Nasser, Suez and Arab Nationalism

In July 1956 the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal Company, seizing the great waterway from the British and French interests that had owned and run it since the nineteenth century, and declaring that its revenues would build Egypt, after Western powers withdrew an offer to finance the Aswan High Dam. It was a bold assertion of Egyptian and Arab sovereignty over a potent symbol of foreign domination, and it was met with jubilation across the Arab world. In October 1956 Britain, France and Israel launched a secretly coordinated invasion of Egypt, the Suez Crisis, known in Arabic as the Tripartite Aggression, but under combined American and Soviet pressure the three were forced into a humiliating withdrawal, and Nasser emerged with an enormous political victory. For the following decade he was the towering figure of Arab nationalism, and his pan-Arabism, broadcast across the region by radio, with its promise of Arab unity, social justice, dignity and independence from both colonialism and the old order, swept the Arab world and inspired movements far beyond Egypt, until the catastrophic defeat of 1967 broke its spell. This scene depicts the high tide of that moment, a great celebrating crowd in a Cairo square under the eagle banners of Arab nationalism in 1956, with the contested canal in the distance.