Empire and Its Limits

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Empire and Its Limits
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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 CrisisMain Events

• 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 Europes 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.

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Nasser
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Anthony Eden
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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 Nassers 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 Wests
  windpipe. Could cut off oil shipments.

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Nasser on the day of nationalization
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Eisenhower and J.F. Dulles
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From Diplomacy to War

• 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. Edens, 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.
• I

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US Policy Fears

• J.F. DULLES PRESS CONFERENCE 2 OCTOBER 1956
• 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
• J.F. DULLES MINUTES NSC 1 NOVEMBER 1956.
• 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
  COUNTRIESUNLESS WE NOW ASSERT AND MAINTAIN OUR
  LEADERSHIP, ALL OF THESE NEWLY INDEPENDENT
  COUNTRIES WILL TURN FROM US TO THE USSR.
• 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).

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The British Lion at Suez
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War

• 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.
• The area of Anglo-French collusion with Israel is
  the one where historical researchers into the
  Suez crisis have established the most important
  truths.
• 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).
• The Sèvres accord was inspired by two men

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Christian Pineau
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David Ben-Gurion
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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 Gurions 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, Edens duplicity
  and Ben-Gurions paranoia.

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The Suez Crisis 1956
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Seem Familiar?
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Stabs in the Back

• 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 Edens career. Goes to Jamaica to
  recover from nervous breakdown loses
  premiership to Macmillan in January 1957.

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Harold Macmillan
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Role of Macmillan

• 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.
• 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
  Kunzs 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. Macmillans 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).
• 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.
• 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?

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A.J.P. Taylor on Suez

• 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.

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Revisionism?

• 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 Edens
  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 Geyls great phrase,
  is why history is argument without end.

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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 Epsteins 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.