How did the Suez Crisis mark the end of British power? Britain was forced to withdraw and, for the first time, realized that it could no long act unilaterally. It was a humiliating defeat for Britain and is sometimes said to be the actual end of the British Empire.
The Suez Canal was opened in 1869 and it was a way of passing through the land that connects Africa to the Middle East, connecting the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. It meant that ships didn’t need to sail right round Africa to reach India and it saved an enormous amount of time. The canal was built by a French company and the Ottoman Empire, which controlled Egypt at the time. The canal was run by the Suez Company, which was an Egyptian company, but in 1875 Egypt had a huge financial crisis and had to sell a large portion of the shares in that country. Britain stepped in to by them and instantly controlled 44% of the company. Britain was increasing its influence in the Middle East and Northern Africa at the time and in 1882, Britain invaded and occupied Egypt, taking complete control of the canal as well. Britain continued to hold the area through the First World War, the Second World War, and on into the 1950s.
After World War Two, Britain needed to borrow enormous amounts of money from America to rebuild and to shore up their economy. One of the conditions for this money was that Britain slowly released all of her colonies. In the 1940s, India, Burma, Ghana, and Malaya gained their independence. However, Britain continued to have a large military presence in many old colonies and protectorates, including Egypt. The world was obviously changing and the people born after World War Two had a completely different way of thinking, but many of the people in government in Britain at the time had been around from before the war and still saw Britain as an empire. This old fashioned way of thinking would bring about the crisis.
In 1952, Gamal Abdel Nasser overthrew the Egyptian government and took power. He demanded that the British remove all of their troops from Egypt within 20 months. That doesn’t seem like an unreasonable demand. In 1956, British troops started to pull out and Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal Company, taking control of the canal. Britain, with support from France, decided to take it back. They made a top secret deal with Israel to invade Egypt. Then, they would invade Egypt under the pretense of trying to stop Israel. This would let them take back control of the canal. Anthony Eden was the UK prime minister and he still believed in the empire. He thought that it was Britain’s right to take back the canal. They also thought that a rebellion in Egypt might spark ideas of rebellion in other colonies. They also didn’t want to risk access to the colonies being cut off.
Israel invaded, as planned, and Britain and France invaded as well. They destroyed the Egyptian airforce, but then they were forced to stop by an order from the United Nations. This order basically came from the USA. President Eisenhower had strongly warned the British not to invade Egypt. At the time, the Soviet Union was spreading and the USA was worried that a British attack on Egypt would drive the Arab countries into the arms of the Soviets. The USSR actually threatened to go to war on the side of Egypt. Eisenhower thought that this could be the beginning of World War Three. The USA led United Nations threatened Britain with sanctions. This caused a panic in British financial markets and millions of pounds were wiped out of the country’s reserves overnight. The pound rapidly started to lose its value. Britain approached the International Monetary Fund to get financial assistance, but the US controlled the IMF and assistance was denied. The US also threatened to dump its stocks of British pounds on the market, which would crash the pound and destroy the British economy. Britain had no choice but to end the war.
This marked the end of British power because it became obvious for the very first time that Britain could not launch a unilateral war on any other country anymore. The days of empire were gone. If the USA wanted Britain to stop fighting, then they had no choice. It became obvious that Britain was no longer one of the superpowers and was a second tier country. The two superpowers of the USA and the USSR were the only countries that could go it alone. Britain was humiliated internationally. Ironically, Britain invading Egypt to protect its colonies may have had the exact opposite effect because the colonies could now see that Britain had no power and most of them gained independence in the next few years. And this is what I learned today.
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Sources
https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/why-was-the-suez-crisis-so-important
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/mar/14/past.education1
https://www.suezcanal.gov.eg/English/About/SuezCanal/Pages/CanalHistory.aspx
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis
Photo by Eric Seddon: https://www.pexels.com/photo/ships-in-suez-16574945/