Ferdinand de Lesseps and France made a decisive contribution to the piercing of Suez’s isthmus and the Suez Canal’s construction. Lesseps was the driving force be-hind the private joint-stock company Compagnie universelle du canal maritime de Suez, which built the canal from 1858–1869. Although France was not involved in the canal's construction as a State, the headquarters of the joint-stock company was located in France, the French capital was important, and Emperor Napoleon III supported the project. However, such a large undertaking can only be realized with the cooperation of many people. One of them was the engineer Alois Negrelli, who was born in the southern, Italian-speaking Tyrol. He designed the route of the canal without locks. Half a century after its construction, a grotesque dispute arose over the authorship of the canal. Starting with a lawsuit based on a claim for financial compensation by one of Negrelli’s daughters, the canal was successively described as a German, Austrian and Italian achievement. Thus, the canal became the object of nationalistic historiography in these countries. It was instrumentalized for pursuing anti-French and anti-British politics. Historiography itself was put in the service of nationalistic, chauvinistic politics. This article describes how this dis-pute – not a glorious chapter in the history of historiography – arose, evolved, and concluded.