Reassessing Suez 1956

New Perspectives on the Crisis and its Aftermath

Simon C. Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780754661702
• eBook ISBN: 9781317070689
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1956 triggered one of the gravest international crises since the Second World War. The fiftieth anniversary of the Suez crisis in 2006 presented an ideal opportunity to re-visit and reassess this seminal episode in post-war history. Although much has been written on Suez, this study provides fresh perspectives by reflecting the latest research from leading international authorities on the crisis and its aftermath. By drawing on recently released documents, by including previously neglected aspects of Suez, and by reassessing its more familiar ones, the volume makes a key contribution to furthering research on - and understanding of - the crisis. The volume explores the origins of the crisis, the crisis itself and the aftermath all from a broad perspective. An introduction by the editor presents the current state of the historiography and provides an overview of the debates surrounding the crisis, while the conclusion by Scott Lucas not merely draws the themes of the book together, but also explores the crisis in its regional and international context. Within the overall context of focussing on the international and military aspects of the crisis, it is an explicit intention to embody in the contributions the multifaceted nature of Suez. Although Britain, as in many ways the principal actor, is strongly represented, there are also highly original chapters on both the regional and international dimensions to the crisis, and crucially the interaction between the two. As well as exploring the role of the main protagonists, essays also deal with American, Jordanian and Turkish reactions to the invasion. The overall result is an innovative, thought-provoking, and wide-ranging reassessment of Suez and its aftermath, which at a time when the Middle East once again holds the world's attention, is particularly appropriate.

Chapter 1
Prelude to the Suez Crisis: The Rise and Fall of British Dominance over the Suez Canal, 1869–1956

Steve Morewood

Most accounts of the Suez crisis commence with merely a tangential reference to Britain’s long-standing military occupation of Egypt and associated dominance over the Suez Canal, but fail to comprehend that this historical prelude formed an essential ingredient in the crisis itself. Egyptian nationalists’ seething resentment at Britain’s impudent manipulation of the famous waterway to serve its geo-strategic interests finally boiled over when President Nasser announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal Company on 26 July 1956 before a hysterical crowd in Alexandria. This trigger for the crisis was long in coming, and signified the end of the British hold over Suez which had waxed and waned since 1945. Indeed, after the Second World War the Egyptians progressively turned the tables on the British, interpreting the Suez Canal Convention (1888) to suit their own interests, and aside from one brief but short-lived effort to reverse the situation, London felt obliged to accept the position, not least because Washington refused to play ball. Prior to 1945, however, Britain had successfully resisted all Egyptian efforts to claim the Canal, assumed Egypt’s assigned role as its defender, interpreted the convention as it saw fit, for much of the time colluded with the Suez Canal Company to ensure the security of this shortcut of empire, and through the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936 forged a perpetual alliance and Egyptian recognition that the Canal was a vital imperial highway for the British Empire and Commonwealth. This chapter will assess the various stages in the ascent and decline of British dominance over the Canal, culminating in the opening of the crisis that confirmed Britain’s relegation to a second-rank power.

From British Occupation to World War

The French dreamed of a canal linking the Mediterranean with the Red Sea. Napoleon’s engineers erroneously concluded in 1801 that there was a difference in sea levels which rendered a waterway impractical, thereby delaying commencement until 30 November 1854, when the Egyptian Khedive Mohammed Said Pasha granted a 99-year concession from its opening to Ferdinand de Lesseps, a former French consul in Egypt turned engineer who had astutely befriended the Khedive before he assumed power after finding his predecessors, Abbas and Mohammed Ali, opposed to a canal, fearing it would compromise Egyptian independence. Before the Suez Canal became an established fact, British governments used every device short of war to try to prevent the project’s realization. When de Lesseps travelled to London, he encountered discouraging noises from Palmerston and Clarendon, Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary respectively, who openly doubted whether a canal was technically feasible, and if it was, feared that it would remove Britain’s existing commercial and maritime ascendancy. Nevertheless, de Lesseps pressed ahead, assured of a pool of Egyptian labour, and from 1858, of the diplomatic backing of his government. In November 1869, the Suez Canal opened, the first ship to traverse it being French, closely followed by a British vessel. At just over a hundred miles in length, it immediately removed the Cape of Good Hope route’s advantage in freight carrying between Europe and the Far East.¹ ‘Of his [de Lesseps’] creation,’ wrote the senior British government director of the Canal Company in 1923, ‘it may be said that French enterprise formed the artery and British commerce provided the blood which together nourished and developed the body of international seaborne trade between the old and the new worlds of the Eastern Hemisphere.’² Five-sevenths of the empire lay east of Suez. The Canal’s arrival shortened the distances from the port of London substantially: to Bombay by 4543 miles, to Calcutta by 3667 miles, to Melbourne by 645 miles. Before 1914, India, the ‘jewel of empire’, accounted for over half of Canal traffic; trade with the Far East increased tenfold, and volume exports from Australasia became viable. By 1928, exports to Britain from India and Burma constituted 35.1 per cent of south–north traffic, falling to 32.3 per cent in 1932, at the bottom of the Great Depression, recovering to 33.1 per cent by 1937.³ British-flagged ships became easily the largest users of Suez, an ascendency they would maintain until 1964,⁴ thereby creating a vital British interest, raising the dilemma of how best to protect this critical artery, which became known as ‘the spinal column of the British Empire’ and its jugular vein.⁵

Two conflicts heightened British fears and paved the way for the occupation of Egypt, the only certain way to ensure control over the Canal. During the Franco-Prussian War, the French-dominated Suez Canal Company allowed the belligerents to use Suez. Indeed, the presence of French warships at the port of Suez so alarmed the Admiralty that it pressed for an international agreement on the neutrality of the Canal. During the Russo-Turkish War (1877–78), the British government became so nervous that Russia might seize the Canal for military purposes, since Egypt remained technically part of the Ottoman Empire, that it issued a warning to St Petersburg: ‘An attempt to blockade or otherwise to interfere with the Canal or its approaches would be regarded … as a menace to India and as a grave injury to the commerce of the world.’⁶ Although the Russians returned a conciliatory reply, British concerns over the security of Suez remained. Financial constraints meant the Canal could only accommodate large ships in single file outside of the lakes through which it passed (Lake Timsah and the Great and Little Bitter lakes) and eight crossing stations.⁷ This characteristic held the advantage of averting collisions between passing ships, but also raised the prospect of the Canal being blocked, accidentally or deliberately, in its narrowest sections, to the grave detriment of British commerce, the Admiralty’s capacity to redeploy warships and the War Office’s ability to move troops to and from India and the Far East. In 1875, Disraeli famously purchased a 44 per cent stake in the Suez Canal Company. This gave the British government the largest holding – though an individual shareholder was entitled to a maximum of ten votes. From 1876, there were three official British government directors, the most senior of whom paid an annual visit to the Canal, plus, from 1884, after the board increased from 24 to 32 members, seven unofficial directors looking after British shipping interests, which was a greater representation than any other power. But this did not equate to dominance, and over several issues, such as Canal dues, the British voice often failed to carry at the Paris meetings of the Board or the Committee of Management.⁸

By the nineteenth century, the cardinal principle of British strategy in the eastern Mediterranean was the ability to protect the shortest route to India. For years the British Admiralty convinced itself that naval bases at Gibraltar and Malta were sufficient to prevent any occupation of Egypt by a hostile power. What it failed to anticipate was the development of an internal threat to Canal security as Colonel Arabi’s nationalist movement, born in the autumn of 1881, reacted against Anglo-French Dual Control arising from Egypt’s foreign debts with the rallying cry ‘Egypt for the Egyptians’. Some historians suggest that, at best, the Suez Canal issue was a red herring designed to obscure underlying financial motives for British military intervention in Egypt.⁹ In fact, the defence of Suez lay at the heart of British calculations. On 19 June 1882, nine days after anti-European rioting in Alexandria, the Admiralty, anticipating an invasion, drew up a memorandum in which the seizure of the Canal formed an integral part.¹⁰ Again, on 13 July 1882 the Gladstone government formally proposed Anglo-French intervention to protect Suez, only to find that the French Chamber of Deputies failed to approve. Significantly, in August the Royal Navy began to assume control over Suez after Arabi threatened to sabotage the waterway. This was justified by the Khedive’s induced decree which recognized that British military intervention was intended to restore order and authorized ‘the occupation of all necessary points’.¹¹ As a result, the Canal was only closed for two days. Following a feint landing at Alexandria, General Wolseley’s expeditionary force re-deployed to Ismailia, the central station of the Canal, whence it marched during the night of 12–13 September to surprise Arabi’s force encamped at Tel-el-Kebir, which was routed within twenty minutes. Immediately a cavalry force was rushed to Cairo to secure the fresh water supply to Suez which emanated from the Sweet Water Canal between Ismailia and the capital. Two days later, Wolseley’s main force entered Cairo, Arabi surrendered, and Britain’s long-standing occupation of Egypt commenced. Although Britain promised to withdraw on innumerable occasions before 1914, the offer was never unconditional. In reality, Britain needed to maintain a garrison in Egypt as a guarantor, in the final resort, of its dominance over Suez. For instance, the Canal Convention (see below), while stipulating that troopships should pass through as quickly as possible, specified no limits on the numbers on board. Without a military deterrent, an enemy might easily seize the waterway. ‘It may be contended’, wrote the Assistant Under-Secretary of State at the War Office in 1901, ‘that so long as we are in military occupation of Egypt, no hostile Power is likely to risk troops in the Canal.’¹²

Until April 1904, France was viewed as the power most likely to disrupt British communications via Suez. Indeed, they had a Trojan horse in the form of the Suez Canal Company, whose founder, de Lesseps, had threatened to block the Canal in mid-1882. In September 1882, the British directors of the company warned their government:

The events of the past few months have shown that the Suez Canal Company have it in their power to act with considerable hostile effect against any power using the Canal whose political designs they may wish to frustrate, and more especially against England. The possible case of a war between France and England … might lead the company to block the Canal.¹³

Briefly, the idea of a parallel English canal was mooted, before financial considerations ruled it out. The Franco-Russian military convention of August 1892, leading on to a full-blown alliance, was a worrying development. The French Mediterranean fleet, boasting 19 ironclads with naval bases at Algiers, Bizerte and Corsica, could potentially combine with the Russian Black Sea fleet to wrest from Britain its maritime domination of the eastern Mediterranean. Already in 1887 the Ottoman Empire had succumbed to Franco-Russian pressure in rejecting Britain’s terms to evacuate Egypt, not least because they included the right of re-entry under certain conditions. The prospect of a Mediterranean naval war with France and Russia filled the British with dread. Joe Chamberlain publicly conceded in 1893 that if this scenario materialized, then ‘the British navy would have to cut and run – if it could run’.¹⁴ Privately, the Admiralty shared this view and engaged in a frantic naval build-up in an effort to bluff Paris and St Petersburg. But if this failed, then the War Office envisaged a nightmare scenario whereby the French and Russians would send troopships through Suez, seize the Canal and then march on Cairo.¹⁵

In 1895, the Admiralty drew up a memorandum in response to Lord Salisbury’s directive to investigate the problem of seizing the Dardanelles. Its conclusion was:

by taking Egypt absolutely, we would secure what we have long sought to maintain by keeping Russia out of Constantinople. The advantages of holding the Suez Canal are bound up in the question of Egypt … it may be said that if there were no Suez Canal, it would not be long before there was no India.¹⁶

The Prime Minister was persuaded to abandon the Constantinople strategy of preventing a Russian naval entry into the Mediterranean, which the Franco-Russian Alliance rendered impractical, in favour of holding Egypt.¹⁷ Given the fraught state of Anglo-French relations, which reached their nadir over Fashoda, there was no official announcement of this change. With Imperial Germany emerging as a threat, it became imperative to mend fences with France, which was achieved in the Entente Cordiale of April 1904. This removed the long-standing bickering over Britain’s continued military occupation of Egypt and brought into force the Suez Canal Convention when Britain waived the precondition that its occupation must have ended first.

The convention, concluded at Constantinople on 29 October 1888, decreed that the Suez Canal must remain open to all vessels, irrespective of their flag, in peace and war, and could not be subjected to a blockade. The signatories were Great Britain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Russia, Spain, Turkey and Holland, which wer...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Map of Suez Canal
• Introduction
• 1 Prelude to the Suez Crisis: The Rise and Fall of British Dominance over the Suez Canal, 1869–1956
• 2 Eden, Churchill and the Battle of the Canal Zone, 1951–1954
• 3 Britain and the Suez Crisis: The Abadan Dimension
• 4 Julian Amery and the Suez Operation
• 5 Who to Fight in 1956, Egypt or Israel? Operation Musketeer versus Operation Cordage
• 6 French–Israeli Relations, 1950–1956: The Strategic Dimension
• 7 Supporting the Brave Young King: The Suez Crisis and Eisenhower’s New Approach to Jordan, 1953–1958
• 8 A Reluctant Partner of the US over Suez? Turkey and the Suez Crisis
• 9 The 1956 Sinai War: A Watershed in the History of the Arab–Israeli Conflict
• 10 When Did Nasser Expect War? The Suez Nationalization and its Aftermath in Egypt
• 11 The Suez Crisis at the United Nations: The Effects for the Foreign Office and British Foreign Policy
• 12 In Search of ‘Some Big, Imaginative Plan’: The Eisenhower Administration and American strategy in the Middle East after Suez
• 13 Telling Tales Out of School: Nutting, Eden and the Attempted Suppression of No End of a Lesson
• 14 Post-Suez Consequences: Anglo-American Relations in the Middle East from Eisenhower to Nixon
• 15 Suez 1956 and the Moral Disarmament of the British Empire
• Conclusion
• Index