Эпизод 31: Британия побеждала в Суэце, пока Вашингтон не начал атаку на фунт

The real story of the Suez Crisis of 1956, and the part the military version leaves out. Britain was winning on the ground when it retreated, and what forced it home was not a battle. It was a run on the pound, and an ally who could have stopped the fall and chose not to. Everyone remembers Suez as a military humiliation. It was not one. In the autumn of 1956 British and French forces landed at Port Said and were taking the canal that Egypt's president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, had nationalized that July. Militarily, the operation was working. What was collapsing was the money. Sterling was still the world's second reserve currency, oversized and fragile, and once the fighting began, holders around the world started dumping it. To defend sterling, Britain had to spend its reserves of gold and dollars, and in the single month of November those reserves fell by roughly an eighth of everything the country had left. There was a way to stop the bleeding. Britain could draw a large loan from the International Monetary Fund, enough to steady the pound and ride out the run. But the deciding voice at the Fund was the United States, and Washington had made up its mind. President Eisenhower, furious that he had not been told about the operation and that it was launched just as Soviet tanks rolled into Hungary, let it be known there would be no loan and no emergency American oil, not until Britain agreed to a ceasefire and a withdrawal. His Treasury Secretary, George Humphrey, held the tap. Harold Macmillan, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and until then one of the most hawkish men in the Cabinet, looked at how fast the reserves were leaving and reversed in a matter of days. He did the arithmetic and concluded the country could not afford its own war. In early December the Cabinet agreed to withdraw. The troops that had been winning were pulled out, the canal still in Egyptian hands. The moment the retreat was certain, the tap opened. The loan came through, and the oil began to move to Europe again. Who was overthrown, and who collected. What fell at Suez was not a government in Cairo. Nasser stayed, stronger than ever. What fell was the idea that Britain still set its own course. Within weeks the prime minister, Anthony Eden, was gone. Within a year the United States announced the Eisenhower Doctrine and stepped into the role in the Middle East that Britain had just proven it could no longer hold. The country that had marched into Egypt in 1882 as a creditor, collecting a debt at gunpoint, was in 1956 the debtor, made to retreat by a creditor of its own. The same weapon, used both times. Only the hand on it had changed. Chapters: 0:00 Winning at Suez and Going Broke 1:38 Disraeli Buys the Canal Overnight 3:25 Egypt Occupied for Its Debts 4:52 The Pound Everyone Could Run On 6:56 Nasser Takes the Canal Back 8:59 The Secret Plot at Sevres 10:22 Washington Puts a Run on Sterling 12:25 The Loan Washington Would Not Release 14:38 Macmillan Does the Arithmetic 15:56 The Creditor Decides Sources / further reading: The Egyptian nationalization decree of 26 July 1956 and the British Cabinet minutes of the withdrawal decision. - the nationalization, the reserve crisis and the decision to pull out The Bank of England reserve figures for September to December 1956. - the scale and speed of the reserve drain The US Treasury and International Monetary Fund correspondence on the British drawing. - the loan withheld until Britain agreed to withdraw Foreign Relations of the United States, Suez Crisis, 1955 to 1957. - the diplomatic record and the American position at the Fund Britannica and World History Encyclopedia. - the 1875 canal share purchase, the 1882 occupation and uncontested chronology only Documentary only. This draws on the declassified diplomatic record, the Bank of England reserve figures and standard reference histories, and where the reading is disputed, the battlefield against the balance sheet, the video says so. #SuezCrisis #ColdWarHistory #BritishEmpire #EconomicHistory #HiddenHistory