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During the 1950s, Britain, France the USA and the USSR all conducted great power politics and diplomacy in the Middle East, competing to court and undermine rising nationalist movements in Egypt, Sudan, Jordan and beyond. This podcast explores the wider context of these interactions and their culmination in the Suez Crisis Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, pleas
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During the First World War, much of the fighting occurred in colonial Africa, which in 1918, the victorious powers believed could not rule itself. President Woodrow Wilson of the USA and Britain were able to collude on a neo colonial mandate system that mainly benefited them at the expense of France. All three had agreed that it was unthinkable that former German and Ottoman colonies be returned. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert i
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In the last years of Jimmy Carter’s presidency, the ruthless Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua was overthrown by the Sandinista revolutionaries, a coalition of the moderate and revolutionary left. The incoming Reagan administration in 1981 immediately froze aid to the Nicaragua and began to arm the anti Sandinista rebels, the Contras. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the
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When Britain, France and Russia secretly planned to carve up the Ottoman Empire in 1915, France made a claim on Ottoman Syria and acquired it as a mandate during the Paris Peace Conference. Brutality, colonial mendacity and a refusal to acknowledge the demands of Druze leaders and Syrian nationalists led to an explosion of anti colonial violence in 1925, along with an equally brutal response from the French occupiers. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical con
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In 1956 the British Government, led by Anthony Eden, embarked on a disastrous military adventure with France and Israel that divided the country, split both political parties and was conducted despite the misgivings of the navy and air force. The agreement to attack Egypt was decided by the three main powers at a villa at Sevres weeks before the invasion. Britain wished to removed an irritant in the form of Colonel Nasser, the nationalist leader of Egypt who had nationalised the Suez Canal, the
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As the allied powers deliberated at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, David Lloyd George encouraged the Greek prime minister Venizelos to seize the former Ottoman city of Smyrna. The consequences for the city, once a bastion of religious and cultural tolerance, would be tragic, but to the British simply consequence of a wider imperial game in the near east. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the
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During the Second World War, the fate of British and French mandates in the Middle East was a constant pressure on war time diplomacy and on American domestic policy. The legacies of the Anglo-French carve up of the Middle East after the war and the pressures placed on both empires by the Axis powers gave Jewish nationalism and the careerism of Roosevelt’s chief rival Wendell Wilkie new opportunities. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and exp
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A complete absence of intelligence about new German guns along the Dardanelles led Britain into a disastrous campaign against the Ottoman Empire in 1915, in the hope that naval power alone could defeat Germany’s ally and lead to a break through away from the western front. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.▸ Support the Show & Get Excl
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In a two month period Truman’s policy towards the Soviet Union became more entrenched in the face of Soviet advances in eastern Europe and Iran. Truman, with little foreign policy experience was swayed by wartime diplomats such as George Kennan and the former Prime Minister of Britain, Winston Churchill. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and sha
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How did a combination of Wilsonian liberal internationalism and British colonial ideas about civilisation intersect with Britain’s objectives in expanding its territories after the First World War? The Mandate system for administering German and Ottoman colonies was a largely British project, influenced by American internationalism and resented by the French. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the