Suez Crisis

1956--Jayesh Gupta

Where is Suez?

Suez Canal (167 Km)

Port Said (entry from Mediterranean)

Ferdinand de Lesseps Built it 1859-1869

Port Said to Port Tawfiq

• The excavation took some 10 years using forced labour of Egyptian workers during a certain period. Some sources estimate that over 30,000 people were working on the canal at any given period, that altogether more than 1.5 million people from various countries were employed, and that thousands of laborers died on the project.

• The British government had opposed the project of the canal from the outset to its completion, it disapproved the use of "slave labor" of forced workers on the canal.

Voyage from Europe to India shortened from 6 months to 6 weeks

75% of Europe’s oil came through Suez canal

CharactersGamal Abdel Nasser(President Egypt)

Dwight D. Eisenhower(President USA)

Anthony Eden(Prime minister UK)

Guy Mollet (Prime minister France)David Ben-Gurion

(Prime minister Israel)

Nikita Khrushchev(Chairman of communist party, Soviet Union)

Study of Suez Crises on basis of :

• Contingency • Conjuncture• Accident• Fall of post world war colonialism• US replacing Britain with its own kind of

Imperialism in Arab nations.

1952

• A military coup overthrew Egypt’s King Farouk• Two years later Nasser overthrew the titular

head of the coup and established himself as dictator of Egypt.

What started it ?

• Control of Suez canal by British and French troops

• Profits went to Britain and France but Egyptian money built it.

• Aswin High Dam (1955)• Supply of military weapon from Soviet Union

to Egypt threatened US .• Seizure of Suez canal by Nasser 26th July 1956

Abdel Nasser

• Son of a post office clerk and a born plotter, he had started his anti-British maneuverings a decade earlier, and relished the game of subterranean intrigue thereafter.

• A secret CIA profile of Nasser concluded that “He gets boyish pleasure out of conspiratorial doings”

• Even when head of state, he would tell visitors and associates that he still felt that he was conspirator.

Eisenhower

• The British and French could not install a friendly government that could survive

• Any military action would arouse not just the Arabs, but the entire developing world, against the West and play into the hands of the Soviets, who would be able to take the mantle of world leadership.

• It would make Nasser a hero, and undermine friendly regimes throughout the Middle East.

• It was also an opportunity to win support among developing nations, even at the cost of traditional allies.

Mollet

• Nasser was supporting rebels in Algeria, who had started their war for independence from France two years earlier.

• The French wanted to teach Nasser a lesson and reclaim the canal that had been built with French financing.

Ben-Gurion

• Nasser was building up armaments in apparent preparation for war with Israel.

• He was also operating guerilla raids into Israel and instituted a blockade of Israel’s southern port of Eilat.

Eden

• Britain had been severely weakened from the World Wars.

• Its gold and dollar reserves barely covered three months of imports.

• Britain’s oil operations were mightily important for revenue.

• A win for Nassser would destroy British prestige.

• 1956 was the twentieth anniversary of the remilitarisation of Rhineland by Hitler against the peace accords after the First World War.

• Naser’s “Philosophy of Revolution” read to Eden like Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”.

• Nasser too wanted a great empire and urged the Arab countries to use the power that came with control over petroleum.

• Eden had invested great personal prestige in a 1954 settlement with Egypt over the withdrawal of British forces from the canal, and had been subjected to considerable attack from memebers of his own Tory party because of it.

• Now he felt that like Hitler Nasser’s word was also worthless.• Eden had lost two brothers in the First World War, a son in the Second.

He owed it them and the millions who died to prevent another Hitler from rising.