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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 October 2015
This article compares the rhetorical justifications surrounding two landmark instances of Western imperialism. In 1882, the British occupied Egypt, ousting indigenous proto-nationalist forces that supposedly threatened British and other foreign interests. The consequences of this intervention were still being worked out in 1956 when, in the wake of the Cairo regime's nationalization of the Suez Canal, the British again invaded. France participated on this occasion, with serious but differing political consequences for both. We suggest that comparing how the British and French argued about these issues, and also examining how the rhetoric of the later crisis contrasted with the earlier one, offers useful insights into the two nations' respective imperial cultures. Specifically, we suggest that the latter-day imperialists Anthony Eden and Guy Mollet couched their actions in internationalist rhetoric reminiscent both of the Gladstone government's justifications for intervention in 1882 and of French official explanations for their takeover in Tunisia a year earlier. Each claimed their actions were taken both to uphold better standards of governance and to restore regional order, itself a highly loaded concept. The language of imperial domination was eschewed; but the ends of empire were served by the use of this rhetoric of ‘liberal order’.
Research for this article was supported by The Leverhulme Trust. The authors would like to thank the journal's editors and anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts.
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26 Dilke's speech, reported in the Daily News, 1 Feb. 1882.
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51 Jennifer Pitts has argued that during the nineteenth century ‘The vision of international law as an order of purely European origins to be imposed gradually on the rest of the world eclipsed more pluralistic understandings of possible global legalities’: ‘Legal universalisms in the eighteenth century’, American Historical Review, 117 (2012), pp. 92–121CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Gladstone's understanding of international law appears to have fallen within that pattern.
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61 The same rhetorical ploys depicting military incursion as politically urgent and ethically imperative were used to justify creeping French imperial control in Vietnam: Ministère de la Marine et des Colonies, ‘Note sur les affaires du Tonkin’, no date, Apr. 1880; ‘Note sur l'exécution des traits de 1874 conclus avec l'Annam’, May 1880, 77PAAP4, MAE.
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70 Président de la Chambre Syndicale des négociants-commissionnaires, 16 Jan. 1883, letter to M. le Président du Conseil; réponse de Jules Ferry, 7 Dec. 1883, Egypte/Commission d'Alexandrie, 1882–3, 23ADP8, MAE.
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94 Lewis, ‘Geographies’, p. 802. In 1900, as much as seven-eighths of Tunisia's white settler population had Italian, mainly Sicilian, roots: Choate, ‘Identity politics’, p. 101.
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98 De Freycinet inaugural speech, 31 Jan. 1882, débats parlementaires, Journal Officiel, p. 69.
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102 Cabinet Minutes, CM (56) 54th Conclusions, 27 July 1956, CAB 128/30, TNA.
103 Anthony Eden to Dwight D. Eisenhower, 27 July 1956, PREM 11/1098, TNA.
104 On the legal issues surrounding the use of force, see Lewis Johnman, ‘Playing the role of a Cassandra: Sir Gerald Fitzmaurice, senior legal adviser to the Foreign Office’, in Saul Kelly and Anthony Gorst, eds., Whitehall and the Suez Crisis (London, 2000), pp. 46–63.
105 HC Deb 30 July 1956, vol. 557, cols. 918–21; HC Deb 2 Aug. 1956, vol. 557, cols. 1602–9.
106 HC Deb 2 Aug. 1956, vol. 557, cols. 1636–40.
107 Tony Shaw, Eden, Suez and the mass media: propaganda and persuasion during the Suez Crisis (London, 2009), pp. 24–30. On press attitudes, see also Parmentier, Guillaume, ‘The British press in the Suez Crisis’, Historical Journal, 23 (1980), pp. 435–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Negrine, Ralph, ‘The press and the Suez Crisis: a myth reexamined’, Historical Journal, 25 (1982), pp. 975–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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109 ‘MP accuses Mr. Dulles of “betraying” premier’, Manchester Guardian, 6 Oct. 1956.
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113 HC Deb 2 Aug. 1956, vol. 557, cols. 1653–61.
114 Williams, Diary of Hugh Gaitskell, p. 565 (entry for 2–3 Aug. 1956).
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116 Ibid.; Janet Morgan, ed., The backbench diaries of Richard Crossman, Book Club Associates (London, 1981), p. 508 (entry for 5 Sept. 1956).
117 ‘Dulles predicts ‘“moral force” will solve Suez Canal Crisis without use of troops’, News and Courier (Charleston, SC), 4 Aug. 1956; Andrew Preston, Sword of the spirit, shield of faith: religion in American war and diplomacy (New York, NY, 2012), chs. 21 and 23.
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119 See Cairo radio's quotation of an article by Anwar al-Sadat, 1 Aug. 1956, in ‘Summary of world broadcasts part IV’, 2 Aug. 1956.
120 Nasser's broadcast of 12 Aug. 1956, in ‘Summary of world broadcasts part IV’, 14 Aug. 1956.
121 ‘Record of a meeting held in the foreign secretary's room, Foreign Office, August 1, 1956’, FO 371/119090, TNA.
122 British Embassy, Paris, to Foreign Office, 3 Aug. 1956, FO 371/119095, TNA.
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124 George H. Gallup, ed., The Gallup International Public Opinion Polls: Great Britain 1937–1975; vol. 11937–1964 (New York, NY, 1976), pp. 394–5, 398–9.
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135 Mireille Conia highlights the depth of local reaction to the dispatch of national servicemen to Algeria in the context of one provincial département, Haute-Marne. See her ‘La Haute-Marne: berceau des actions de solidarité envers les soldats’, in Raphaëlle Branche and Sylvie Thénault, eds., La France en guerre: experiences métropolitaines de la guerre d'indépendance algérienne (Paris, 2008), pp. 58–69.
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137 Guy Mollet, ‘La France sans l'Algérie, ce ne serait plus la France’, 2ème séance du 9 Mars 1956, in Jansen, ed., Les grands discours, pp. 220–2.
138 Preface and ‘Séance du 10 Février 1956’, in Jansen, ed., Les grands discours, pp. 205–9.
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140 Mollet, ‘La France sans l'Algérie’, pp. 222–4.
141 Jacques Fauvet, ‘L'affaire de Suez offre une nouvelle occasion de conflit entre les communistes et M. Guy Mollet’, Le Monde, 6 Aug. 1956.
142 Keith Kyle, Suez: Britain's end of empire in the Middle East (new edn, London, 2011), p. 115; also cited in Hughes, Postwar legacy of appeasement, p. 49.
143 The complexities and contradictions of former resisters overseeing the repression of anti-colonial resistance in Algeria have been explored by, among others, Martin Evans, The memory of resistance: French opposition to the Algerian War (1954–1962) (Oxford, 1992); and Bertrand Hamelin, ‘Les Résistants et la guerre d'Algérie (1954–1962): quelques jalons problématiques’, in Branche et Thénault, eds., La France en guerre, pp. 138–42.
144 Abel Thomas, Comment Israël fut sauvé: les secrets de l'expédition de Suez (Paris, 1978), pp. 25–6; also cited in Vaïsse, ‘France and the Suez Crisis’, p. 132.
145 Levey, ‘French–Israeli relations’, p. 102.
146 Vaïsse, ‘France and the Suez Crisis’, p. 134.
147 Levey, ‘French–Israeli relations’, pp. 87–9, 103–6.
148 ‘M. Mendès-France: Français et Anglais sont intervenus trop tard’, Le Monde, 20 Nov. 1956.
149 ‘M André Philip reproche au gouvernement sa politique au Moyen-Orient et en Algérie’, Le Monde, 22 Nov. 1956.
150 Ibid.
151 Maurice Vaïsse, ‘Post-Suez France’, in Louis and Owen, eds., Suez 1956, p. 337.
152 Philip published this fierce critique of his former party as Le Socialisme trahi (Socialism betrayed) in 1958. The moral crisis in the French Socialist party triggered by Algeria, and exacerbated by Suez, is nicely described by Benjamin Stora, La gangrène et l'oubli: la mémoire de la guerre d'Algérie (Paris, 1991), pp. 74–9.
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155 See Christian Pineau, 1956/Suez (Paris, 1976), pp. 25–9, 37–41, 139–47, 189–91.
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