Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam
164. The Suez Crisis of 1956
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA

 

The Suez crisis of 1956 refers to the invasion of Egypt by the combined armies of Britain, France and Israel with the declared intent of seizing the Canal Zone.  In the deadly game of real politic where power is the arbitrator of justice, the Egyptian defenses were found wanting against the combined onslaught of the invading armies. But Egypt won the political battle when the Eisenhower Administration of the United States forced the invaders to withdraw.

The political triumph heralded the heyday for Arab nationalism and propelled Nasser as a hero of the Arab world. The euphoria was short lived and lasted only until the devastating defeat of the Arab armies by Israel in the war of June 1967.

From a historical perspective, the Suez crisis of 1956 was the last hurrah for the British Empire. It confirmed that the age of the European Empires had passed and a new world order dominated by the United States and the Soviet Union had emerged.

Arguably, the British Empire was a partnership between British Civil Service and the Indian army. India was not just the crown jewel in the British crown; it was the lynchpin of the empire. With India, the British lion had teeth. Without India, the British lion roared but it was toothless. In 1947, India and Pakistan gained their independence.  The two million strong Indian army that had provided the muscle for the empire in places as far away as Malaysia and Palestine was no longer under the command of British officers. Without this military power, the British Empire was like a façade without props.  

Within fifteen years of India’s independence, Britain had withdrawn from Palestine, Singapore, Malaysia, Kenya, Nigeria and Cyprus. While it was once boasted that the sun never set on the British empire, it had now indeed set and Britain had become an island nation, cast into a supporting role to the English speaking megalith across the Atlantic, the United States of America.

What caused this global shift in power was Hitler’s war (1939-45). While local folklore lionizes native sons in the struggle for national independence, it was the Second World War and its debilitating stress on the Europeans that sapped their power and their ability to keep Asia and Africa under their heels. It was during this war that the armies of the empire which had fought under colonial flags saw that the Europeans were not invincible and could indeed be defeated by an Asian power like Japan. For instance, in India and Pakistan, Gandhi and Jinnah are lionized. While history will acknowledge the contributions of these political giants, it was the rebellion of the Indian navy in February 1946 as much as anything that Gandhi and Jinnah did that convinced the British to quit India, a fact acknowledged by Attlee, the then prime minister of the United Kingdom.

The story of the Suez Canal is a text book example of the interplay between imperial design and local ineptitude played out against a backdrop of the global reach of international bankers.

Egypt is where the Eurasian landmass meets up with Africa. In times of peace it is the artery for trade and commerce between the Mediterranean and the Indian Oceans. In time of war it commands the vital logistics between Asia and Europe.  Control of Egypt has dictated the destinies of Eurasian empires from times immemorial and has had an impact far beyond the Middle Eastern region. For instance, in the tenth and the eleventh centuries, Egypt was controlled by the Fatimids, who were locked in a bitter struggle with the Abbasids of Baghdad for dominance over the Islamic world. As trade between Europe and Asia flowed through Fatimid lands, the Abbasids were impoverished. To compensate for this loss of revenue, the Ghaznavids who backed the Abbasids, raided India in search of gold. It is only in this global context that one can understand the devastating and fateful raids of Mahmud of Ghazna into Punjab and Gujarat in India, circa 1000 CE.

It has been a dream of the rulers of Egypt since the days of the Pharaohs to connect the Mediterranean with the Red Sea and integrate the maritime trade routes of Asia and Europe. In the nineteenth century, as the European powers consolidated their colonial empires, the movement of men and material between Europe and Asia accelerated. Transportation through Egypt would reduce thousands of miles from the long shipping routes around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa.   Rivalry was intense between the colonial powers. The British were the first to make their move securing the rights to build a railroad between Alexandria and Suez so that goods could be unloaded in Alexandria, transported by rail overland to Suez City on the Red City, reloaded onto ships and transported to their burgeoning colonies in India and the Far East.

It was the French who achieved a commercial coupe in 1851 when the French engineer Ferdinand de Lessop secured the concurrence of Mohammed Said, the Pasha (Ottoman governor) of Egypt, for the construction of a canal linking the Mediterranean with the Red Sea.  Financing for the project was a major issue. French private investors bought a majority of the shares in the newly formed Compagnieuniverselle du canal maritime de Suez with the Pasha of Egypt holding 44 percent of the shares.

Detailed plans were prepared and the work on the monumental project began in earnest in 1859.  Thousands of Egyptian fellahin were conscripted as laborers. But no amount of sweat can compensate for flawed planning. Soon, there were cost overruns and the Pasha was forced to borrow money from international bankers, who demanded collateral for their loans.

It was at this juncture that the interplay of global events dictated the fate of the Suez Canal project and of Egypt itself. The American civil war started in 1861. America, along with Egypt, was a major supplier of cotton to the international market. Due to dislocations of the civil war, American cotton disappeared from international markets.  Demand from the cotton mills of England was strong and the price of Egyptian cotton shot up.

Meanwhile, in 1863, Mohammed Said, the Pasha of Egypt died and was succeeded by his son Ismail Pasha. Ambitious, lavish and profligate, Ismail surrounded himself with Egyptian sycophants and European swindlers and sank Egypt into an ever-deepening morass of debt. He mortgaged the future crops of Egyptian cotton, assuming that the high price which had resulted from a temporary disruption of world markets would continue. When the civil war ended in 1865, American cotton was back on the market and the price of Egyptian cotton plummeted. Ismail was bankrupt, unable to pay the interest on the funds he had borrowed from the international bankers.

The British, outmaneuvered by the French in the initial gambit, had stayed out of participation in the financing of the Suez Canal Company. In 1857, the British empire was jolted by the Indian Sepoy Mutiny. Reinforcements for the beleaguered garrisons in India had to be sent from places as far away as Aden.  Additional supplies from England took months to arrive from Liverpool and London. The Indian Sepoy Mutiny reinforced for the British the importance of the Canal and they looked for an opportunity to get back into the imperial game for control of the sea lanes leading to their British Indian empire.

The opportunity presented itself when Ismail Pasha, unable to meet his financial obligations, borrowed additional funds at higher interest rates to make payments on older loans. Lavish expenditures on his frequent trips to Paris and London, a futile war on Ethiopia, and the construction of several palaces added to his financial woes.

The Suez Canal opened with much fanfare in 1867 but by then, the host Ismail Pasha, was a pauper. Ismail transferred his personal debts to the state. By 1873, the Egyptian debt had climbed to over 100 million pounds and Egypt was on its knees. The beleaguered Pasha sold his shares in the Suez Canal Company to the British for a sum of 4 million pounds. Thus was born the Anglo-French consortium for control of the Canal. Even this sale was insufficient to pay for the interest on the Pasha’s loans. Through a series of political and financial maneuvers, the European powers cornered Egypt into first surrendering its finances, and when the Egyptians protested, the British navy bombarded Alexandria and occupied Cairo in 1978. Using Egypt as a base, the British armies advanced further south and subdued the Sudan in the 1880s.

During the Italian invasion of Libya in 1911 and the Balkan wars of 1911-12, the British used their garrisons in Egypt to block the movement of Ottoman troops between Anatolia and North Africa thus helping Italy, Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia to seize and occupy vast areas of the Ottoman Empire in Eastern Europe and Libya.

When the First World War erupted in 1914, Britain declared Egypt to be a ‘protectorate’, reinforced its garrisons in the Suez Canal area with Indian troops and used Egypt as a base to launch an invasion of Palestine and Syria. It was an Anglo-Indian army under Allenby that occupied Jerusalem in 1917. Throughout the Great War, the Canal proved to be crucial in the movement of troops and supplies for the allies in the Middle Eastern sector and in the ultimate defeat of the Ottomans.

In 1936 Egypt received its nominal independence from Britain.  Under a Treaty concluded with the Pasha of Egypt, British troops continued to occupy the Canal zone with vague promises of withdrawal at a future date.

(The author is Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, CA; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group)