Britain bought into the Suez Canal Company in 1875 and occupied Egypt in 1882, and by the 1950s the Canal Zone held around 80,000 British troops. In 1952 British forces besieged an Egyptian police barracks in Ismailia and killed 41 men, riots burned Cairo, and the Free Officers under Mohammed Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser overthrew King Farouk. Nasser, a solitary decision-maker according to historian Abd al-Azim Ramadan, bought Soviet bloc arms through Czechoslovakia in 1955, backed Algeria’s rebels, recognized Communist China and stirred the protests that ended Glubb Pasha’s command in Jordan. When Eisenhower and Dulles pulled funding for the Aswan High Dam in July 1956, Nasser answered within days.
On July 26, 1956, in a live radio speech in Alexandria, Nasser spoke the name Ferdinand de Lesseps, the prearranged signal for his men to seize the Suez Canal Company offices. Anthony Eden, in pain after botched gallbladder surgery and dependent on amphetamines, saw a new Mussolini or Hitler and joined France and Israel in the secret Protocol of Sèvres. Israel invaded Sinai on October 29, Britain and France issued a staged ultimatum and landed at Port Said, and the Egyptian army, split by a deep class gulf between officers and conscripts, collapsed. Eisenhower then forced a withdrawal through the IMF and the threat of dumping sterling, Eden resigned in early 1957, and Nasser emerged as the symbol of anti-colonial resistance.
- The 1888 Convention of Constantinople declared the canal neutral, yet Britain closed it to enemies in both World Wars.
- The invasion coincided with the Soviet crushing of the Hungarian uprising, costing the West its moral argument.
- The crisis produced the first United Nations Emergency Force.
- Saudi Arabia imposed an oil embargo on Britain and France, and the U.S. withheld replacement oil until the troops left.
- Israel withdrew from Sinai but won the reopening of the Straits of Tiran to its shipping.
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