ‘A liberal-progressive narrative’ according to which ‘expertise leads
to better futures and … enables cooperation’ and a ‘critical narrative’ where expertise
‘narrows down available policy options, stabilizes power relations, hinders emancipation
or marginalizes actors.’ Given the centrality of expertise not only to global governance
practices, but also to broader theoretical questions of authority in international politics,
Bueger is right in urging scholars ‘to recognize that the Golem of expertise is neither the
enemy of legitimate political orders, nor by necessity its friend.’2
And yet, the debate seems to have come no closer to bridging the divide between
optimists and pessimists, instead continuing to talk past one another. In this paper, I
argue that this is to a large extent due to a lack of engagement with history: failing to
carefully historicise the idea and practice of expertise in international politics has led to
two sets of assumptions that might actually be normative interpretations or unwarranted
generalisations based on descriptions of the present.3 To improve the situation and
develop a historically grounded shared vocabulary, this paper asks: how and why has
expertise become such a central component of modern global governance? What is it
about the idea and practice of expertise that has endowed it with such seemingly obvious
purchase for IR? We think of expertise as a self-suggesting tool that helps us address
international challenges—but what if it is instead the designation of challenges as
“international” that allows some actors to claim international expert status?
The paper introduces a surprisingly neglected case of expert-based international
cooperation—the 1855 International Commission on the Isthmus of Suez—to help
scholars rethink prevalent understandings of expertise. In doing so, the paper builds on
contributions from Science and Technology Studies (STS), global history, and the IR
practice turn. My analysis does not offer a causal explanation but identifies the structure,
criteria, and agents of a budding global governance practice. Combining global histories
of the Suez Canal with the methodological strengths of historical-sociological IR, the
case study combines a membership analysis of the Commission with a narrative account
of its creation, use, and subsequent role in the canal enterprise. The paper argues that
expert-based global governance should be understood as a practice that deploys
“internationality” as a categorical claim to impartiality. What made modern global
governance possible, in an important sense, was a notion of the international as a
1These are stylised ideal types, and of course there are “optimists” who indeed view expertise critically,
and “pessimists” recognising the positive potentials of expertise.
2 Bueger 2014, 51; emphasis original.
3Recent studies of expertise in global governance include Sending 2015; Kennedy 2016; Jones 2019;
Carraro 2019.
Draft · Please do not circulate 2!EXPERTS WITHOUT COMMUNITIES depoliticised category or field. This authorised experts as central agents of international order. Consequently, expert authority is not epistemic by default: the 1855 case shows instead that political favour can endow experts with authority, a nexus which internationality can then mask as impartiality. The rise of the middle classes, scientific internationalism, and informal empire in the nineteenth century made such masking more desirable than the open admission of political aims. This sheds new light on a central practice of modern global governance in ways that may allow optimists and pessimists to engage in more fruitful conversation. It also implies a shift from experts as successful “depoliticisers” to depoliticisation itself as a potentially politically desired, i.e. politicised, form of governance. To build the case, I first briefly discuss two prevalent accounts of modern expert-based global governance, epistemic communities and governmentality, highlighting to what extent their grasp of the role of experts remains unsatisfactory. I criticise both for their insufficient engagement with history, but also highlight important advances both bodies of scholarship have made. Second, I present a historical case study of the 1855 International Commission on the Isthmus of Suez as a key moment of modern expert- based global governance in the making. I show how this practice enabled a highly versatile legitimation of informal empire by constructing internationality as a categorical claim to impartiality. From this insight I then advance a historicised reconceptualisation of the place of experts in IR: what made modern global governance possible was a notion of the international as a depoliticised category, which authorised experts as central agents of international order. I close by summarising the theoretical ramifications of my findings and suggesting how we might better understand the relationship between expertise and global governance. Experts in global governance: two approaches Rather than attempt a full review of IR scholarship on expert-based global governance, this section will compare two particularly widely used approaches to the topic, epistemic communities and governmentality. To be sure, most standard accounts of global governance touch upon the role of experts. There is a wide array of voices on the role of experts that would exceed the scope of this paper: rational design scholars see experts as problem-solvers who mediate collective action problems.4 Liberal institutionalists, in turn, study them as bureaucratic or as private actors pulled in on an issue-by-issue basis.5 These accounts treat experts as a sub-class of transnational non-state actors, as a case of private authority, or as a channel for decision-making input. 4 E.g. Mattli and Woods 2009; Koremenos, Lipson, Snidal 2013. 5 Barnett and Finnemore 2012; Jinnah 2014; Voeten 2021, ch. 5. Draft · Please do not circulate 3!
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By contrast, epistemic communities and governmentality place central emphasis
on experts as active participants and makers of global governance. Both, that is, highlight
expert agency, and as such they have informed the largest portion of recent work on
expertise in IR. In what follows, I outline and compare the frameworks on three
dimensions: their assumptions about the relationship between politics and expertise;
about the relationship between experts and other experts; and about the source of expert
authority. I then identify the limits of their theories of variation in time and point to
valuable insights that the remainder of the paper will further develop.
Epistemic communities: independence, cohesion, knowledge
The epistemic communities framework, arguably the most well-known of approaches to
the role of experts in IR, is part of functionalist work on global governance. On a
functionalist view, which as mentioned is here stylised as “optimism”, scientific and
technical experts can promote international cooperation as they supersede existing
divisions by virtue of the unifying, borderless, and apolitical power of science and
technology. Functionalists subscribe to a minimalist conception where ‘cooperation is
more likely to be achieved if the contentious issues of high politics are put aside, if
attention is given to pragmatic progress on matters of low politics where common
interests were most apparent’.6 The implicit bottom-line is that experts are able to reduce
contention by shifting focus to ‘low politics’, and that this process of depoliticisation is
on average successful and beneficial.
The epistemic communities framework partially relies on this set of assumptions.
First developed by Peter Haas in the early 1990s, building on previous work in that
direction by his father Ernst Haas, the concept builds on neofunctionalist sociology. It is
defined as a functional response to growing complexity in world politics. 7 Understood as
a natural symptom of globalisation, complexity necessitates input from and deference to
experts. In response, epistemic communities emerge and are endowed with authority for
functional reasons. On a view of governance as regulation, epistemic communities step
in as authoritative agents that improve the knowledge available to policy-makers.
Epistemic communities are thus ‘networks of knowledge-based communities with an
authoritative claim to policy-relevant knowledge within their domain of expertise’. Their
key characteristics are internal cohesion and consensus. They share beliefs about
principles, causation, and validity, and even a ‘policy enterprise’ directed at problem-solving
and enhancing ‘human welfare’. 8 Epistemic communities are cohesive, non-political,
6 Hurrell 2005, 89; see also Murphy 1994.
7 ‘The international system has become more … complex.’ Haas 2014, 19. Also Jervis 1997; Rosenau 2003.
8 ibid., 29-30; emphasis added.
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merit-based, and recognisably impartial groups. 9 The framework assumes that there is,
and that we can reliably identify, a gulf separating expertise from partisan politics.10
In sum, the epistemic communities approach postulates that first, expertise and
politics are analytically and empirically separate, experts being independent possessors of
knowledge who are brought into the political process; second, experts relate to other
experts as a community, their authority and efficacy growing as a function of the
cohesiveness of their epistemic community; and third, the source of their authority is
epistemic, based on their specialist knowledge (see Table 1). This is an empirically helpful
framing: it suggests that we can reliably identify expert groups, label them, and then
study what they do, how they do it, and to what effect. On the other hand, the approach
pays less attention to variation over time: one proponent mentions, for example, that
epistemic communities have ‘an identifiable intellectual ‘pre-history’’ but does not specify
what exactly this pre-history looks like.11 By exception to a largely non-historical
literature, Davis Cross has advanced the concept’s application to history.12 She maintains,
however, that the persuasiveness of epistemic communities largely rests ‘on their degree
of internal cohesion and professionalism’ and that ‘if an epistemic community is not
internally cohesive, then it is less likely to be as persuasive as one that is.’13
The epistemic communities framework suffers from two main shortcomings.
First, it carves out identifiable communities as usefully discreet objects of inquiry, but
excludes, at least so far, the role of experts prior to their formation into a community.
Second, the role of experts at the international level remains under-explored, as do the
questions whether there is something distinctive about international expert governance. To
echo a recent critique, the approach brackets the role of problem construction prior to
institutional choice.14 It reifies actor interests (as cohesive, recognisable communities),
but is bound to be silent on how these evolve in the first place. Functions overdetermine
expert governance, leaving little room for experts without communities. While
floodlighting the effects and uses of expert knowledge in global governance, and being
sensitive to knowledge-dependent actor constitution, it is biased in favour of expertise—
and in that sense belongs to the “optimist” camp—in a way that risks rendering it an
exercise in policy improvement rather than critical inquiry. Relying on an intellectual
9‘The internal consensus … provides the glue for collective action amongst the individuals of the
community. … Their track record … provides an ongoing warrant for their reputation for expertise and
impartiality.’ ibid., 30.
10 Haas 1992; Haas 2004. For a recent critique see Esguerra 2015.
11 Dunlop 2000, 140.
12 Davis Cross 2007; Davis Cross 2013.
13 Davis Cross 2013, 147.
14 Allan 2018a; Allan 2018b.
Draft · Please do not circulate 5!EXPERTS WITHOUT COMMUNITIES heritage that stems from early functionalist advocates and protagonists of expert governance themselves, the bias is unsurprising.15 It may also be a chief reason why the epistemic communities framework is rarely historicised. The basic problem, then, is not inherent in the logic of functionalist analysis: its conclusions do follow from its premises. But to understand how expert governance came to be taken for granted, and how it evolved as a practice even before its institutionalisation, the perspective is insufficient. STS scholars have long insisted that such views not only overstate the separation of politics and experts but also black-box the role of contestation.16 IR scholars across the field accept this view. Hurrell notes several ‘legitimacy issues’: experts might turn into an interest group of their own; their ‘technical knowledge as purely technical and apolitical’ is a dubious idea; and the assumption that controversies could be resolved by technocrats working in intransparent institutional settings is ‘bound to raise questions of democratic legitimacy’.17 Kennedy suggests experts are political agents rather than mere providers of knowledge.18 Voeten similarly points to the ideological underpinnings of international institutions, including the use of expertise which he notes ‘is rarely neutral amid ideological conflict.’19 Finally as with all functionalism, an understanding of what functions an attribute (expertise) serves in action (politics) provides no clues about its meaning. No observation of rational behaviour proves its existence as an independent mechanism—as Boswell notes, government officials do not merely draw on expert knowledge to learn from it, they also use it to galvanise support, gain legitimacy, or consolidate their institutional or social position.20 Functionalists leave these aspects out for the sake of parsimony. Governmentality: constitution, competition, relation Governmentality has emerged as a perspective in critical studies of modern global governance from the early 2000s. There has been lively debate about its merits, focused mainly on its applicability across space (to non-liberal states) and time (prior to the ascendancy of liberal internationalism).21 The concept was introduced to IR as an alternative to what Sending and Neumann identified as three unfulfilled promises of the 15 Murphy and Augelli 1993, 73-74; Murphy 2005, ch. 3. 16 Jasanoff 1990; Jasanoff 2004; Maasen and Weingart 2005. 17 Hurrell 2005, 89. 18 Kennedy 2018, 111. 19 Voeten 2021, 70. 20 Boswell 2009, 12. 21 Foucault 2007; Foucault 2008. In IR see Sending and Neumann 2006; Neumann and Sending 2007. Draft · Please do not circulate 6!
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global governance literature. Scholars originally set out to shift attention from
government as an institution to government as a process; from states to non-state actors;
and from the sovereign state to more dispersed sites of authority such as transnational
advocacy networks and spheres of authority.22
Sending and Neumann argue that global governance scholarship is conceptually
unequipped to study government as a process. They introduce governmentality as a lens
that would capture both non-state and state authority without speculating about the
relative rise or decline of each, studying process in terms of concrete practices.
Governmentality comprises both ‘the practices of governing’ and ‘the rationality
characteristic of the systematic thinking, reflection, and knowledge that is integral to
different modes of governing.’ 23 It is also specific to neoliberalism, to Foucault a
condition under which subjects are governed by not ‘governing too much’ as it imbues
subjects with agency limited by norms. This was how Foucault understood the invention
of society as a place in which power is exercised over free subjects.24 As an analytical
category, therefore, it ‘focuses on how certain identities and action-orientations are
defined as appropriate and normal and how relations of power are implicated in these
processes.’ 25 Its logical presupposition is the autonomous individual.
Neumann and Sending go a step further to argue that the international as a
category can more generally be understood as governmentality: as they write, ‘the
international is a political sphere increasingly defined by liberal norms’ and this change
‘transforms the modality of governing.’ 26 Others have developed and adopted this
argument. 27 Critics were quick to point out its presentism: if governmentality as a
concept resulted from a genealogical study of changing practices of government through
early modern and modern history, based on specific European experiences, does it make
sense to extrapolate it to the level of an international “rationality” or “logic”?28 Joseph
argues from a Marxist perspective that governmentality can only be applied to areas
where liberalism prevails in an advanced form, and historical periods in which liberalism
already existed roughly as we know it today.29 If governmentality rests on the free subject
22 Rosenau and Czempiel 1992; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Rosenau 2003.
23 Sending and Neumann 2006, 657.
24Foucault 1997, 73-79; quoted in Hindess 2005, 394. See also Foucault 1991; Foucault 1989, 261. For an
excellent history of the social and its significance for international relations see Owens 2015.
25 Sending and Neumann 2006, 657.
26 Neumann and Sending 2007, 698.
27 E.g. Dean 2002; Lipschutz 2005.
28 Selby 2007; Chandler 2009; Joseph 2010.
29 Joseph 2010.
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epistemic communities governmentality
relationship politics/expertise separate mutually constitutive
relationship experts/experts cohesive competitive
source of expert authority epistemic relational
Table 1. Comparison of theoretical assumptions of the epistemic communities and governmentality approaches.
as a technical instrument, and thus freedom as a technical modality through which it
governs, at the level of general theory it may end up masking ‘the continued anarchy of
international relations and the dominant structures and relations of power.’30 It might be
that this is a case of talking past each other. Sending and Neumann nowhere say that
international organisations deploying the logic of governmentality do so successfully or
without a mismatch between their own self-inscribed liberal premises and the non-
liberalism of most of the world they claim to speak on behalf of. They admit that
governmentality operates through civil society, but this does not by itself exclude non-
liberal polities on a supposedly international claim. Instead the ‘liberal programme’ might
be better understood as ‘a universal tendency rather than a global actuality’.31
By and large, given its focus on practices and rationalities underlying the actual conduct
of government, as well as Foucault’s best-known writings on the relationship between
power and knowledge, governmentality urges us to view expert-based global governance
as specialist knowledge specifically directed to the purposes of political power: as
“power/knowledge.” In contrast with the epistemic communities framework, then, the
governmentality lens views the relationship between expertise and politics as mutually
constitutive (expert knowledge is called upon by politics: only then does it come into
being as such); the relationship between experts and other experts as competitive (if
expertise grants power there will be a contest for it); and the source of expert authority
as relational (it is not their knowledge on its own that imbues experts with power, but the
use to which this knowledge is put). Table 1 compares the frameworks, highlighting their
contrast in terms of the relationship between experts and politics, that between experts
and other experts, and in terms of the source of expert authority each theorises.
A missing piece: change over time
So far this paper has shown that there is cross-paradigmatic interest in the study of
expertise and its role in standard practices of international relations. Clearly, the study of
30 Joseph 2010, 230.
31 Vrasti 2013, 64 and 51.
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knowledge-based global governance practices and practitioners is of considerable import
to functionalists and poststructuralists alike. It should thus be a fruitful area of inquiry
and dialogue across IR divides. Epistemic communities and governmentality scholars do
share some assumptions in common; it is their application that has deepened the divide.
When Haas originally promoted the study of epistemic communities it was in opposition
to singular notions of truth.32 Such a constructivist take easily matches the
poststructuralists’ baseline assumptions. And when Haas posits that the use of expertise
‘contributes to state control over domestic society’ this arguably sounds very close to
governmentality governing through autonomous subjects in civil society.33
Generally however, IR research on expertise suffers from limited historical
portability and so tends to be either limited to the post-1900 era or sidelined altogether.
Such presentism is unwarranted if it means that as scholars we turn a blind eye to
variation in time. It is also ironic given periodically stated intentions to turn to history. As
mentioned, Davis Cross has applied epistemic communities to a historical study of
diplomats and bureaucrats, and with fascinating results.34 Still, her study is limited to
identifying cohesive communities. Unformed communities of experts, even where they
are involved in global governance practices despite their disunity, fall by the wayside.
Governmentality, in turn, has been criticised for travelling in time only poorly given its
conceptual reliance on neoliberalism. Ironically, this has created a situation in which
governmentality scholars sideline the challenge by refraining from historicising expertise:
indeed governmentality in IR is almost exclusively applied to the post-1945 era.35
In both cases, the limitations are unfortunate. But even self-consciously historical
IR contributions on the role of technical and scientific experts limit themselves by
focusing on group cohesion.36 Across the various approaches in IR, experts are almost
ubiquitously conceptualised as belonging to networks or communities with particular
commitments, subscribing to particular ideals, defending and promoting a particular view
of ‘what makes the world hang together’.37 And yet prior to the late nineteenth century,
these actors rarely ‘hung together’—but engaged in global governance anyway.
32 Haas 2004.
33 Haas 2014, 24-26.
34 Davis Cross 2007.
35This is unsurprising: to Foucault, governmentality is a historically specific phenomenon and the
culmination of a long genealogy of modern government practices. Governmentality is then not a lens to
explain expertise but a practice to be explained.
36 E.g. Murphy 1994; Marsden and Smith 2004; Yates and Murphy 2019.
37 Ruggie 1998.
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In response to these contributions, this paper intends to historicise the role of experts in
modern global governance by asking how the relationship between the two developed in
practice to the point of becoming a standard component of global governance. But if
the epistemic communities and governmentality frameworks are conceptually and
methodologically wanting, how can we historically study the emergence of expert-based
practices instead? In a recent study of scientific cosmologies underlying changing
historical international orders, Allan conceptualises the role of experts along two
possible trajectories: what he calls ‘recursive institutionalisation’ entails a stage of
‘associational change’ where associations strategically deploy scientific ideas for problem-
solving, or ideas set off a discursive reconfiguration that alters ends and purposes of
associations.38 Though still bound to the identification of groups, this is a much more
open-ended approach to history. Sending in turn, who more recently moved away from
governmentality to a Bourdieusian practice-theoretical approach, on the one hand builds
on a budding research agenda on expertise in IR that analyses the very notion of
expertise rather than taking it for granted as an empirical category. On the other hand, he
makes a crucial contribution to this literature by directing its attention to history, based
on the observation that thus far the focus of research has been on conditions under
which experts may shape policy outcomes—next we should, Sending argues, consider
‘what constitutes ‘expertise’ in the first place’.39 Sending’s work represents a turn to
sociologically conceptualising expertise as a constructed authority relation rather than a
straightforward epistemic qualification: ‘a “source” of authority is not just there for an
actor to draw on but must itself be constructed, nurtured, and made effective in
particular settings.’40
A way of concretely studying changing practices across time is Bruneau’s
proposal to study the changing content of education in the careers of international
practitioners.41 Scholars can study criteria of inclusion and exclusion in education and
training, in turn requisite for membership among international practitioners—arguably
particularly among experts. This is not least how historical IR can trace gender, social,
cultural, and racial hierarchies, stratification, and closure to answer that difficult question
of who actually ‘governs the globe.’42 These are promising avenues for opening up the
question of how expertise is constituted: not only socially, in terms of their habitus or
38 Allan 2018a, 21.
39 Sending 2019, 391.
40 Sending 2015, 5.
41 As Bruneau writes, ‘studying major historical shifts in the way groups of people … process information
and make choices, can shed new light on the micro-level mechanisms through which macro-level
transformations … take place.’ Bruneau 2020, 15-16.
42 Avant, Finnemore, Sell 2010. On social closure see Keene 2013; Naylor 2018; Viola 2020.
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background knowledge, but also in terms of their politics and ideology and that of those
routinely calling upon them.
More specifically related to the role of experts is a growing body of literature on
expert practitioners in nineteenth-century international organisations. Building on
Murphy’s seminal work on international organisations as institutions devised to regulate
industrial change and transnationally expanding markets, this literature continues to
examine and theoretically develop the politics inherent in the design and activities of
international organisations. Ravndal has written on the expertise-based authority claims
of international civil servants at the Public International Unions.43 Yao most recently
examined the 1856 Danube Commission and the highly political underpinnings of its
functional justification.44 As a contribution to this burgeoning research agenda, this
paper develops a theoretical argument based on the case of the 1855 International
Commission on the Isthmus of Suez. To be clear, my analysis does not aim at causal
explanation but intends to identify the structure, criteria, and agents of a budding global
governance practice. Combining global histories of the Suez Canal with the
methodological strengths of historical-sociological IR, my case study relies on a
membership analysis of the commission, combined with a narrative account of its
creation, use, and subsequent role in the Suez Canal enterprise.
The 1855 International Commission
When at all, IR scholars cite the Suez Canal as a straightforward example of modern
international cooperation. To give one example, Jupille, Mattli, and Snidal imply such a
story. Their book on institutional design lays out three causes for an ‘explosion of
commercial activity’ in nineteenth-century Egypt: liberal elites, new technologies, and ‘the
opening of the Suez Canal, which enormously facilitated commerce between East and
West.’ Indeed, the authors contend, the canal ‘put Egypt at the center of global trade’.45
This functionalist narrative presents the Suez Canal as a rational solution to a technical
problem.46 A natural force, commerce could flow more freely once a canal had pierced
an equally natural obstacle separating the Mediterranean from the Red Sea. Anglo-French
inter-imperial rivalry, the undermining of Egyptian sovereignty, and forced labour fall by
the wayside.
43 Ravndal 2017.
44 Yao 2019.
45 Jupille, Mattli, Snidal 2013, 3 106.
46Most work in IR refuses to engage with the history of the canal’s making and instead focuses on its
political aftermath. See e.g. Axelrad Cahan 2019, 480.
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In global history, on the other hand, the Suez Canal tends to feature in histories of
globalisation, reflecting the well-rehearsed story of ‘time-space compression’ in the
second half of the nineteenth century.47 Huber’s recent intervention in this literature is a
crucial departure and recognises the period as neither ‘an era of unhampered
acceleration, nor one of hardening borders and increasing controls’ but instead one of
‘differentiation, regulation and bureaucratisation of different kinds of movement.’48 No
such recognition has taken place in IR to date. Prevailing approaches fail to answer
important questions, most importantly: how did expert governance emerge here as a
practice? As I show below, expert governance was international from the start: the
contexts in which experts interacted and practised their skills illustrate that. To
internationalise was to legitimise, and experts were key agents of making this happen—
key agents of rendering internationality a categorical claim to impartiality. The case of
the International Commission then matters not only in that its ‘epistemic communities’
were in fact non-cohesive and politically contested, but also as it urges us to take the role
of experts as pivots between imperial and international orders, and the roots of global
governance practices in this mutuality, more seriously.
A few caveats are important to note. The case study design of the research
presented in this paper comes with the obvious limited generalisability of all historical
research. For both practical reasons of linguistic access, and historical reasons of
structural exclusion, my analysis pays little attention to the Egyptian perspective in its
own words, for example. More research deserves to be done to develop this into a
properly global history, which scholars on the forefront of that field have already done
much to advance. On the other hand, the historicisation of expert-based global
governance proposed here is but a beginning. To advance a much-needed conversation,
mine is hardly a sufficient account of the making of expertise as a global governance
practice and method—hopefully it is a step in that direction nonetheless. With that in
mind, the below focuses chronologically on the context in which the International
Commission came into being; its creation and work; and the effects of its output.
1834–50: Saint-Simonian beginnings
The modern history of the Suez Canal is characterised by an intimate linkage between
and simultaneity of the application of expertise and the creation of experts: its roots in
early-nineteenth century technocratic political thought already attest to the inseparability
of expertise from intended political application. It dates back to Napoleon Bonaparte’s
1798 campaign to Egypt. Despite its popularity, Napoleon discarded his explorers’ idea
of a canal at Suez, based on the scientific finding (later to be found erroneous) that a
47 Rosenberg 2012, 352-357.
48Crucially, her work urges historians and others to view globalisation as made rather than natural. Huber
2013, 3; see also Huber 2012.
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difference in sea levels between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea would render the
undertaking too complicated. Still the idea was captivating and inspired hopes for a Red
Sea route that might boost the economic and military efficiency of Europe’s empires.
Adding another incentive, from 1835 British correspondence and bills to India had
moved shipping routes from the Cape to the Red Sea.49
One group particularly drawn to the idea were the Saint-Simonians, a network of
students and graduates of the still relatively new École Polytechnique in Paris devoted to
studying the technocratic social and political thought of Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–
1825). The ‘marriage of East and West’ was a central concern of theirs, along with the
pacifying promise of science without borders. 50 Saint-Simonian tenets reverberated
across Europe: the Vienna order had not least created an unprecedented expert route
into international politics by introducing numerical power-balancing, but also declared
knowledge-guided mastery over nature a European imperative. 51 Saint-Simonianism,
characterised by a technocratic view of politics as the practice of regulating industry,
tends to be relegated to histories of socialism and is typically ignored by IR.52 Yet its
reach was remarkable, and former Saint-Simonians played key roles in the French
establishment during the second half of the nineteenth century.53 The immediate
precursor to the 1855 International Commission was a Saint-Simonian project too. Saint-
Simonian sectarian leader Prosper Enfantin devoted his energies to ‘the great work of
Suez… and further still, Panama.’ 54 By 1846, he had raised 150,000 francs and gathered
several engineers and entrepreneurs to form the Société d’Études du Canal de Suez.55 The
venture included engineers from Britain, France, and Austria-Hungary, divided into three
national chapters each tasked with a different geographical section of the Suez peninsula.
And yet a Saint-Simonian Suez Canal never took off given internal disagreement, a lack
of financial resources—a plight the 1847-1850 economic crisis only compounded—and
poor timing, given the turmoil of the 1848 revolutions. Nevertheless, the Société d’Études
did achieve one groundbreaking insight: the French chapter had discovered that
Bonaparte’s engineers had been sorely mistaken—the levels of the Red Sea and
Mediterranean were actually close to equal.56
49 Huber 2013, 23.
50 Drolet 2015.
51 Yao 2019.
52 Exceptions include Mazower 2012; Kaiser and Schot 2014.
53 Murphy 2011, 39.
54 Quoted in Pinet 1894, 89.
55 Karabell 2003, 67.
56 Taboulet 1968, 96.
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1850–55: Concession and internationalisation
Once the dust of the February Revolution had settled, the Suez Canal idea received
renewed attention and support, despite Egypt’s closed doors. Former vice-consul to
Egypt Ferdinand de Lesseps now assumed charge over the project.57 Lesseps managed to
appropriate the Suez Canal project and so end the direct involvement of the Saint-
Simonians; but most importantly, he engaged in expert governance in a way that labelled
as “international” what was in effect an enterprise of informal empire. The replacement
of isolationist, reactionary Egyptian viceroy Abbas with Saïd was a golden ticket for
Lesseps, who knew Saïd as an old friend. It also coincided with the 1850 Clayton-Bulwer
Treaty, an agreement that famously settled British-American tensions over a Nicaragua
Canal by binding both parties to never ‘obtaining or maintaining’ exclusive control over a
canal if built, effectively amounting to a guarantee of neutrality. It also stipulated that
neither signatory would ever ‘occupy, fortify, or colonise’ any territory in Central
America. Setting a precedent for the possibility and legitimacy of a neutral canal,
beneficial to global commerce, the treaty added momentum to the Suez project.58
Having worked there as French ambassador before, Lesseps returned to Egypt a
private citizen. Making use of his credentials as a former diplomat, he was received as
near-royalty—helped by the fact that his cousin Eugénie de Montijo had recently become
Empress of France. Lesseps managed to secure what Enfantin had not: on 30 November
1854, viceroy Saïd granted Lesseps a land concession that would allow the former to set
up a company for the construction of a canal, granting the right to operate for 99 years.59
Egypt was to receive 15% of the eventual canal’s annual net profits, with another 10%
going to the founders of the company as listed by Lesseps (including, preemptively,
Enfantin and other potential competitors), and 75% to shareholders. The concession
also granted the right to import all necessary equipment and building materials free from
Egyptian taxation. Lesseps enthusiastically wrote to the consuls of Europe to inform
them of his grand achievement. Anyone, he proclaimed, ‘preoccupied with questions of
civilization and progress cannot look at a map and not be seized with a powerful desire
to make disappear the only obstacle interfering with the flow of the commerce of the
world.’60 The realisation of this Saint-Simonian project amounted to informal empire,
57 Pinet 1894, 89.
58 Taboulet 1968, 102.
59 Huber 2013, 27; Boutros Ghali and Chlala 1958, 1-9.
60 Lesseps 1883, 172-202.
Draft · Please do not circulate ! 14EXPERTS WITHOUT COMMUNITIES
driven and legitimated by the modernising spirit of technocratic internationalism.61 But
despite the concession, Lesseps still had quite a few people to convince: Napoleon III;
the British government, whose assent would be vital to the commercial success of the
enterprise; and the Ottoman Empire, which legally still had the final word about land
concessions and whose will Lesseps was not willing to surpass just like that.
1855–56: Getting the experts on board
Since the 1840s, the canal had become a subject of increasing interest among engineers,
and opinions were divided as to whether a Suez Canal would be feasible. Debate ensued
over the choice between a direct route through the isthmus, which could compete with
Robert Stephenson’s Alexandria-Cairo railroad; or an indirect route via the Nile,
benefitting Alexandrian trade. Despite mounting pressure from the Alexandrian
merchant lobby favouring the indirect route, Saïd preferred the former in the interest of
the canal staying at a distance from Egypt’s urban power centres, hoping this would keep
European meddling with Egyptian affairs to a minimum. In Europe, too, expert debate
picked up pace. As one historian explains, ‘the most heated debate was over control, and
the technical debate was merely a proxy for a contest for fame.’ 62 But how and why could
‘technical debate’ play such a role?
British skepticism in both politics and engineering circles was a serious obstacle
for Lesseps. In 1855 he met with Lord Palmerston, who proved immune to diplomatic
attempts at persuasion. The argument against the canal turned, or so it seemed, on
technicalities: Palmerston did not think, as Lesseps would later recall, ‘that the canal was
technically viable’ but also pointed out that ‘even if the engineering challenges would
somehow be overcome, he felt that the opening of a new route to the East would
undermine England’s position as the dominant power in world trade.’ Reference to
expertise was blended with an admittance to an underlying political motive. In response,
safely sticking to the technical level of engineering, Lesseps gave Palmerston his word
that ‘an international commission of engineers would shortly be dispatched in order to
prove once and for all that the canal and the jetties planned for Port Saïd were feasible.’63
The basic problem, for Palmerston as for the public, was that Lesseps’ enterprise
was almost bound to appear as an extension of French imperial reach. Could it be
genuinely international under such circumstances? Or was this a cover, a case of
“reluctant internationalism”?64 Anticipating such suspicions, Lesseps constantly
61Huber writes that ‘The concessions can be understood in the framework of an emerging informal
empire, with European firms taking advantage of the weakness of local states.’ Huber 2013, 27. See also
Todd 2011; Philips and Sharman 2020; Todd 2021.
62 Karabell 2003, 94.
63 Lesseps 1875, 221-27. English edition: Lesseps 1876.
64 Reinisch 2016; Pearson 2018.
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emphasised the canal’s international, impartial benefits for humanity and civilisation at
large: he actively, that is, constructed internationality as a categorical claim to impartiality.
In that vein, a whole array of commissions, surveys, and lobbying across Europe’s
capitals followed. True to his promise to Palmerston but also to concession stipulations,
Lesseps finally convened an International Commission for the Piercing of the Isthmus
of Suez in 1855. This was significant at a time before the advent of the modern
international organisation, even before the international public unions; the 1855
Commission thus effectively staked a claim to the meaning and scope of “international”.
It brought together thirteen experts from seven countries—Egypt was not one of them
—to examine existing plans and determine the optimal course of action. Lesseps wanted
the Commission to test the accuracy of French and Egyptian precursory schemes,
respectively, and settle the quest for the optimal route. The commission, as he put it, was
‘charged with the duty of examining the preparatory surveys of the preliminary scheme,
of solving all the problems in science, art, and execution presented by the operation.’65
Membership of the Commission was, relatively unsurprisingly, exclusively
European: around the middle of the nineteenth century, this did not yet contradict the
label, still a neologism, of “international”.66 To select members, Lesseps had asked
ministers of each country (Austria, Italy, Holland, Germany, Spain, England, France) ‘to
name the engineer who is the most capable’. A commission ‘composed of such men’,
Lesseps stressed in a letter to the editor of the anti-canal Times, surely ‘ought to remove
all doubts, all mistrust, all anxiety, all timidity’ among investors and the general public.67
Who were these experts, and what made their credentials worthy of serving on the
Commission? What were their motives for participating, and what did they derive their
expert authority from? Table 2 provides an overview of all 13 members of the 1855
International Commission. Three features stand out. First, the fact that members were
exclusively white and male aside, expert authority was far from homogeneous. Experts
did not share a common type of education or degree: some where formally trained at
engineering schools, others through apprenticeships, other still had little knowledge of
engineering at all. And even though ‘the backers of the canal needed the seal that the
engineering community could give’, this was not a commission composed solely of
Europe’s top engineers. Rather it was a group selected for distinction in not only
engineering but also military experience abroad. Second, the common criterion seems
instead to have been a sort of international portfolio, tied to a mindset committed to the
spread of progress through either military or technical preponderance. Third, although
carrying the word “international” in its title, the commission was French-dominated—
though it is interesting to note the aspiration to internationality as such, presumably
65 Lesseps 1876, 183-184.
66 Suganami 1978.
67 Lesseps 1876, 183-184.
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motivated by an expectation of credibility extending from that label. In sum, the project
did not build on a straightforward scientific seal of approval. Instead it was legitimated
by drawing from the relatively new political authority of expertise. No cohesive epistemic
community was available: the Commission was composed of a wide array of figures,
some with technical credential, many without—the label mattered more than the
practice. Internationality as represented by the 1855 International Commission, in other
words, was configured as a claim to impartiality, while in reality it was based on the
universalism of white European men favoured by their nations’ political elites and with
some “international” (to wit, multilingual and/or imperial) credential.
1856-69: The politics of ‘ascertained facts’
By 1856, the Commission had finished its report, complete with a detailed description of
the canal; a summary of its key findings were translated and published in English and
Italian in the same year.68 The report became a centrepiece of the pro-canal campaign. It
also placed emphasis on the expert-based superiority of the commission over the
Egyptian government’s own engineers. The widely circulated English-language edition of
‘facts and figures’ noted, for example:
The scheme of His Highness the Viceroy’s engineers, includes a channel 100 mètres [sic] wide,
preceded by a vast flushing basin and protected by an insulated breakwater 500 mètres in length. The
International Commissioners cannot approve of these propositions. The establishment of a vast water-tight
basin in the sea would be very difficult and very expensive. The necessity of flushings is not
proved, and their efficacy is doubtful.69
The publication’s opening ‘Statement of Facts’ also stressed that the members of the
Commission ‘have drawn … conclusions, which the scientific world may henceforth look
upon as ascertained facts.’ Their report ‘suffices for the present to answer the
expectations of the public, and to remove all doubts which, on grounds of prudence or
policy might still be entertained as to the practicability of this vast undertaking. The
question from an engineering point of view’ had been ‘fully solved’. But Lesseps also
made sure to pay heed to the British imperial point of view. Stressing the advantages of
steam power he made recommendations such as this: ‘The great shipping movement in
the direction of the East Indies which will take the route by the Red Sea must, more than
any other, yield to this general tendency to renounce the use of sails’.70 Convinced by the
document, viceroy Saïd issued a second act of concession, this time explicitly for the
long-contested direct route. In Article 3 of the 1856 Charter of Concession for a Suez
68 Lesseps 1856.
69 Lesseps 1876, 144; emphasis added.
70 ibid., 15-18 and 24-25.
Draft · Please do not circulate ! 17EXPERTS WITHOUT COMMUNITIES
Name Nationality Education Experience Key qualification
Alois Negrelli, Italian University of Padua, • Chief engineer Schweizerische Nordbahn 1836–46; Transnational engineer of
1799–1858 University of • railways to Prague, Poland, German states; large-scale public works;
Innsbruck (1817 • 1850 President of the International Shipping Commission of Austria; prior surveys in Egypt
graduate) • 1852 Austrian Delegate to International Commission for the Central with Enfantin
Italian Rail;
• member of Enfantin’s Société d’Études
Charles Jaurès, French French Naval • 1830 marine admiral on French expedition to Algeria; Military career, imperial
1808–1870 College, Angoulême • 1844 Morocco; distinction
(1825 graduate) • 1852 Egypt;
• 1855 China
Charles Manby, British Engineering • 1823 move to France to install hydrogen gas pipes across Paris for his Factory builder and
1804–1884 apprentice at his father's company; Fellow of the Royal
father's Staffordshire • 1820s employment by French government to build state-owned tobacco Society
Horseley Ironworks factories;
from 1817 • 1838 back in England joined Sir John Ross’s India Steamship Company;
• helped Samuel Colt build firearms factory;
• 1853 named Fellow of the Royal Society;
• 1856 named London Representative of Robert Stephenson & Co.
Charles Rigault de French École Polytechnique • 1830 French expedition to Algeria; Military career, imperial
Grenouilly, (1825 graduate) • 1831 participated in forcing of the Tagus; distinction
1807–1873 • 1843 commanded corvette on China and India Seas station;
• 1854 served as flag captain during Odessa bombardment in Crimean War;
• 1857 Second Opium War;
• 1857 punitive expedition Vietnam
Cipriano Segundo Spanish London; École • involved in establishing industrial engineering as a profession in Spain, and Key role in emerging
Montesino Estrada, Centrale des Arts et creation of the Royal Industrial Institute modelled on French Engineering Spanish engineering
1817–1901 Manufactures, Paris schools profession; Director-
(1837 graduate) • 1841/43 Public Works Officer for Spanish government General of Public Works
• 1847 founding member and elected scholar at the Real de Ciencias Exactas, at time of commission
Fïsicas y Naturales
• 1854-56 Director-General Public Works for Spanish government
Edward Alfred John British Royal Naval College • standard career with Royal Navy: midshipman 1823 to South America, Naval commander of
Harris, 1808–1888 1821–23 there until 1827, made Lieutenant in 1828 imperial credential,
• 1839–41 commander North America and West Indies diplomat and MP
• 1872 Knight Commander of the Order of Bath
Frederik Willem Dutch Delft School of • 1817 engineer in Dutch canal projects Known Dutch canal and
Conrad, 1800–1870 Artillery and • 1825 Provincial Engineer for North Brabant railway pioneer
Engineering (1817 • 1829 engineer for South Holland in Rotterdam
graduate) • 1847 co-founder Koninklijk Instituut van Ingenieurs (KIVI)
• 1839-55 Director-Engineer Hollandsche Ijzeren Spporweg-Maatschappij
(HIJSM)
• 1858-65 represents Egyptian viceroy at the Suez Canal Company
James Meadows British None; worked as • 1822 road construction works across Devon; Dock design, chain ferry
Rendel, surveyor from an • 1827 builds bridge across Plym estuary, earning medal of Institution of invention, Medal of
1799–1856 early age Civil Engineers; Honour
• 1831 invented the chain ferry;
• 1852–53 designed docks in Genoa;
• 1853–55 reported on harbour at Rio de Janeiro;
• 1854–55 reported on river Elbe for Hamburg senate;
• directed construction of East Indian and Madras railways;
• 1855 Medal of Honour at Paris World’s Fair
Jean-Pierre H. French École Polytechnique • 1843 Secretary Nautical Commission in Algeria; Book on the ports of
Aristide Lieussou, (1834 graduate) • 1846–53 Cartographic Evaluation of Algeria at the Marine Repository of Algeria
1815–1858 Maps;
John Robinson British Belfast Academical • Co-founder engineering consultancy McClean & Stileman; Eminent engineer; high
McClean, Institution, • Advisor on Suez Canal to British government; status in both engineering
1813–1873 University of • Chairman, Anglo-American Telegraph Company; and politics
Glasgow • 1864–65 President of the Institution of Civil Engineers;
• 1868–73 MP for East Staffordshire
Karl Lentze, Prussian Prussian Surveying • 1823 enters Prussian civil service as land surveyor Chief engineer of civil
1801–1883 Examination 1823 • experience building bridges, canals, dykes engineering credential in
• 1850 Head of Royal Commission for Bridges Prussia, experience
• 1859 title of Geheimer Oberbaurat building bridges and
• delegate for Prussia and Norddeutscher Bund on Suez commission canals
Louis M. A. Linant French None; travelled as • 1818–30 surveying work in the service of Viceroy of Egypt Muhammad Life in Egypt; stakes in
de Bellefonds, mapping novice to Ali; Suez project as its chief
1799–1883 Greece, Syria, • 1822 first visit Isthmus of Suez; engineer
Palestine, Egypt • 1831 Chief Engineer Public Works, Upper Egypt;
• 1837 earned title of Bey;
• 1854 chief engineer of Lesseps’ Suez project
Pietro Paleocapa, Italian University of Padua, • 1817 Venetian Engineers of Water and Streets Alpine tunnel engineer of
1788–1869 Military Academy of • 1813 prisoner of war during Napoleonic Wars acclaim, political favour
Modena • 1825 commissioner for Vienna census as pro-unification activist
• 1857 Fréjus Rail Tunnel works
Table 2. Members of the 1855 International Commission on the Isthmus of Suez.
Draft · Please do not circulate ! 18You can also read
