The First Suez Crisis
In 1956 the Suez Canal seemed to flow through every British drawing room and the limits of British power and influence were forcefully brought home - but it had been a different story in 1882, explains Christopher Danziger, when the first Suez Crisis brought Britain prestige and the expansion of her Empire.
Most people know something about the Suez Crisis. By that they mean, of course, the crisis of 1956, when the Egyptians nationalised the canal. But if there had not been another Suez Crisis, in 1882, then the fiasco of 1956 would not have happened. The crisis of 1882 had a very different outcome, and it was really decided by a single battle, whose centenary falls this month, and although it has never passed into popular folklore like Rorke's Drift or Omdurman, it is difficult to think of any battle fought by the British in the last quarter of the nineteenth century which was more important in the long term.
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