The Suez Crisis of 1956: a turning point of the British foreign policy?

The Suez Crisis of 1956 still attracts a keen interest of domestic and foreign, especially British, historians. The first decade of the 21st century noted a surge of monographs and articles devoted to a comprehensive and thorough study of the events of the autumn of 1956. This situation, first of all, refers to Western historiography; however, Russian historical science, responding to the opening of the archives of the United Kingdom and other countries, had new fundamental publications related to the history of the triple Anglo-French-Israeli intervention in 1956. In describing the events of the autumn of 1956, the author also touches upon the Hungarian Crisis that coincided with the triple Anglo-French-Israel intervention and had a significant impact on the discussion of the events in the area of the Suez Canal in the Security Council and the General Assembly of the United Nations. Particular attention is paid to the reaction of the USA and the USSR on the Suez and Hungarian Crises. For the first time during the Cold War, Moscow and Washington were on the same side against the colonial powers and strongly condemned the military action against Egypt. At the same time, the White House could not use unrest in Hungary for propaganda purposes. The author, referring to the history of the events of the summer and autumn of 1956, builds material of the article around a search for an answer to the question of whether it is possible to consider the events of the autumn of 1956 a turning point of the British foreign policy. This formulation of the problem is due to the advent of the so-called revisionist trend in British historiography which presented a new view of events related to the implementation and consequences of the Suez operation against Egypt in 1956. Revisionists deny the Suez Crisis as a line after which the British policy in the Near and Middle East changed dramatically. However, questions remain about the impact of the events of the autumn of 1956 on the colonial policy and other areas of foreign policy of Britain. For the UK, the crisis highlighted the need to rethink the chosen strategy not only in the Middle East, but also in the matters of decolonization, which at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s acquired a prompt character in connection with the strengthening of the so-called "non-aligned movement" and the growth of the Asian and African countries in the UN. The Suez crisis had a clear impact on the political crisis in the country and had an important psychological impact on the perception of the country by the population and by the political elite. In the early 1957, Prime Minister Anthony Eden resigned and H. Macmillan became a new head of government. He put forward new initiatives in the field of colonial and European policy. A new chapter began in British history.

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