“The Suez Crisis (Routledge Sources in History)”, by Anthony Gorst and Lewis Johnman

 

186 pages, Routledge, ISBN-13: 978-0415114509

The Suez Crisis by Anthony Gorst and Lewis Johnman – which is part of a larger series called Routledge Sources in History – is a succinct book that describes and documents a turning point in British history. Controversy still surrounds the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt in 1956 and the role of senior British politicians, such as the Prime Minister Anthony Eden, especially since the Suez Canal crisis is thought to have been a radical catalyst by which Britain, racked by postwar rebuilding and the loss of Empire, finally lost her status as a world power. This volume traces the history of Anglo-Egyptian relations since the opening of the canal and Britain’s wider interests in the region; the crisis itself, from its development to the invasion and the aftermath, is fully explored, as are the wider implications of the episode, both for Britain and on a global scale. A wide range of documentary evidence is carefully woven into textual analysis, including: key British and American government sources, photographs, cartoons, diary entries, interviews and extracts from newspapers. The significance of individual sources (and their usefulness for historians) is highlighted, as one might expect from a textbook.

The main focus of this book is the “post-war decline from great power status” and the economics behind the crisis. The authors write, “Suez highlights the central fact of post-war British history that it no longer possessed an economy that was capable of sustaining a great power role…” The views expressed in this book describe the reasons behind the economic decline in Britain, decline that is closely linked to decolonization in Africa, post-war economies, and the Suez crisis. The authors, however, do not present the Suez crisis as the turning point that changed the course of Britain's history; instead they discuss the domestic and external policies of Britain to address the decline of the great world power. With that in mind, I still wish that the book focused on other players in the conflict, such as the French, Americans, Egyptians and even the Italians. For all that, I found this book helpful in understanding how the crisis unfolded and British reactions to the many events that were taking place.