What if the Suez Canal opens had gone differently?

A sea-level ditch cuts weeks off the Europe–Asia route and rewires world trade.

If it had gone differently: Asia stays a long way round the Cape; European empires in the east are looser and slower to supply.

1. 1868The Meiji Restoration, Japan stays closed and agrarian; the idea that a non-Western state can industrialise fast has no example.
2. 1870The first globalisation, The world economy stays a patchwork of regions; no belle-époque boom, and no 1914 shock when it unwinds.