Transcript The Suez Crisis 1956

Empire and Its Limits
Lecture Objectives
Case study in historical methodology.
► Suez is good example of how patient work in
the archives gradually amends conventional
wisdom and politically motivated contemporary
accounts.
► Also a good example of how contemporary
historians have gone beyond traditional
diplomatic history to understand the context in
which events were occurring.
► The whole process is rather like restoring a
fresco. Gradually bring to light hidden details
until you have a richer picture than before.
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The Suez Crisis
Main Events
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What was the Suez Crisis?
A small war fought by Britain, France and Israel against Egypt
first week November 1956.
Cause?
Structural causes and immediate ones.
Rise of Arab nationalism in the M.E. endangered British client
regimes and the French presence in Algeria. Presence of Israel
since 1948 gave a focus to Arab resentment. Gamel Abdel
Nasser emerges after April 1954 as a charismatic leader.
M.E. source of Europe’s oil & in 1950s oil overtakes coal as
main source of energy.
Intellectual structures: Egyptian leader Nasser portrayed as a
new Mussolini by British and French leaders; lessons of
appeasement.
Imperial Humiliations: GB had had to leave India and Palestine
with her “tail between her legs.” France had been humiliated in
Vietnam in May 1954 with the military defeat at Dien Bien Phu.
I stress these structural causes because it is easy to
personalize the war as a clash between Nasser and British P.M.
Anthony Eden.
Nasser
Anthony Eden
Origins of the Crisis
After Nasser takes power in 1954, he successfully moves to
close British bases in the canal zone (October 1954). He
refuses the British offer to join the Baghdad Pact. In 1955, he
begins to make overtures to the Soviet bloc. September 1955
signs arms deal with USSR.
► At the same time, he asks the US and GB to finance the Aswan
dam project. Playing off two superpowers against each other.
The trigger for the crisis comes on 20 July 1956 when the
Americans, tired of Nasser’s double game, pull the plug on the
Aswan project.
► In retaliation Nasser nationalizes the Suez canal. The canal
would have become Eygptian anyway in 1968. But the rest of
the world feared that Eygpt would not abide by the 1888
Constantinople convention, which specified that the Canal
should remain open, even in times of war, to ships of all
nationalities.
► Also: Nasser had his hands on the West’s windpipe. Could cut
off oil shipments.
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Nasser on the day of nationalization
Eisenhower and J.F. Dulles
From Diplomacy to War
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I
Under the influence of Eisenhower and J.F. Dulles, the Suez
issue was initially dealt with at diplomatic level.
In August, via Australian P.M. Robert Menzies, the creation of a
non-profit company that would guarantee Egypt a secure and
rising dividend is proposed.
After failure of this attempt, US propose the SCUA (Users’
Association) to collect tolls. But this plan is blocked in the
Security Council on 13 October by the USSR.
US policy? Elections first week in November – Want no
problems. Also, issue of US attitude towards imperialism.
British memoirs (e.g. Eden’s, which in places is a harangue)
have generally tried to portray the US as not having been clear
about its opposition to war. Scholarly research, by Wm Roger
Louis and Scott Lucas has shown this to be unlikely.
US Policy Fears
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J.F. DULLES: PRESS CONFERENCE 2 OCTOBER 1956
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“THE UNITED STATES CANNOT BE EXPECTED TO IDENTIFY ITSELF 100% EITHER
WITH THE COLONIAL POWERS OR THE POWERS UNIQUELY CONCERNED WITH THE
PROBLEM OF GETTING INDEPENDENCE AS RAPIDLY AND AS FULLY AS POSSIBLE…”
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J.F. DULLES: MINUTES NSC 1 NOVEMBER 1956.
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“FOR MANY YEARS NOW THE US HAS BEEN WALKING A TIGHT-ROPE BETWEEN THE
EFFORT TO MAINTAIN OLD AND VALUED RELATIONS WITH OUR BRITISH AND FRENCH
ALLIES ON THE ONE HAND, AND ON THE OTHER HAND TRYING TO ASSURE
OURSELVES OF THE FRIENDSHIP AND UNDERSTANDING OF THE NEWLY INDEPENDENT
COUNTRIES…UNLESS WE NOW ASSERT AND MAINTAIN OUR LEADERSHIP, ALL OF
THESE NEWLY INDEPENDENT COUNTRIES WILL TURN FROM US TO THE
USSR….”
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SOURCE: WM ROGER LOUIS, “DULLES, SUEZ AND THE BRITISH,” IN ED., RICHARD H. IMMERMAN, JOHN FOSTER DULLES AND THE
DIPLOMACY OF THE COLD WAR (PRINCETON UP, 1990).
The British Lion at Suez
War
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After the UN vote, Eden seemingly decides that diplomatic means are exhausted
and that Britain needs to pass to military action. Convinced of this by the French,
who were anxious to involve the Israelis, at a meeting at Chequers. No formal
minutes taken; senior officials excluded; No mention in Full Circle. First revealed
by Anthony Nutting (Min. State Foreign Office) in his memoirs, No End of a
Lesson (1967). Eden could “scarcely contain his glee.”
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The area of Anglo-French collusion with Israel is the one where historical
researchers into the Suez crisis have established the most important truths.
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It is the key issue because at the time Eden did not explicitly tell the cabinet of
the extent to which the war had been planned with Israel; lied to Parliament
about the plans; denied any collusion in his memoirs and tried to eliminate all
extant copies of the compromising Protocol of Sèvres (24 October) that planned
out the joint military action. “Massive attempt to deceive” (Avi Shlaim).
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The Sèvres accord was inspired by two men:
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Christian Pineau
David Ben-Gurion
Sèvres
The Sèvres accord was reconstructed from various sources by
Keith Kyle in his 1991 book, Suez. Before then, Christian Pineau
(1976), a British civil servant, Donald Logan (1986) had
published their accounts. Mordechai Bar-On, secretary of the
Israeli delegation to Sèvres, published a detailed history in
English in 1994 (The Gates of Gaza). Ben Gurion’s personal
copy of the protocol was published in 1996.
► The whole business is brilliantly summarized by Avi Shlaim in
his article “The Protocol of Sèvres, 1956: Anatomy of a War
Plot,” International Affairs 73 (1997), 509-530.
► In substance, Britain, France and Israel agreed that Israel
would attack Egypt on 29 October; that Britain and France
would intervene to “protect” the Canal by asking both sides to
withdraw to at least 10 miles from the canal zone.
► Shlaim: “The Protocol of Sèvres was thus a monument to
French opportunism, Eden’s duplicity and Ben-Gurion’s
paranoia.”
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The Suez Crisis 1956
Seem Familiar?
Stabs in the Back
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The US was horrified by Anglo-French support of Israel. 2 November,
Dulles introduces a Security Council Resolution condemning the war. 4
November, ONU demands cease-fire + peace-keepers (proposed Lester
Pearson, Canadian P.M.)
British public opinion divided. Popular dailies gung-ho. Eden makes
“man of peace” broadcast; Gaitskell replies, “It is not a police action;
there is no law behind it. We have taken the law into our own hands.”
Observer: “We had not realized that our government was capable of
such folly and crookedness.”
5 November, Britain and France land troops at Port Said; the USSR,
which was brutally oppressing the Hungarian revolt, warns Suez crisis
could turn into a third world war.
6 November, British Chancellor Harold Macmillan tells Cabinet that
$280 million dollars (£100m) had been lost on the Forex markets in a
week and urges GB to accept cease-fire (despite having been a hawk
throughout the crisis). Eden announces cease-fire for midnight.
War ends Eden’s career. Goes to Jamaica to recover from nervous
breakdown & loses premiership to Macmillan in January 1957.
Harold Macmillan
Role of Macmillan
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Is another area where historians have been at work. The standard account
assumed Macmillan was telling the truth. That he had discovered the position of
sterling and changed his mind.
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The work of Diane Kunz (The Economic Diplomacy of the Suez Crisis, 1991) called
this into question. She argued that less than $100m had been lost. In Kunz’s view
the sterling crisis only began afterwards when the US refused to allow GB to
draw upon IMF funds until GB withdrew from canal zone. Macmillan’s statement
to cabinet had been “either knowingly or accidentally” untrue. On the basis of
this argument, the “sensational loss of nerve” school gained ground. In brief,
Macmillan either chickened out (possible), or wanted to be on good terms with
the US in order to replace Eden (impossible given that Macmillan was an English
gentleman).
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Latest research complicates this picture, however. Klug and Smith, “Suez and
Sterling, 1956” (Explorations in Economic History 36 (1999), 181-203 argue that
while Kunz is right to say only abt $100m was lost from British reserves in the
first week of November, overall July-November 1956 saw a “total underlying loss”
of $883m in British reserves. Suez was the most serious postwar challenge to the
£ until 1967, even greater than 1949, when the £ was devalued.
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The conduct of Macmillan remains strange, however. Documentation shows he
was persistently warned of the danger to sterling throughout the crisis. Why did
he choose the heat of the battle to give a false figure to cabinet?
A.J.P. Taylor on Suez
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The moral for British governments
is clear. Like most respectable
people, they will make poor
criminals and had better stick to
respectability. They will not be
much good at anything else.”
Revisionism?
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Perceptible shift towards rehabilitating Eden and British
government. E.g. D.R. Thorpe, Eden (2003). Does so in
three ways:
A) By putting Suez in context. Eden one of the great
statesmen of the 20th century; Suez a blip.
B) By emphasizing that Gb and F did nothing untoward.
Were victims of American moralizing. Compare US action
against Mossadeq in Iran in 1953.
C) By putting blame on other members of Eden’s cabinet,
especially R.A.B. Butler and Macmillan, who is rapidly
becoming the villain of the piece.
Other scholars, e.g. Gordon Martel, are calling into
question the accepted view that Suez was a “watershed”
in postwar world history (certainly British history).
This kind of revisionism, in Geyl’s great phrase, is why
history is “argument without end.”
What We Know
Yet also true that the Suez crisis is proof of a cautiously
“objectivist” view of history. We do not know (and cannot know)
THE truth about Suez, but we do now know that many former
beliefs are wrong; that leading politicians lied; that the US had
complex motives; that collusion took place; that the £ was
under pressure.
► Historians are now also at work on the social history of the
crisis. Recent work has been done on film and newsreel during
the crisis; work is being done on public opinion; somebody
needs to do work on the political parties since the only work on
the subject is Epstein’s 1964 classic British Politics and the
Suez Crisis.
► A provocation: We may eventually even know more about the
Suez crisis than the leading actors did at the time. The fresco
restoration metaphor is a powerful one. Our knowledge of the
past is necessarily incomplete, but it can still be richer and
more vivid than contemporaries could know.
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