Origins of the Suez Crisis: Postwar Development Diplomacy and the Struggle over Third World Industrialization, 1945–1956

By Guy Laron

Delving into archival material from six countries, Laron offers a much deeper, nuanced perspective of the Suez Crisis.

Origins of the Suez Crisis describes the long run-up to the 1956 Suez Crisis and the crisis itself by focusing on politics, economics, and foreign policy decisions in Egypt, Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Based on Arabic source material, as well as multilingual documents from Israeli, Soviet, Czech, American, Indian, and British archives, this is the first historical narrative to discuss the interaction among all of the players involved--rather than simply British and U.S. perspectives.

Guy Laron highlights the agency of smaller players and shows how they used Cold War rivalries to advance their own economic circumstances and, ultimately, their status in the global order. He argues that, for developing countries and the superpowers alike, more was at stake than U.S.-USSR one-upmanship; the question of Third World industrialization was seen as crucial to their economies.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1421410117
• ISBN13: 9781421410111
• Release Date: August 2013
• Publisher: Woodrow Wilson Center Press
• Length: 280 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.0" x 9.0"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher