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Suez Crisis
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The 1956 Suez Crisis is one of the most important and controversial events in British history since the Second World War. Not only did Suez result in deep political and public division in Britain, it ... caused international uproar. It has come to be regarded as the end of Britain's role as one of the world powers and as the beginning of the end for the British Empire. In future British foreign policy would be conducted in concurrence with American diplomatic support. This special online exhibition has been developed to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Crisis. The exhibition draws from the Bodleian's rich holdings of modern political papers to provide an 'insider's viewpoint' of Suez from politicians, diplomats, civil servants and leading public figures.
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The Suez Crisis was a turning point in the Middle East because it heralded the beginning of a series of new eras. Nasser would use his successful handling of the Crisis to catapult himself into the position of leader of Pan-Arabism. It remained to be seen if he could do what none had been able to do in modern history -- unify the Arab people under one flag. He could not. Ironically, if the Middle East had been democratic it might have been possible, but as it stood the US was not the only country that feared Nasser. Most Middle Eastern leaders, although they respected Nasser... feared and did not trust him.
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Actually, what eventually became known as the Suez Crisis, which started as a quarrel between Israel and Egypt, had been a major international preoccupation throughout most of 1956. As a student at the University of California in Berkeley preparing for examinations leading to the acquisition of a master’s degree in French literature, I had paid little attention to it until June, when, degree in hand, I began my search for overseas employment. In July 1956 the recently elected president of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, announced in Alexandria the nationalization of the Suez Canal. As everybody knows, the Canal was designed by Viscount Ferdinand de Lesseps and finally, after a great deal of bickering between the French and the English, was inaugurated in 1869 by the beauteous Eugénie, empress of the French, whom Loretta Young fetchingly portrayed in a 1938 Hollywood movie not surprisingly entitled "SUEZ." Early in August 1956, Nasser, furious because of U. S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles’s withdrawal of the United States’ offer to build the billion-dollar Aswan Dam, declared that Egypt would nationalize the World Maritime Company of the Suez Canal and use the canal’s annual income to build the dam. Obviously things began at once to go from bad to worse as far as Great Britain and France were concerned. Determined not to give them clear justification for occupation of the Canal Zone, Nasser scrupulously refrained in August from interfering with canal traffic.
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"Suez Crisis (1956), an international crisis in the Middle East, precipitated on July 26, 1956, when the Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, nationalized the Suez Canal. The canal had been owned by the Suez Canal Company, which was controlled by French and British interests. The Suez Crisis was provoked by an American and British decision not to finance Egypt's construction of the Aswan High Dam, as they had promised, in response to Egypt's growing ties with communist Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. Nasser reacted to the American and British decision by declaring martial law in the canal zone and seizing control of the Suez Canal Company, predicting that the tolls collected from ships passing through the canal would pay for the dam's construction within five years. Britain and France feared that Nasser might close the canal and cut off shipments of petroleum flowing from the Persian Gulf to western Europe. When diplomatic efforts to settle the crisis failed, Britain and France secretly prepared military action to regain control of the canal and, if possible, to depose Nasser.
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Suez Crisis was precipitated by the nationalisation of the Suez Canal by President Nasser of Egypt. Israeli forces attempted to capture the canal and British and French forces intervened to enforce a United Nations cease-fire. Opposition at home and abroad forced the withdrawal of British and French troops in December 1956.
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The Suez Crisis resulted in strained relations between the United States and its senior European allies, France and Great Britain. The Canadian government, led by the Secretary of State for External Affairs, Lester Pearson, succeeded in defusing this dangerous international crisis.
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Suez Crisis