The Suez Canal is one of the most important waterways in the world.
Linking Europe with Asia, for 150 years it's been a vital piece of geostrategic territory.
Nothing perhaps signifies its importance as much
as the Suez Crisis in 1956; a conflict that would rewrite the global balance of power.
So, what was the Suez Crisis?
And why did it have such a significant impact on modern international politics?
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Hello and welcome. If you're new, my name is James Ker-Lindsay and here I take an
informed look at international relations, conflict and the origins of countries.
There are moments in history that stand out as the end of one order and the emergence of another.
In modern international history, some obvious moments would include the assassination of
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo in June 1914, which ushered in the First World War,
and, of course, the fall of the Berlin Wall, in November 1989, which saw the end of the Cold War.
However, alongside these widely recognised epoch-changing events, there are other key moments
in history that, in their own ways, also come to signify important moments of international change.
One such event was the Suez Crisis in the autumn of 1956.
In the space of a few days, British and French imperial grandeur
finally came to an end and the new order of Cold War bipolarity
between the United States and the Soviet Union was firmly cemented.
But its effects were also felt far more widely.
It would also shape the development of the Middle East and redefine the United Nations.
So, what was the crisis all about?
The story starts with the Suez Canal.
At one time, shipping heading from Europe to Asia had to pass around
Africa; a long and often hazardous journey.
It was against this backdrop that the idea for a waterway
that would link the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea and from there
the Indian Ocean - thereby entirely cutting out Africa began to gain attention.
In 1854, a former French diplomat, Ferdinand de Lesseps, secured a concession from the
Ottoman-controlled Government of Egypt to establish a company to build a canal.
15 years later, 17 November 1869, the 193 kilometre, or 120 mile, Suez Canal officially
opened and the Suez Canal Company - which was jointly owned by French shareholders and the
Khedive, or Viceroy, of Egypt - was granted the right to operate the canal for 99 years.
While Britain had originally been opposed to the Canal,
fearing a loss of trade along the traditional route, it soon recognised its value.
What had previously been a six-month voyage to India,
Britain's most prized colonial holding, could now be completed in eight or nine weeks.
In 1873, as a financial crisis hit Egypt,
the British Government bought the Khedive's 44 percent shareholding in the Suez Canal Company.
From there, the Canal became steadily more important to Britain.
Less than a decade later, and against the backdrop of growing nationalism in the Middle East,
Britain occupied Egypt.
And even after Egypt became an independent kingdom, in 1922,
British troops continued to be stationed in the country to guard the Canal.
The precise roots of the crisis emerged in 1952 when the Egyptian
king was overthrown by army officers led by a young colonel, Gamal Abdel Nasser.
A key advocate of pan-Arabism, and a leading light of the Non-Aligned Movement, which sought
to sit between the Cold War powers, Nasser sought to reduce British influence in Egypt.
In 1954, he negotiated an end to Britain's military presence along the Suez Canal, with the
last troops leaving in June 1956 - albeit with the clause that they could return in the event of war.
Meanwhile, Nasser also set to work trying to modernise Egypt.
His flagship project was the construction of a high dam at Aswan, on the Nile.
This would provide vital irrigation and electricity for the country.
At first, Britain and the United States were willing to put up the funding for the project.
However, following Nasser's engagement with the Soviet bloc,
including an arms deal with Czechoslovakia, and rising anti-Western sentiment in
the Egyptian state-control media, they pulled out of the agreement.
Determined to raise revenues to fund the project,
on 26 July 1956 Nasser announced that Egypt had seized control of the Suez Canal.
The United States - under the Eisenhower Administration - now looked for a diplomatic
solution to the disputes and warned Britain and France not to consider military action,
knowing that this would only play into the hands of Nasser and the Soviet Union.
In the months that followed, efforts were made to try to reach a political settlement.
However, with their financial stakes in the Canal at risk, and a key transit
route for European oil supplies disrupted, London and Paris were determined to act.
Finding a willing partner in Israel,
which wanted to end Egypt's blockade on its shipping through the Canal,
the three countries secretly hatched a plan - Operation Musketeer - that would see Israel invade
Egypt, thus providing the pretext for Britain and France to intervene to protect the Canal Zone.
On 29 October, Israeli forces entered the sinai peninsula and quickly advanced towards the Canal.
In response, and as per the agreement,
Britain and France issued a call for the sides to stop fighting and pull back from the Canal.
When Nasser refused to agree, they then began bombing Egypt.
Realising what was happening, and just days away from a presidential election,
Eisenhower was furious.
He immediately threatened sanctions against Britain and France,
and using a now little known mechanism to bypass a veto in the Security Council,
the United States referred the matter to the UN General Assembly.
On 2 November, the assembly passed Resolution 997.
This called for an immediate ceasefire, the withdrawal of
all forces behind armistice lines, and the reopening of the Canal.
However, the call went ignored by London and Paris.
Just three days later, on 5 November,
they launched an airborne and then seaborne invasion of Egypt to take control of the Canal.
It was at this point that the whole campaign came crashing down - and spectacularly quickly.
Since the start of the Crisis, the British economy had come under enormous pressure.
Having lost a huge amount of its foreign currency reserves,
London now leaded an emergency loan from the International Monetary Fund.
This gave Eisenhower the leverage he needed.
He refused to agree unless Britain withdrew from Egypt.
Facing a financial crisis, and growing public protest, the British Prime Minister, Anthony Eden,
was left with no choice but to agree to a ceasefire and full British withdrawal.
This now left France and Israel with no choice but to follow suit.
On 7 November, two days after the invasion started,
the General Assembly passed Resolution 1001 establishing a UN peacekeeping
mission - the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) - to oversee the withdrawal.
Ten days later, and following Egypt's agreement, the first elements of the
force - made up of troops from 10 countries, including NATO members - began arriving in Egypt.
Six weeks later, the final British and French troops had withdrawn from Egypt and Israel had
pulled back its forces to the Gaza Strip, which it finally gave up in March the following year.
So, what were the wider effects of the crisis?
First of all, and most notably,
it marked the definitive end of British and French imperial pretensions.
Of course, both have been on the decline anyway.
Britain had already given up Imperial India - the key reason for wanting the
Suez Canal in the first place - in 1947, but this finally sealed the situation.
Their utter humiliation at the hands of the United States
signalled that they were no longer the key players in international politics.
In this sense, it really did mark the final break with the old European
imperial order in world affairs and the start of a new era of US and Soviet superpower rivalry.
But, interestingly, the ways the two countries dealt with the fallout was rather different.
For Britain, Suez came to be seen as nothing less than a moment of national embarrassment.
It fundamentally reshaped Britain's view of itself and its place in the world.
And yet, interestingly, despite Eisenhower's stand,
it did little lasting damage to British- US relations.
Within a year or two, the countries had put the events behind them.
Britain continued to regard its 'special relationship' with Washington
as its single most important international partnership.
Unlike Britain, the effects of Suez in, and on, France were much less marked.
Suez took place against a backdrop of many other crucial events, not least of all the
brutal conflict in Algeria, which had started two years earlier, and growing pressures in Indochina.
And yet it's been suggested that the wider effects on France may actually have been
even more significant for international politics than its effects on Britain.
Having been fundamentally let down by the British, which Paris saw as having bent to
American pressure, and resentful of the US role in the humiliation, it's been suggested that this
marked the moment that France really and truly threw its weight behind the European project.
It's perhaps no coincidence that the Treaty of Rome,
the document that founded the European Union, was signed the following year.
Of course, the two big winners with the United States and the Soviet Union.
The United States, in having taken on its NATO partners,
had not only definitively proven its leadership of the Western Bloc,
it had also burnished its anti-colonial credentials in the eyes of much of the world.
But it also led to the formulation of the Eisenhower Doctrine,
which would see a much greater US involvement in the Middle East in the decades ahead.
For the Soviet Union, the crisis cemented its relationship with Nasser,
giving it a significant and valuable regional ally in the Middle East.
To this extent, and as Washington feared, the crisis strengthened Moscow's position
across the Middle East and the developing world.
But Suez also had another benefit for the Soviets.
At the same time as the World's eyes were on Egypt,
Moscow stepped in to crush an uprising against communist rule in Hungary.
Regionally, the effects were just as pronounced.
Needless to say, the outcome was a huge victory for Nasser.
Not only had he finally ended British involvement in Egypt,
he also now staked his claim to be the leader of Arab nationalism.
For Israel it was a bit of a mixed picture.
On the one hand, it was chastened by the United States for its role in the Crisis
and the fact that Nasser had gained in strength was no doubt bad news.
However, the fact that it opened up the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping
certainly proved to be an advantage, as did the military experience that it gained at the time.
Finally, the crisis was a landmark moment for the United Nations.
The creation of the United Nations Emergency Force
effectively marked the birth of peacekeeping as we know it today.
While there had been limited missions before, this was the first
major deployment of troops between combatants.
Indeed, some of the most important principles of peacekeeping - such as the requirement of
host state consent, and that the UN ultimately decides which countries
should participate in missions - were established at that moment.
For over 150 years, the Suez Canal has been one of the most
important geopolitical locations in the world,.
Providing a link between Europe and Asia, it came to
dominate international trade and became a crucial linchpin in the British Empire,
which steadily increased its economic and political investment in the Canal.
And it was when this investment was challenged
that it would take a fateful decision to break with its key ally, the United States,
and team up with France and Israel to take control of the Canal.
The resulting Suez Crisis would become a watershed moment in international politics.
As well as marking the moment when any last vestiges of British imperial grandeur collapsed,
it's also seen as the moment that the two Cold War powers, the United States and the Soviet Union
assumed their unchallenged places as the superpowers of the international system.
In the space of just a few days in October and November 1956,
an old order was finally brought to an end and a new one was confirmed.
I hope you found that interesting. If so, here are some more videos that you might like.
Thanks so much for watching and see you in the next video.