284. Suez Crisis: The British Imperialist vs The Arab Nationalist (Part 1)

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0:29Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnon. And me, William Duribault. Now, we're very excited about this because we've done the Panama Canal. We're going to do the Suez Canal, all the canals. No, not all the canals, just the Suez Canal, a mini-series on the Suez Canal. And we're predominantly going to concentrate on the 1950s, where you find the Suez Canal is at the crossroads of international geopolitical fury. So that's what we're going to be talking about. Britain's imperial prestige is declining. the US and the USSR are cementing themselves into the position of global superpowers, and they are also becoming sworn enemies.

1:09So this is a story of revolutions, of colonialism, of secrecy. I mean, it's all got it all packed in. In a sense, this is always just like, if you like, Plassey is said to be the moment when the sort of British Empire really kicks off in India. Suez is the moment that British imperial power is seen to be eclipsed. Never again after this is Britain described as a superpower, which it is before this. And it's a crucial moment. It's the moment also that marks the ascendancy of the US over British foreign policy, because by the end of this, America has just blown a whistle, cut Britain's credit, and Britain has had to fall immediately in line, and the government falls.

1:50And it's the first time that America has had that power over Britain, where nothing can happen without an American say so. So this is the moment 1956 when Britain is shrunk down from an imperial power into just another European power and this is what will then in time lead Britain to join the European Union the next phase in its history but it's a it's a crucial crucial turning point and we are lucky to have with us our great great friend Alex von Turselmann. Hello. Author of many wonderful books my favorite Indian book of hers is the Indian summer but this book your Sue's book blood and sand Sue is hungry and the crisis that shook the world and is is equally brilliant and what you do so well Alex is that not only do you talk about the sort of big geopolitics but you sort of drill into the minutiae of people's personality frailties as well very good at frailties yes I mean very good at frailties but you know just the kind of thing where humans flesh and bone just screw up in all sorts of ways which you know you can link to their relationships with their daddies or their mummies or the way they went to school but these things kind of you know formulate the politics that we face today which I love.

3:05Absolutely. It's a wonderful mix in all her books of really serious archival research and then written in this wonderfully light and debullient style. So anyway we are lucky to have you with us Alex. Welcome back. Oh thank you all so much. Yeah so now that we've warmly welcomed you. We're going to ignore you for one minute because what we wanted to do, that's what we do to the people we really like. We'd never normally do that. We're just going to have a cup of tea. Especially the ones that we love. You know, you just don't have a cup of tea and put your feet up. But what we thought, because Alex is going to take us through the 1950s, this sort of pivotal time, to the Suez Crisis, which you might even have heard about the Suez Crisis, but not quite know what it was or what precipitated it.

3:41But just as we did with the Panama Canal, we wanted to give you the origin story of this Suez Canal as well. And there is one man, a name that is common to both, and that's Ferdinand de Lesseps. Now, you might imagine that this would be the brainchild of an engineer, but it isn't. Remember, de Lesseps, if you heard our Panama Canal program, is not an engineer. He's not a builder of big things. He is a diplomat, he is ambitious, and he's a blue blood. But he is a man who knows how to get people to hand over money for very big capital projects. He's a sort of entrepreneur of spectacular projects.

4:16And we've done him certainly back to front because, of course, his terrible failure in building the Panama Canal that drives him and everyone else around him to bankruptcy is the sad end of a career which has its triumph, first of all, in the building of Suez. So we're doing it back to front, but this is what comes first. This precedes the Panama Canal, and it's the success of what de Lesseps does in Suez that gives him the will late in life to take on Panama with such fatal results for him, but ultimately a triumph for America. The thing that links both of them is that de Lesseps, like everybody else, is looking for some kind of superhighway linking Europe to the east.

4:50This is the obsession at the time, that there must be a faster way to get to the riches of the east. So de Lesseps himself has a private company, Campagne Universal de Canal Maritime de Suez. I always love your French accent. Always one of the highlights of this podcast. But it is a private company. It's founded in 1858 by de Lesseps himself. So the financing structure, who pays for the Suez Canal? Just like with the Panama Canal, he does it with other people's cash. So primarily European shareholders and the Egyptian government under the Khediv Saeed Pasha and then his successor Ismail Pasha.

5:30So the majority of funds, let's look at where the money really came from. The majority of funds for Suez were raised through the sale of shares to private European investors and they were mostly French. French citizens, banks, banks were among the largest subscribers to this. But Egypt also significantly financed this project. 44 % of the money came through direct purchases of shares. But Egypt took out huge loans to pay for these shares. And this is going to be really important later in the history of Egypt and the Middle East. We should perhaps explain the geography of this, which we haven't done, and what has, in a sense, given the idea for this throughout history, ever since Vasco da Gama, but particularly since Britain established its Indian empire in the 18th century.

6:19almost all Brits trying to get to India did not go over land. They went by sea in a very odd sea road that you started off going down the coast of Spain. Then you went to the Canary Islands. Then you went to Brazil, which doesn't seem to be on the way at all, but that was where replenished. And this famously was where Clive fell off the boat and nearly drowned on his way to India. And then from Brazil, you go to Cape of Good Hope. and finally you end up in Bombay or increasingly Calcutta. Now, in the 1840s, there'd been a change in that because the Brits realized that they could get a boat to Alexandria, take a nice small boat down the Nile, and then just jump on a carriage and cross to Suez, and you could then get another boat.

7:06So by the 1840s, most Brits going to India were no longer going round the Cape. They were getting off in Egypt, getting into a carriage, crossing the desert and getting a new boat at Suez. And this is the point that the French have the idea of building this canal. And this way, you can just stay on the boat and never get off it. You can get all the way into the Mediterranean without unpacking your suitcases at any point. What's really interesting, a little while ago, Willie was talking about how the Brits had long seen or had the vision that this is the quickest way over, stop in Alexandria, cross over, and then pick up a boat at Suez.

7:42So you'd think, wouldn't you, that they'd be all for the construction of a canal. But initially, they are not for it at all, because partly, it's the French that have done it first. Those damn French. And if the French do it, it can't be a good thing. Yeah. And then, you know, they've also got a lot of money invested in the alternate route. So, they're not really behind this at all. They oppose it at first, and then they're deeply sceptical about it. But construction, whatever they think, it's got nothing to do with them. It is the French. It is the Egyptians. And it is all the investors, the private investors who are looking for a return, a bang for their buck, who are jubilant because on the 25th of April, 1859, they start construction.

8:20We should perhaps say why the French are interested in the Suez Canal at all and why they hadn't been interested earlier. And the answer to that, of course, goes back to our series on the Opium Wars. At the end of the Second Opium War, the French are given concessions in China. And with those concessions comes an opioid economy that they begin to realize how much money you can make from opium, which is something the British have been doing. And out of that comes the French conquest of Southeast Asia. So the French also need to get their ships from the Mediterranean to Southeast Asia, to their new colonies in Cambodia and Vietnam and Laos, the modern names, and also to their concessions in China.

9:06And this is all part of that late 19th century European rush to make opium money, which follows the Second Opium War. So as well as the Brits going to India, you've got the French chugging along the same routes heading on further to Southeast Asia. Yeah. If you want to be an effective drug dealer, get there quicker, is the moral of that story. So look, they start construction in 1859, and it is through desert terrain. Also, they've got to deal with some very hefty rocks, and they use Egyptian laborers. And at first, we're talking about men basically with hammers and pickaxes. It's really hard, intense work.

9:45The workers, and they're all Egyptian, they are peasants known as the fellaheen who are doing the work here, and they've got terrible conditions. And just again, Again, these are mirror images, the experience in Panama where you had disease sweeping through workers' camps. This is happening as well at Suez. And we should perhaps also say that geographically, how remote Suez is. I've been there and it's in the middle of absolutely nowhere. It's a very, very bleak spot. When at the end of this story, you have the Suez Canal zone and you have troops stationed there, it's famously the worst posting you can possibly be offered anywhere in the world because it's absolutely nothing to do for hundreds of miles around.

10:24It's dry, it's arid, it's flat, and there's absolutely no reason whatever to be there but for the strategic value of this canal cutting through the desert. So they're dealing with very bleak and remote geography as well as the sheer difficulty of cutting a canal through the desert. Well, they do it. I mean, it takes 10 years, they do it. But finally, on November 17th, 1869, there is going to be this lavish ceremony to trumpet the opening of the Suez Canal. And what happens is the Egyptian ruler, who's the son of the man who starts the whole thing off, Ismail Bashar, he wants to present the canal as a symbol of Egypt's modernization, him as a new leader in a new Middle East.

11:07And he decides to throw the party to end all parties. So for two days, there are fireworks, feasting, the likes of which nobody's ever seen before. or some Western journalists who are present to turn up their nose at the whole thing, calling it orientally excessive. Rich from the British, who are busy getting up to exactly the same thing in India at the same time. But yeah, we'll let that pass. Yes, but they don't throw the parties. They don't have Arab salt dancing. They do become a house, spectacular quivering jellies and peacock's plumes and all the rest of it. They may well have peacocks and jellies, but what they object to is the dancing bears and the snake charming and the feasts, which go on and on for 100 courses.

11:43But they are sort of making their way to Suez and they get there on the 19th of November. It's a kind of procession through the desert. 6 ,000 guests attend in all for this inauguration, including, and this is, again, I think just really interesting looking at the guest list. Empress Eugenia of France, wife of Emperor Napoleon III, who plays sort of the lead ceremonial role here because she's sort of like the most important royal from the French side. You've got Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria. you've got the King of Hungary, you've got Prince Louis of Hesse, the brother of the King of the Netherlands, the smattering of other European princes.

12:19Do you know the royal that doesn't come is any royal from Britain. They won't send a royal because this is not their party and they're not going to do it. So what they send instead is an ambassador to Istanbul. Because what they've done now, they've moved from pure opposition to the idea of this canal to sort of a detached skepticism. So if it is all going to turn to custard, they can say nothing to do with us. But if it does work out, they have a presence at the party. And there is this massive flotilla of 77 ships, including 50 warships from all of these countries that do this sort of procession behind the French royal yacht that go through the Suez Canal and its inauguration.

12:59And the other lovely thing that I loved about the inauguration is that there is this multi-faith prayer that goes on, this sort of act of worship, which has, according to one journalist, William Simpson, who is there, who made his name covering the Crimean War, but he's been sent here to do these very detailed reports for the illustrated news, Latin, Greek, and Mohammedan priests officiating a mass blessing. That's very modern to have them all together. Right. Right. But there is also another journalist who's there, who's a Scot called Alexander Russell, who looks at this canal as an absolute beacon of hope for the future.

13:37He says, it will unite the East and West, not only in commerce, but ideas and so greatly bless humanity. And he describes the celebration cannons thundering till ears were stunned and the atmosphere thickened with smoke. So for him, anyway, here when the smoke clears, you have got the greatest kumbaya moment the world has ever known. Everybody's going to embrace or be peaceful. The Suez Canal has fixed everything. Now, you say it wasn't a British party, but only 15 years later or 20 odd years later, it becomes a British party. And we've been ignoring our poor guest, Alex, who's been sitting on her sofa.

14:16We just want to do the boring prehistory before we get to the really exciting stuff with her. We need to bring in Alex. And Alex, explain to us how the Brits get their controlling interest in this canal, which is the crucial lead up to the Suez crisis. Basically, the Khadiv ran out of money. Anita's already talked about. He was kind of up to his neck in loans, but also embroiled himself in a war that he shouldn't have and all of this and ran out of money. And it's really crucial to say this important point, and it gets missed by an awful lot of people at the time as well. But I think we need it clear in our heads.

14:48There are two entities here. There's the Suez Canal, the physical structure, the thing you talked about, this miracle of engineering. That was always owned by Egypt. The physical structure is 100 % owned by Egypt and was from the beginning. But the Suez Canal Company is the operating company that controls transit through the canal. So this is a different thing. I hadn't realized that. The physical thing is always in Egypt's hand. Always Egyptian, 100 % Egyptian. So, you know, when we come to nationalization, the canal is always Egyptian. The canal company is not Egyptian. This is the difference.

15:22And that's the one that Khediv owned 44 % of it. It's a very large, but not completely controlling share. And the French and various other companies own portions of it. And the company is actually the really contentious thing. And actually, everyone misses this. Everyone talks about it in this completely vague way. You know, oh, we own this, so it's canal. No, you don't. Egypt owns it, always has, always did, just not actually in dispute. So what happens when the Hadif has this financial crisis, and indeed, absolutely right, the Israeli gets a very quick loan, a huge amount of money from Lord Rothschild, to buy him out, buy this enormous share.

15:56And actually, de Lesseps went bananas hearing this was happening, you know, and he sort of tried to run there and stop it happening because, of course, this was the British taking over this great French innovation. You can understand why I'd be a bit pissed off, can't you? Really pissed off, yeah, absolutely. But the British managed to buy this huge stake in the canal company, which was indeed the company that operated those sort of pilot ships that go up and down. And this transit through it was controlled by this company. And presumably rakes in the profits from every... Exactly. It's the operating company, so everything through that.

16:32So that, you know, it was a huge coup, really, that Britain got control of that. And especially because at that stage, because of India, of course, as you've mentioned, that's the big imperial route for transit. But it continues to be incredibly important and actually become, in a sense, even more important into the 20th century, into the 1950s. Now, of course, as we will all notice, India was no longer British by 1956, quite notably so. But what was at that stage British was a load of oil fields in Iran. That's right. The Anglo-Persian oil company had just struck Lucky and Banda Abbas and all those sort of wells were kicking off for the first time.

17:11Because Mossadegh had nationalised it, but I mean, obviously then the Brits had booted him out with the CA and got the Shah back in. But just one other observation about the Israeli deal, because it was so wily and canny. It's right, he didn't even ask Parliament whether this was the right thing to do for Britain. He just goes off behind a closed door, gets the money and then runs and buys it. How does Parliament react to that? I mean, is there a sort of jubilation that he's done a clever thing or are they just quite appalled they've been bypassed? Well, pretty mixed feelings, as you might imagine.

17:42How big was the loan? Can you remember the figure? So the loan that he took from Lord Rothschild was about£4 million in 1875. Today, you'd have to say it would be around£5 billion, although it's pretty hard to compare the numbers at that point. I mean, there were lots of different ways to assess that, but an absolutely huge amount of money, I think it's fair to say. Alex, just to go back to the 1950s, is there a sense that Britain's obsession about holding on to the Suez Canal in the face of NASA's wish to nationalise it, is that in a sense a sort of ghost limb that, you know, rather like soldiers being able to feel the toes that they've lost in a battle in the trenches or whatever?

18:22Is it that Britain still feels that it needs to have controlled the route to India and the east? Or is it specifically the oil fields that they're thinking of at this point? It's really oil at this point is what it's about. How interesting. It's the first big oil war. Absolutely. It's an enormous oil war. And that's absolutely crucial is that because Britain at this stage still controls those oil fields in Iran and has those, that's the oil that is priced in pounds. This becomes very important. so it's priced in sterling that means for the british to buy it is very cheap oil that you get say from venezuela is priced in u.s dollars that's much more expensive because britain has to use its dollar reserves for that that's very difficult you're you know thinking about the converting the money and all of this so you know that oil is what britain sees as britain's oil now the iranians dispute that but you know that's how britain sees it because it's priced in pounds That's the oil that is now needed to keep the lights on and the cars running in Britain by 1956.

19:21I hadn't realised that link. So, so interesting that Mossadegh and his coup and the Suez crisis is all part of Britain needing to keep its petrol pumps running. While William comes to terms with this revelation, we're going to take a short break. When we come back, we'll go into more detail about how, you know, the fact that this is now the superhighway to oil changes everything.

19:51so welcome back and we are heading now into a neater territory because we have a good looking fella turning up something my co-host has always been aware of shall we say in the course of our podcast and i thank you for that and i thank you so much for creating this image of a boy crazy co-present it's not true at all but Alex you do do a good pen portrait and you've got a you've got a doozy coming up so sit back and enjoy tell us about Nasser. Gamal Abdul Nasser the man who sets this whole thing off by nationalizing the Suez Canal. Give us his backstory Alex. By nationalizing the Suez Canal Company.

20:32Ah the Suez Canal Company quite right. Yes I know I know such a pedant, but there is a reason I'm being that much of a pedant because it becomes very important to the story. Nasser is such an interesting figure, really important figure of the mid-20th century. He came from a pretty ordinary middle-class background and he joined the army and became an army officer, rose to quite a high point in that. So there is a wonderful history of Gaza by a French diplomat called Jean-Pierre Fillu. and he tells a whole episode of Nasser's life which I was unaware of that he is a staff officer in 1948 during what the Israelis called the Israeli war of independence and what the Palestinians call the Nakba and this is this moment when the Palestinians who've had their leadership exiled by the British after the Palestinian revolt and who've been disarmed lose everything in 1948 when the British pull out of the Palestine mandate to the Israelis.

21:32The Israelis are incredibly well organized. You have David Ben-Gurion, one of the great leaders of his time, an incredibly well organized military machine, just makes mincemeat of both Arab state resistance in the form of the Egyptian army, and to a lesser extent, the Arab Legion under Glubb Pasha hold their own. But the Palestinians themselves, this is the moment of their catastrophe, what they call the Nakba. 750 ,000 Palestinians are kicked out of their towns and villages and farms and find themselves refugees. Now, of those 750 ,000, 200 ,000 end up on the sand dunes in Gaza. And the reason that Gaza remains in Arab hands is that Nasser, as a junior staff officer, is there, as incidentally is the young Yasser Arafat, who long before the founding of the PLO, is there associated with and lending a hand to, they're not formally part of, the Muslim Brotherhood, which again is interesting for future history, that he was with the brothers at that point, because of course, later on, he becomes their enemy.

22:35So Gaza becomes a large refugee camp in the early 1950s. And so that is where Nasser first comes to prominence. And since 1948. Alex, he's orchestrated a military overthrow in 1952. Tell us about that. So Egypt had what was called the Veiled Protectorate, which was it was sort of controlled by Britain, but also sort of not. So it wasn't ever fully colonised. And the reason for that was about protecting the interest around the Suez Canal for Britain. Britain wanted a stake in how Egypt was run. It wanted control over it, but it didn't want to fully colonise Egypt by that point, this was going to be very expensive.

23:18That would be a nightmare. They didn't want it. They just were quite happy to ensure the safety of the canal. And King Farouk, the sort of Egyptian monarchy, was really seen as a bit of just a British stooge, really. And Alex Nasser is very much the man of the moment because he's had that military experience. He's kind of been a soldier that people respect. He's walked the walk as well as talked the talk. We haven't mentioned, and Willie's going to have a great deal of fun with this, that he has the looks of a matinee idol. He has sort of like a young Valentino look about him, does he not? You would never normally notice such things, Nita.

23:52I mean, look, I'm not just making it up. Just look at the man. I mean, he does look like a matinee idol. But also, Alex, more importantly, he's a good talker. And he gives very passionate speeches that rouse people. Tell us a little bit about the personality. Well, he was. And I mean, actually, this is pretty crucial to his appeal, that he was young for a political military leader. He was very good looking, very charismatic, an excellent speaker, spoke very good English as well. He was a highly literate, intelligent man. And at this time, I mean, as you said, because of the foundation of Israel and all this that happened, there is a kind of rise in Arab nationalism.

24:27And that's complicated. It's not kind of purely because of that. There's all sorts of reasons that's happening. It's also, you know, we're coming out still of the colonial period. So a lot of that resentment is against the British, for instance, also in the Middle East, the French, and, you know, various other imperial powers that are involved in small ways, like the Americans sort of have a little foothold, although not anything like as much yet as the British and the French. And Nasser is kind of standing up. Initially, when Farouk was ousted, he didn't take over as Prime Minister immediately, he actually somebody else did, and he sort of stood behind.

24:59And only a couple of years later, really did he come out as the leader and really sort of take over the running of Egypt. But he was somebody who led a kind of Arab nationalism because he was this figure of surprising charisma and gravitas, who seemed to have a real ability to kind of command attention on the international stage, who also seemed to be charting an interesting and quite clever route internationally. We had in our episode on the partition of Yemen, the fact that everyone as far away as Yemen is listening to Nasser's speeches that's stirring stuff up in Aden. There's also a sense in which he is the leader of the Arabs and the Algerians are looking to him in their struggle against the French.

25:48Tell us about that. Yes, you've got the whole, really, of the Middle East and North Africa, the whole Arab world, and actually also quite a lot of people beyond the Arab world listening to Nasser. He's very clever with media. He runs Voice of the Arabs radio and allows him to be heard kind of far and wide across the Arab world and indeed beyond often Voice of the Arabs translated. It's right. I mean, he becomes a sort of icon of power and freedom and resistance in Africa too. Absolutely. You know, a lot of North Africa is Arab as well. And so there's a very shared kind of language. And, you know, we'll doubtless come back to this because it's exactly what the French get upset with Nasser about.

26:26But yes, he had links with the Algerian resistance against French colonial rule. Effectively, everybody at that time who was kind of growing up, who was interested in Arab independence, was really looking to him as a generation of new, young, exciting post-colonial leadership that seemed to have a kind of self-respect and a sort of dignity to it. So, I mean, you mentioned that he was annoying the French. And one of the main reasons is because he's kind of instrumental in giving a podium to the leader of Algerian resistance, a man called Ben Bella. Now, I don't know much about him. I do know there's an extraordinary story about how he gets to Cairo.