The Crimean War Versus the Suez Crisis

Jenkins, Peter S.

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-14078-6_8

The Crimean War Versus the Suez Crisis

Peter S. Jenkins²

Chapter
First Online: 08 June 2019

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Abstract

The Crimean War (1853–1856) occurred during a period of rising happiness in the British Parliament, and the Suez Crisis of 1956, during a period of falling happiness, although the absolute happiness levels were similar in both times. This chapter finds that the outbreak of the Crimean War was caused by the Russophobe faction in the British Cabinet (the non-depressive Lords Palmerston and Russell) which prevailed over the Russophile one (the depressive Lords Aberdeen and Gladstone), so that Britain overestimated Russia’s resolve to dismember the Ottoman Empire. This chapter also concludes that the reason for the outbreak of the Suez Crisis was Britain’s underestimation of Nasser’s resolve in 1954 when the ailing and depressive Prime Minister Winston Churchill, together with his obsequious Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, agreed to withdraw British Forces from Egypt, leading to Nasser’s decision to nationalize the Canal.

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Notes

1.
Gavin B. Henderson, “The Seymour Conversations, 1853” History, Vol. XVIII, No. 3 (October 1933), 241–247.
2.
Ibid.
3.
Kingsley Martin, The Triumph of Lord Palmerston: A Study of Public Opinion Before the Crimean War (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1924), p. 18.
4.
Norman Rich, Why the Crimean War? A Cautionary Tale (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1985), pp. 32–33.
5.
Brunnow to Nesselrode, February 21, 1853, A.M. Zaionchkovskii, Vostochnaia Voina, 2 vols., St. Petersburg, 1908–1913.
6.
A.J.P. Taylor, The Struggle for the Mastery of Europe, 1848–1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), p. 61.
7.
Russell to Clarendon, March 20, 1853, Spencer Walpole, The Life of Lord John Russell, 2 vols., Vol. 2 (London, 1889), p. 181.
8.
Bernhard Unckel, Österreich und der Krimkrieg. Studien zur Politik der Donaumonarchie in den Jahren 1852–1856 (Lübeck, 1969), p. 89.
9.
A.M. Zaionchkovskii, Vol. 1, #98, pp. 357–358.
10.
Alexandre Jomini, Diplomatic Study on the Crimean War (1852 to 1856), Russian Official Publication, 2 vols., Vol. 1, English translation (London: W.H. Allen and Co., 1882), pp. 511–512.
11.
Norman Rich, pp. 8–9.
12.
F.A. Simpson, Louis Napoleon and the Recovery of France, 1848–56 (London: Longman, Greens & Co., 1923), pp. 220–240.
13.
A.C. Benson and R. Brett (eds.), The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol. 2, 1844–1853 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1907), p. 560.
14.
Ibid.
15.
Available at: https://tinyurl.com/yd5dtl7r.
16.
Alexander Kinglake, The Invasion of the Crimea: Its Origin and an Account of Its Progress Down to the Death of Lord Raglan, 8 vols., Vol. 1 (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1863–1867), pp. 484–197.
17.
F.A. Simpson, pp. 220–240.
18.
Norman Rich, pp. 38–39.
19.
Ibid., p. 113.
20.
Seymour to Clarendon, February 21, 1854, FO 65/445.
21.
R.H. Davison, “‘Russian Skill and Turkish Imbecility’: The Treaty of Kuchuk Kainardji Reconsidered” Slavic Review, Vol. 35, No. 3 (September 1976), pp. 463–483.
22.
A.M. Zaionchkovskii, Vol. 1, #147, pp. 434–436.
23.
Ann Pottinger Saab, The Origins of the Crimean Alliance (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1977), pp. 82–90.
24.
H. Thomas, The Suez Affair (London: Wiedenfed and Nicholson, 1966).
25.
John Campbell, Pistols at Dawn: Two Hundred Years of Political Rivalry from Pitt & Fox to Blair & Brown (London: Vintage Press, 2010), p. 232.
26.
Anthony Nutting, No End of a Lesson (New York: Potter, 1967), p. 145.
27.
Anthony Eden, Full Circle (Cambridge: Houghton Mifflin, 1960), p. 290.
28.
Ibid., p. 276.
29.
Ibid., p. 388.
30.
Ibid., p. 374.
31.
Stephen Dorril, MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service (London: Simon & Schuster, 2002), p. 613.
32.
Shuckburgh to Kirkpatrick, March 2, 1956, FO371/121542/VJ1201/57.
33.
Cabinet Secretary’s Notebook, March 5, 1956, CAB195/14, TNA.
34.
Graham Jevon, Glubb Pasha and the Arab Legion: Britain, Jordan and the End of Empire in the Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), p. 251.
35.
Bert E. Park, M.D., Aging, Ailing, Addicted: Studies of Compromised Leadership (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993), p. 158.
36.
Eden, Full Circle, p. 497.
37.
Ibid., p. 505.
38.
Park, p. 162.
39.
Eden, p. 540.
40.
Ibid., p. 590.
41.
Ibid.
42.
Ibid., pp. 580–581; Park, p. 153.
43.
Park, pp. 145–167.
44.
Guillaume Parmentier, “The British Press in the Suez Crisis” The Historical Journal, Vol. 23, No. 2 (1980), pp. 435–448.

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Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada
Peter S. Jenkins

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Jenkins, P.S. (2019). The Crimean War Versus the Suez Crisis. In: War and Happiness. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14078-6_8

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14078-6_8
Published: 08 June 2019
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-14077-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-14078-6
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