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When did Nasser become a member of the United Arab Republic?
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Was Nasser an Arab nationalist before he was an Egyptian?
The United Arab Republic was established on 1 February 1958 [3] as the first step towards a larger pan-Arab state, originally being proposed to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser by a group of political and military leaders in Syria.
With the establishment of the United Arab Republic, the United States under President Eisenhower attempted to build better relations and initiate a rapprochement between the two countries, contrasting with the previously cautious stance of the American government towards Nasser. [172]
- Overview
- Early life
- Attainment of power
Born in Alexandria, Gamal Abdel Nasser grew up in Al-Khaṭāṭibah, where he received his first schooling. He lived in Cairo with an uncle for a time before returning to Alexandria. Constantly in trouble with schoolteachers, Nasser also participated in anti-British street demonstrations. In one he received a blow on his forehead that left a lifelong scar.
How did Gamal Abdel Nasser become famous?
On July 23, 1952, Gamal Abdel Nasser and 89 other Free Officers, a secret revolutionary organization, staged a coup d’état, ousting the monarchy. Egypt was taken over by a council of 11 officers controlled by Nasser, with Maj. Gen. Muḥammad Naguib as the puppet head of state. Nasser named himself prime minister in spring 1954.
What were some of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s major accomplishments?
Gamal Abdel Nasser arranged for the construction of the Aswan High Dam, built with the help of the Soviet Union. It began operating in 1968, controlling the Nile’s annual flood and providing electric power (up to 10 billion kilowatt-hours annually). He accelerated Egypt’s industrialization, granted women more rights, threw off foreign influence, and bolstered Egypt’s middle class.
How did Gamal Abdel Nasser change the world?
Nasser was born in a mud-brick house on an unpaved street in the Bacos section of Alexandria, where his father was in charge of the local post office. In an effort to cultivate a more earthy image of the president as a member of the class of rural agrarians (fellahin), Egyptian government publications for years gave his birthplace as Banī Murr, the primitive Upper Egypt village of his ancestors. From Alexandria, Nasser’s father was transferred to Al-Khaṭāṭibah, a squalid delta village, where the boy got his first schooling. Then he went to live in Cairo with an uncle who had just been released from a British prison and had rooms in a building occupied by nine Jewish families.
Constantly in trouble with schoolteachers, some of them British, Nasser took part in many anti-British street demonstrations. In one he received a blow on the forehead that left a lifelong scar. After secondary school he went to a law college for several months and then entered the Royal Military Academy, graduating as a second lieutenant.
While serving in the Egyptian army in the Sudan, Nasser met three fellow officers—Zakariyyā Muḥyi al-Dīn (Zakaria Mohieddine), later vice president of the United Arab Republic; ʿAbd al-Ḥakīm ʿĀmir, later field marshal; and Anwar el-Sādāt, who would succeed Nasser as president. Together, they planned a secret revolutionary organization, the Free Officers, whose composition would be known only to Nasser; their aim was to oust the British and the Egyptian royal family.
Britannica Quiz
Egypt Since the Pharaohs
In the 1948 Arab war against the newly created State of Israel, Nasser was an officer in one of three battalions surrounded for weeks by the Israelis in a group of Arab villages called the Faluja Pocket. (See Arab-Israeli wars.)
On July 23, 1952, Nasser and 89 other Free Officers staged an almost bloodless coup d’état, ousting the monarchy. Sādāt favoured the immediate public execution of King Farouk I and some members of the establishment, but Nasser vetoed the idea and permitted Farouk and others to go into exile. The country was taken over by a Revolutionary Command Council of 11 officers controlled by Nasser, with Major General Muḥammad Naguib as the puppet head of state. For more than a year Nasser kept his real role so well hidden that astute foreign correspondents were unaware of his existence, but in the spring of 1954, in a complicated series of intrigues, Naguib was deposed and placed under house arrest, and Nasser emerged from the shadows and named himself prime minister. That same year an Egyptian fanatic allegedly tried to assassinate Nasser at a mass meeting in Alexandria. When the gunman confessed that he had been given the assignment by the Muslim Brotherhood, Nasser cracked down on this extremist Muslim religious organization.
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In January 1956 Nasser announced the promulgation of a constitution under which Egypt became a socialist Arab state with a one-party political system and with Islam as the official religion. In June, 99.948 percent of the five million Egyptians voting marked their ballots for Nasser, the only candidate, for president. The constitution was approved by 99.8 percent.
As Nasser took titular as well as actual control, Egypt’s prospects looked bright. A secret contract had been signed with Czechoslovakia for war matériel, and Great Britain and the United States had agreed to put up $270 million to finance the first stage of the Aswān High Dam project. But on July 20, 1956, the U.S. secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, canceled the U.S. offer; the next day Britain followed suit. Five days later, addressing a mass meeting in Alexandria, Nasser announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal, promising that the tolls Egypt collected in five years would build the dam. Both Britain and France had interests in the canal and conspired with Israel—whose relations with Egypt had grown even more tense after the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948–49—to best Nasser and regain control of the canal. According to their plan, on October 29, 1956, Israeli forces invaded the Sinai Peninsula. Two days later, French and British planes attacked Egyptian airfields. Although the Israelis occupied the Sinai Peninsula to Sharm al-Shaykh and the Egyptian air force was virtually destroyed, Nasser emerged from the brief war with undiminished prestige throughout the Arab world. (See Suez Crisis.)
In Philosophy of the Revolution, which he wrote in 1954, Nasser told of “heroic and glorious roles which never found heroes to perform them” and outlined his aspiration to be the leader of the 55 million Arabs, then of the 224 million Africans, then of the 420 million followers of Islam. In 1958 Syria and Egypt formed the United Arab Republic, which Nasser hoped would someday include the entire Arab world. Syria withdrew in 1961, but Egypt continued to be known as the United Arab Republic until 1971. That was as close as Nasser ever came to realizing his tripartite dream.
Jun 20, 2008 · On July 23, 1952, a group of Egyptian army officers, calling themselves the Free Officers Movement, took power in a bloodless coup. At the forefront of the uprising was a charismatic young...
Aug 17, 2023 · His efforts in this direction led to the brief formation of the United Arab Republic—a union between Egypt and Syria that lasted from 1958 to 1961. After a coup in 1952, Egypt was under the leadership of Gamal Abdel Nasser, who emerged as a pan-Arab nationalist and a vocal critic of Western imperialism in the Middle East.
May 23, 2018 · Nasser's vision for Pan-Arabism took a small step forward in 1958, when Egypt united with Syria and parts of Saudi Arabia to become the United Arab Republic. Nasser served as president of the new country, and the move excited those interested in integrating Arab nations into one Arab state.
Jul 21, 2010 · He dreamed of bringing all the Arab world into the United Arab Republic, but in 1961 Syria withdrew from the entity following a military coup, leaving Egypt alone.
