Egypt was left in ferment as a result of the Second World War. King Farouk and his ministers tried to remain neutral and refused to declare war on Germany, but Britain, invoking the 1936 treaty, used Egypt as the headquarters of a massive military effort to fend off Italian and German attempts to invade from Cyrenaica and gain control of the Suez Canal and the rest of the Middle East. As 100,000 Allied troops descended on Cairo, anti-British resentment stirred anew. There was particular anger when Britain’s war leader Winston Churchill declared that Egypt was ‘under British protection’. Further friction followed. In 1942, when Farouk obstructed the appointment of a prime minister whom Britain wanted, the British ambassador, Sir Miles Lampson, gave orders for British troops, tanks and armoured cars to surround the Abdin palace and then marched in himself to present Farouk with a letter of abdication. Farouk swiftly capitulated. Lampson saw it as a victory. But most Egyptians were outraged at the humiliation of their king. The Wafd government that the British went on to install was soon mired in partisan politics, malpractice and corruption, causing further public disillusionment. Wartime food shortages and soaring prices added to the mix of popular grievances.
In 1946, the British army withdrew from its command post in the Citadel and from other bases around Cairo and Alexandria and concentrated its forces in the Suez Canal zone. During the war it had become the largest overseas military base in the world – a huge complex of dockyards, airfields, warehouses and barracks that stretched along the Suez Canal for two-thirds of its length and covered more than 9,000 square miles. The area included three major cities – Port Said, Ismailia and Suez – where one million Egyptians lived. In the post-war era, Britain’s military chiefs regarded the Canal zone, with its dominant position at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and Africa, as an indispensable part of their global interests. Some 80,000 troops were stationed there.
But Britain’s continued presence in the Canal zone became a festering sore for the Egyptians. What was especially aggravating was that under the terms of the 1936 treaty, the British were supposed to restrict their Suez garrison to no more than 10,000 men. There were constant demands for Britain to evacuate not only Egypt but also Sudan, which Egyptians claimed as part of their own empire but which Britain had run since 1899, nominally as a condominium.
Apart from sharing a common hostility towards Britain, however, Egypt’s rival factions were perpetually embroiled in internecine struggles. In the post-war era, Cairo became a cauldron of conspiracy, assassination, rioting, strikes and press agitation, as nationalists, royalists, communists and the Muslim Brotherhood competed for ascendency. Among the assassination victims were two prime ministers, a Wafd party leader and Hasan al-Banna, the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood. In rural areas, there were gusts of violence as impoverished peasants rebelled against feudal landowners. Youth groups, students and workers took to the streets, leaving the old establishment at a loss as to how to impose control.
Nor did Farouk offer any leadership. Still in his twenties, he had become an inveterate playboy, obese and balding, addicted to pleasure-seeking. One of the richest men in the world, his fortune included the largest landholding in Egypt, four palaces, two yachts, thirteen private aircraft and two hundred cars. While Egypt teetered on the brink of collapse, Farouk shuffled prime ministers and cabinets, but otherwise devoted himself to spending sprees, gambling sessions and an endless procession of mistresses.
Egypt’s woes were compounded in 1948 when the Egyptian army suffered a humiliating defeat in the Arab–Israeli conflict over Palestine. Blaming the defeat on the corruption and incompetence of Farouk’s high command, a group of young officers formed a clandestine network within the army called the Society of Free Officers – Dhobat el-Ahrar – determined to establish a new political order. Their leader, Colonel Gamel Abdul Nasser, was a taciturn, studious officer with a secretive nature and a talent for intrigue, driven by fierce personal ambition. Initially, the principal aim of the Free Officers was to rid Egypt of Britain’s military presence, but they soon became convinced of the need to remove Farouk as well. Farouk had come to represent the old imperialism as much as the British.
After several years of fruitless negotiations over the evacuation of British troops, the Egyptian government decided to take unilateral action, announcing in October 1951 the abrogation of the 1936 treaty and the 1899 agreement establishing the Sudan condominium. With the connivance of the authorities in Cairo, guerrilla attacks were launched against British targets in the Canal zone. Armed clashes between guerrilla squads and British army units continued for month after month. In January 1952, British forces in Ismailia bombarded an Egyptian police compound, killing more than fifty defenders. The next day, enraged mobs in Cairo destroyed some 750 foreign properties, including landmarks such as the legendary Shepheard’s Hotel.
Amid the mayhem, Farouk remained untroubled about his hold on power, confident that the army command could cope with any challenge. In July 1952, to escape the heat and hubbub of Cairo, he decamped with his family and household staff to the Montazah palace on the beachfront at Alexandria, intending to stay there for the summer. One evening, while enjoying a gambling session with rich socialites, he was called away for a telephone conversation with his prime minister who warned him that a small group of dissident officers within the army was planning a coup d’état. When told of the identity of the plotters, Farouk laughed. ‘A bunch of pimps,’ he scoffed, and went back to the gaming table.
The Free Officers’ coup on the night of 22 July 1952 was accomplished with little resistance. In a radio broadcast, they announced they had seized power in order to purge the army and the country of ‘traitors and weaklings’. With his palace in Alexandria surrounded by troops, Farouk signed an act of abdication and was sent into exile in Europe.
Little was known about the group of officers who had taken control. But in historical terms, the changes wrought by the army coup in 1952 were revolutionary. It not only brought an end to the 140-year-old Turkish dynasty founded by Farouk’s great-great-grandfather; it meant that for the first time since the Persian conquest twenty-five centuries before, Egypt was ruled by native Egyptians.
The Free Officers initially claimed that their objectives were limited to ridding Egypt of the old corrupt elite and introducing reforms to break up their large landholdings. But they soon began to entrench themselves in power, laying the foundations of an army dictatorship. With Nasser as chairman, a Revolutionary Command Council abolished the monarchy, set up a republic, banned political parties and ruthlessly suppressed rival groups including the communists, ultra-nationalists and the Muslim Brotherhood. In similar fashion, they purged trade unions, student organisations, the media, professional syndicates and religious organisations of opposition elements.
Nasser also moved decisively to obtain Britain’s withdrawal from the Canal zone and from Sudan. In October 1954, he reached an agreement requiring all British troops to depart from their Suez base by June 1956. The agreement marked another milestone in Egypt’s history. For the first time since 1882, there would be no British garrison on Egyptian soil. And for the first time in twenty-five centuries, it would have complete national sovereignty.
In negotiations over the future of Sudan, Nasser initially hoped to press Egypt’s claim to full control. But Britain, aware of the rising tide of Sudanese nationalism, insisted on the right of the Sudanese to decide their own future. Nasser eventually accepted the need for self-determination, expecting that, when the time came, the Sudanese would favour linking up with Egypt. In February 1953, he reached an agreement that allowed Sudan a three-year period of internal self-government; the Sudanese would then decide whether they wanted a union with Egypt or full independence.
The rapid pace of change carried inherent dangers. Sudan was a country of two halves, governed for most of the colonial era by two separate British administrations, one which dealt with the relatively advanced north, the other with the remote and backward provinces of the south. The two halves were different in every way: the north was hot, dry, partly desert, inhabited by Arabic-speaking Muslims who accounted for three-quarters of the population; the south was green, fertile, with a high rainfall, populated by diverse black tribes, speaking a multitude of languages, adhering mostly to traditional religions but including a small Christian minority that had graduated from mission schools. Historical links between the north and the south provided a source of friction. In the south, the northern plunder for slaves and ivory in the nineteenth century had left a legacy of bitterness and hatred towards the north. Northerners still tended to treat southerners as contemptuously as they had done in the past, referring to them as abid – slaves.
Only in 1946, when ample time still seemed to be available, did the British begin the process of integration, hoping that the north and the south would eventually form an equal partnership. From the outset, southern politicians expressed fears that northerners, because of their greater experience and sophistication, would soon dominate and exploit the south. The south was ill-prepared for self-government. There were no organised political parties there until 1953. When negotiations over self-government for Sudan were conducted in 1953, southerners were neither represented nor consulted. Southern anxiety about northern domination grew when new civil service appointments, replacing British officials with Sudanese, were made in 1954. Out of a total of some 800 senior posts, only six were awarded to southerners. The presence of northern administrators in the south, often abusive in their dealings with the local population, soon rekindled old resentments. In August 1955, southern troops in Equatoria mutinied against northern officers; northern officials and traders were hunted down and several hundred were killed. When Sudan voted for independence on 1 January 1956, the occasion was greeted with jubilation by northerners but apprehension and fear in the south.
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After a protracted internal struggle within the army, Nasser emerged in sole control of the government. Under a new constitution, he ruled as president wielding massive powers. To snuff out any sign of opposition, he made extensive use of a repressive security and intelligence apparatus. More than 3,000 political prisoners were held in prisons and concentration camps.
He became ever more ambitious, determined to modernise Egypt’s economy through industrial programmes and to turn Egypt into a regional power. He championed the cause of Arab unity and African liberation, rejected an offer to join a Western defence pact, and advocated a ‘non-aligned’ course in foreign policy to avoid entanglements in the Cold War.
Western governments were increasingly alienated by Nasser’s stance. Britain and the United States regarded his form of neutralism as little more than a cloak for anti-Western hostility. When Nasser asked for Western help to procure weapons for Egypt’s poorly equipped army to deal with Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, he was turned down. Nasser’s response was to sign a deal with the Soviet bloc for fighter aircraft, bombers and tanks, producing shockwaves in London and Washington.
Determined to ‘cut Nasser down to size’, the United States and Britain withdrew their support for Nasser’s grand scheme to construct a new dam at Aswan. The aim of the Aswan High Dam was to regulate the flow of the Nile throughout the year, release a million acres for reclamation, provide a source of irrigation and generate electricity. At three miles long, it was to be one of the largest engineering projects in the world, requiring foreign funds and expertise. Both Britain and the United States had initially been willing to participate in the scheme, but now they spurned it.
Nasser’s swift reaction stunned the world. Addressing a crowd in the main square in Alexandria on 26 July 1956, at a rally to mark the fourth anniversary of Farouk’s abdication, Nasser announced the nationalisation of the Suez Canal Company, an Egyptian-registered company owned by British and French shareholders with a concession that still had thirteen more years to run. ‘Today, in the name of the people, I am taking over the company,’ declared Nasser. ‘Tonight, our Egyptian canal will be run by Egyptians. Egyptians!’
Revenues that had previously gone to the Suez Canal Company would be used to finance the building of the High Dam, he said. But he also promised full compensation to shareholders – including the British government, which had a 44 per cent holding in the company – and insisted that there would be no interference with normal traffic.
The Suez Canal, linking Europe with Middle East oilfields and with Asia, was the world’s most important waterway, used by 12,000 ships a year from forty-five nations. Under Egyptian management, the flow of traffic continued much as before, even increasing from an average of forty-two ships a day to forty-five. But politicians in Britain and France were apoplectic about the affront to European interests. Britain relied on the Suez route for more than half of its oil supplies; Prime Minister Anthony Eden declared that Britain could not tolerate having Nasser’s ‘thumb on her windpipe’. While negotiations with Egypt were underway, Eden together with the French engaged in a secret conspiracy to invade Egypt in collusion with Israel and seize the canal. Their overall aim was to destroy Nasser’s regime.
On 29 October 1956, Israeli forces crossed into Sinai and raced towards the canal. On the pretext of separating the two combatants, Britain and France launched their own invasion. But the folly of this exercise in imperial bullying was quickly evident. Nasser promptly sank forty-seven ships in the canal, blocking all traffic and cutting the main artery for Europe’s oil supplies, thereby bringing about the nightmare scenario that the Anglo-French plot was designed to prevent.
Moreover, the Americans were furious at being deceived about the conspiracy. They regarded Nasser as a menace but saw no reason for war, adamant that the dispute should have been settled by negotiation. At the United Nations, the United States put forward a resolution demanding withdrawal and refused to help Britain cope with a sterling crisis precipitated by the Suez debacle. Britain and France were forced into a humiliating retreat.
The Suez invasion propelled Nasser to a pinnacle of prestige and influence. He was acclaimed as a latter-day Saladin, the architect of Western defeat. A Nasser cult took hold, both in Egypt and in the rest of the Arab world. The Suez crisis also enabled Nasser to sweep away layers of foreign influence in Egypt’s commercial, academic and social life. All British and French banks and companies were sequestrated, a total of 15,000 enterprises. In October 1958, he concluded a deal with the Soviet Union enabling the Aswan Dam project to proceed.
Suez marked the end of Britain’s imperial ambitions. Facing a rising tide of nationalism in its African colonies, the British government began to reconsider the merits of colonial rule there.