Nasser

Question 1

Why was 1948 a watershed moment

Answer 1

Should have won the war. Led to disillusionment. Nasser fought in war and felt like they were not provided with thew right equipment or support from Egypt to win war. Nasser realised govt and monarch – dominated by Britain- did not create a good army to fight Israel etc. Felt betrayed by king and colonialism

Question 2

Effect for leaders after 1948 war

Answer 2

Some countries effect dramatic for army officers and regimes in the way they were led into the war and led to a series of coup d’état

Question 3

Coup in Egypt

Answer 3

Free Army Officers led by Nasser overthrew king Farouk in July 1952

Question 4

Muslim Brotherhood and Nasser

Answer 4

1954 Nasser suppressed rival power bloc – Muslim brotherhood Islamic group

Question 5

Nasser and Suez canal

Answer 5

1956 Suez crisis made Nasser most powerful man in Arab world because he challenged colonial power

Question 6

British reaction to nationalisation of canal

Answer 6

Britain tried to take canal back by force. Britain had to retreat and Nasser won-Led to Al-Watan Al-Akbar (Arabic: الوطن الأكبر‎, translated The Greatest Homeland) was an Arab Nationalist song composed by the Egyptian Mohammed Abdel Wahab in 1960.

Question 7

names for war over canal

Answer 7

suez crisis - europe

tripartite agression - arab

Question 8

Why was Nasser so popular

Answer 8

Chasing down colonial masters, support Palestinians, redistribution of power from elites to peasants etc

Question 9

What was the land reform implemented by Nasser?

Answer 9

Land reform – 2000 people owned a 1/5 of land in Egypt. Pay feudal dues to pasha who control land if on it. Can’t purchase any of it or the pasha henchmen will rip shirt off your back as getting above station. No control over land or means of production
above station. No control over land or means of production

Holding cut 4000 to 200 1961 only 100 acres

Gave peasantry opportunity to own and control land

Question 10

Social reforms of Nasser

Answer 10

· Industrialisation, education, building of high dam,
People being able to make gains from countryside, get a job, get a pension

HOWEVER

Perceived lack of freedom in that era – woman talking- everything needed permission, stamp – so much bureaucracy. A lot of public expenditure allocated poor distribution Inc. education. Discriminative for middle class in expense of poor

Question 11

Nasser seen by other Arab states?

Answer 11

Other Arab states perspective- on one grand epitome of person stood up to imperialism, very powerful figure. 1956 Iraqis under Hashemite monarchy, Algeria French rule – he gave them inspirations. Young Yemeni officer sae him as ideal to overthrow Yemeni monarchy. Monarchies saw him as a huge threat. He was attacking their allies but made a point that republican socialism was the future

Question 12

What does Charles Tripp say about the UAR

Answer 12

· Charles Tripp political manoeuvring also play the role in coming demise. A socially divided unequal society - class, rich and poor. Communist parties became active. Fear of communism more that actual in Syria. Up and coming Baathist socialist party fear that communist taking their ideology. Solution to petition Nasser. Group of Syrian officers flew to Cairo to ask them to accept a union.
· Agreed union only if he could rule over Syria. United Arab Republic born.

Question 13

When was the UAR created

Answer 13

1958

Question 14

When was UAR dissolved

Answer 14

1961

Question 15

Why was UAR dissolved

Answer 15

· Iraq Jordan and Lebanon seemed like they might join - In end none of it happened. For many in Syria Nasser’s nationalism was different from reality that ensued
· Syrian political institutions had to be dissolved, military had to be dissolved, positions of power given to Egyptians
· 3 years Syria ceded from UAR
· Experience of union had impact on Baath party. UAR demand Nasser demand that Baath and army dissolved. Resent. Baathist military officer stayed together. Jadid, al-Assad, maintained a consiprital organisation
· Pushed aside civilian nationalist like aflaq
· Rise of military in Syria normal in Arab world. The army revelaed as main decision maker and spearheads ruling elite. Produces political leader.

Question 16

June 5 and 10, 1967 six day war

Answer 16

· Like many nationalist Nasser placed the Palestinian disaster at the top. However he saw Israel as a threat to Arab union. Israel considered Nasser a threat
· 1967 war broke out - Israel, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Israel won
· Dream gone of nationalism, Nasser no longer infallible hero. 3 yrs. later Nasser dead. Arabs lost symbol and leader of nationalism

Question 17

Bghdad pact

Answer 17

In 1955, the British formed an anti-Soviet alliance with Turkey and Iran, later called the Baghdad Pact. They tried to persuade the government of Iraq, which was an Arab state, to join. Nasser was furious. He did not want any Arab state to join. It seemed that the British were interfering in Arab affairs yet again. Nasser saw the alliance as an instrument of western intervention and he feared that Jordan, Lebanon and Syria might also be seduced into joining. That would leave Egypt very isolated. He therefore launched a massive propaganda campaign to prevent Iraq from joining.

Question 18

nassers opposition to western imperialism

Answer 18

Nasser’s opposition to what he saw as Western imperialism won so much Arab support that only Iraq, out of all the Arab states, was able to join the Baghdad Pact. Public opinion in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, was swept along by Nasser’s dazzling oratory and made it impossible for their governments to join the alliance. It was Egypt’s opposition to any Western alliance that was thus the main contributor to the rise of Arab nationalism in the 1950s. However, although Nasser was hugely popular in the Arab world, he felt he could not defend his country while the West refused to sell him arms. He needed these to defend Egypt against the threat of Israel. This became particularly urgent in 1955.

Question 19

nasser and soviets

Answer 19

. This he did through the Soviet Union’s Communist ally, Czechoslovakia. In September 1955, Nasser announced that he had agreed to buy arms from the Czech government. In return for sales of cotton and rice, Egypt was to be supplied with weapons, including Soviet aircraft and tanks. Now, at last, Nasser had secured the weapons Egypt needed to defend itself. The announcement of the Czech arms deal had an electrifying effect. On the streets of the Arab cities of Damascus, Amman, and Baghdad there was rejoicing. Nasser was seen as a saviour, throwing off the domination of the West and securing the defence of the Arab world. Now at last, the Arabs had achieved their victory over ‘imperialism’ and its ‘illegitimate offspring’, Israel.

Question 20

winning suez war

Answer 20

Nasser himself recognised that he had been saved by American intervention but, on the radio and throughout the Arab world, it was Egyptian resistance that was portrayed as having won the day. Nasser became the hero of the Arab world. He had stood up to Britain and France and had gained complete control of the Suez Canal and of a large quantity of British military stores. With American aid, the Canal was cleared and reopened in April 1957.
Arab cities erupted in anti-Western demonstrations and riots, Nasser’s name was chanted and Arab governments came under huge pressure to bring their policies into line with Egypt. Syria and Saudi Arabia broke off relations with Britain and France, while Jordan signed a military pact with Syria and Egypt. Nasser’s charisma, his perceived victory over Suez and the predominance of Cairo radio had contributed to an ever-rising tide of Arab nationalism. This reached its height, in 1958, when Syria demanded a complete merger with Egypt so as to form one state.

Question 21

plo and nasser

Answer 21

Presenting the Israeli project as an act of aggression and a challenge to the whole Arab world, Nasser called for a conference of Arab leaders in Cairo in January 1964. At this conference, the leaders agreed to set up the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) to represent the Palestinian people in the struggle for the ‘liberation of Palestine’. In effect, the Arab leaders had postponed the issue of how to deal with the Israeli threat but had put on a show of solidarity.

Over the next three years, the new Syrian government actively supported the PLO in launching guerrilla raids into Israel. Nasser did not yet want war with Israel: he knew that Israel was a stronger military power than Syria and Egypt combined. Yet he felt drawn to support radical, Arab nationalists, especially in the struggle with Israel. In 1966, the Egyptian government signed a defence agreement with Syria which stated that aggression against either state would be considered an attack on the other. Nasser rose again as the outstanding champion of the Arab cause. But the agreement with Syria paved the way for the chain of events that led to the Six Day War in 1967. This war was a disaster for the Arab states of Egypt, Syria and Jordan.

Question 22

nasser a revolutionary and stabling influence

Answer 22

Nasser left his mark on nearly two decades of Egyptian, Arab and world history. In so doing he evoked strong and conflicting feelings. To some he was a nationalist hero, to others a war-mongering dictator and international troublemaker. He was in fact both a revolutionary and a stabilising influence in the Middle East. At a time: when Arab society was in danger of collapse and of leaving the field to the Communists, the reactionary fanaticism of the Muslim Brothers, a narrow nationalistic military fascism; or chaos, Nasser’s provision of continuous, stable and relatively progressive government in the biggest and most developed Arab state, helped to ensure that in most cases change in Arab society took place in a comparatively bloodless way - the Yemen revolution and civil war were an outstanding exception.

Question 23

nasser leading anti colonial power

Answer 23

Nasser was the most important statesman thrown up by the Arab renaissance. He was also a leading figure in the anti-colonial revolutions, one of the great world political movements of the twentieth century. An Egyptian, a Muslim and a self-proclaimed Arab, he was also a product and animator of the same anti-colonial, anti-imperialist and modernising revolution that produced Nehru and Mao Tse-tung, Sukarno and Nkrumah, Castro and Ho Chi Minh. He belonged to the heroic age of national liberation movements. But he also overlapped into the second stage of Third World concern with social, economic and unification problems - how to organise newly liberated nation-states, above all how to achieve economic as well as political independence, now the central theme of Third World politics in the movement for a ‘new international economic order’.

Question 24

1967 and nasser

Answer 24

Until his colossal blunder of the 1967 war, Nasser’s reputation as a ruler of Egypt seemed to be securely based. He had achieved complete independence through the end of the British occupation and the removal of a subservient monarchy of foreign origins. He had accepted the independence of the Sudan. He had nationalised the Suez Canal Company and built the High Dam, carried out land reform and launched a broad programme of industrialisation, mass education and social reform. His relative and varied success in these respects was qualified by his failure to create a self-sustaining dynamic political system which would dispense with control through the army, secret police and press censorship; by the ineffectual restraints on Egypt’s rapid population growth; by the persistence of massive unemployment and rural poverty and - as the most developed countries - the accumulation of a heavy foreign debt; and by the large sums spent on the armed forces and the intervention in the Yemen.

Question 25

soviet and nasser

Answer 25

In the Third World Nasser had established himself, like Tito, as one of the leading exponents of non-alignment, but his deep commitment to the anti-colonial and. anti-imperial struggle in Afro-Asia led him to lean on Russian support where the West appeared to be the enemy.
Having rejected a Western alliance and protection in the pursuit of complete independence and non-alignment, he found himself relying heavily on Soviet military and diplomatic support. Having sought financial independence and economic aid without political strings, he was faced with a foreign indebtedness of 1,000 million pounds and dependence on subsidies from Arab governments, including his chief Arab opponent, King Feisal of Saudi Arabia.

Question 26

1922 - 52

Answer 26

Even though, formal independence was wrested from the British by countrywide uprisings and demonstrations, under the leadership of Wafd Party, in 1922, they continued to dominate and occupy Egypt until the 1952 Egyptian Bourgeois Democratic Revolution was launched successfully by the Free Officers Movement of the armed forces that abolished monarchy and replaced it with a republic. The 1922 National Liberation Revolution had succeeded in establishing Egypt as a sovereign state but this sovereignty was partial and formal and the reign of puppet monarchal dynasty was continued under King Fuad.

Read more at: http://www.modernghana.com/news/321683/imperialism-and-the-historical-context-of-the-developing-201.html

Question 27

Egypt pressures from the west

Answer 27

After the success of 1952 revolution, Egypt was subjected to various types of economic, political, and military discriminatory pressures by Western imperialism and Zionism. In the Suez Canal Crisis, the Tripartite Aggression was launched against it by the armed forces of Britain, France, and Israel on 29 October, 1956, after it nationalized the Suez Canal on 26 July, 1956. As a result of the heroic resistance of Egyptian armed forces and military threats of USSR, the invaders were forced to withdraw their forces shortly afterwards and to recognize the sovereignty of Egypt over its Suez Canal territory.

Read more at: http://www.modernghana.com/news/321683/imperialism-and-the-historical-context-of-the-developing-201.html

Question 28

monarches and nasser

Answer 28

· Other Arab states perspective- on one grand epitome of person stood up to imperialism, very powerful figure. 1956 Iraqis under Hashemite monarchy, Algeria French rule – he gave them inspirations. Young Yemeni officer sae him as ideal to overthrow Yemeni monarchy. Monarchies saw him as a huge threat. He was attacking their allies but made a point that republican socialism was the future

Question 29

argue anti imperialism embraced, ba’ath party in syria

Answer 29

· Syria a lot of support Arab nationalism – Ba’ath party created – other main strand of nationalism. Objected colonial borders implemented by Britain and France decades earlier. Created by Aflaq - a secular party. Baathism harder edge that nasserism. Closed ideology. Ideology that has an exclusive tack. Nasser more inclusive.

Question 30

nasser and suez

Answer 30

The most obvious source of a foreign power being dominant in Egypt was the British/French control of the Suez Canal. Completed in 1869, the canal was designed by Ferdinand de Lesseps. However the vast bulk of the physical labour required to build this engineering marvel was done by Egyptian nationals. Britain had a 40% holding in the company that ran the canal. However, despite the fact that the canal was on Egyptian ‘soil’, the benefits it brought the people of Egypt were minimal. In 1956, Nasser nationalised the canal – provoking an attack on Egypt by the French and British. This attack was condemned at an international level and the British and French had to withdraw their forces when it became clear that America did not support what they had done. In fact, the American president, Eisenhower, was openly critical of Britain and France.

Question 31

Dam

Answer 31

One of the most pressing problems Egypt faced on an annual basis was the flooding of the River Nile which could decimate fertile farming land. Nasser’s plan was to build a dam to hold back the mighty waters of the Nile which would also provide Egypt with hydro-electric power.

Neither Britain nor France could have been asked to assist in the project. Asking America – who openly supported Israel – was politically impossible for Nasser. Hence he turned to America’s Cold War enemy – the Soviet Union. The USSR provided the capital and the engineers for the huge project.

Question 32

nasser ussr

Answer 32

Egypt and the USSR were curious bed-fellows. One was a Muslim nation while the other, a communist nation, had banned all forms of religion and had shut down all places of religious worship. However, for Nasser, the Russians provided Egypt with what they needed after the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development had withdrawn its financial support for the project after 1956. For Russia, there was the opportunity to gain a foothold in the Mediterranean Sea – the Black Sea Fleet was ‘trapped’ in the Black Sea and its movements were easily made known to the Americans. Egypt offered a way around this problem.

Question 33

iraq and hashemite monarchy

Answer 33

as per eugene rogan, military officers led by al-qassim were inspired by nasser and named themselves the free officers. Condemned hashemite monarchy for being too pro british . executed the royal family and announced by radio they had taken over.

Question 34

goal of iraq coup

Answer 34

The primary goal of the coup was to liberate Iraq from its imperial ties with the British and the United States. The Western powers dominated all sectors of Iraqi governance: national politics and reform, regional politics with its Arab and non-Arab neighbors, and economic policies. As a general rule, many Iraqis were resentful of the presence of Western powers in the region, especially the British. Furthermore, Hashemite monarchic rule could not be divorced from the image of imperial masters behind the monarchy. The monarchy had struggled to maintain power during the Al-Wathbah uprising in 1948 and the Iraqi Intifada of 1952.

Question 35

nasser and iraq revo

Answer 35

A growing number of educated elites in Iraq were becoming enamored with the ideals espoused by Nasser’s pan-Arabism movement. The ideas of qawmiyah found many willing adherents, particularly within the officer classes of the Iraqi military. The policies of Said were considered anathema by certain individuals within the Iraqi armed forces, and opposition groups began to form, modeled upon the Egyptian Free Officers Movement which had overthrown the Egyptian monarchy in 1952

Question 36

violence and iraq revo

Answer 36

By noon, Qasim had arrived in Baghdad with his forces and set up headquarters in the Ministry of Defence building. The conspirator’s attention now shifted towards locating al-Said, lest he escape and undermine the coup’s early success. A reward of 10,000 Iraqi dinar was offered for his capture,[25] and a large-scale search began. On 15 July he was spotted in a street in the al-Battawin quarter of Baghdad attempting to escape disguised in a woman’s abaya.[26] Said and his accomplice were both shot, and his body was buried in the cemetery at Bab al-Mu’azzam later that evening.[23]

Mob violence was to continue even in the wake of Said’s death. Spurred by Arif’s urges to liquidate traitors,[24] uncontrollable mobs took to the streets of Baghdad. The body of ‘Abd al-Ilah was taken from the palace, mutilated and dragged through the streets, finally being hung outside the Ministry of Defence. Several foreign nationals (including Jordanian and American citizens) staying at the Baghdad Hotel were killed by the mob. Mass mob violence did not die down until Qasim imposed a curfew, yet this did not prevent the disinterment, mutilation, and parading of Said’s corpse through the streets of Baghdad the day after its burial.[27]