Gamal Abdel Nasser in the context of "Armed Forces of the United Arab Republic"

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⭐ Core Definition: Gamal Abdel Nasser

Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein (15 January 1918 – 28 September 1970) was an Egyptian military officer and revolutionary who served as the second president of Egypt from 1954 until his death in 1970. Nasser led the Egyptian revolution of 1952 and introduced far-reaching land reforms the following year. Following a 1954 assassination attempt on his life by a Muslim Brotherhood member, he cracked down on the organization, put President Mohamed Naguib under house arrest and assumed executive office. He was formally elected president in June 1956.

Nasser's popularity in Egypt and the Arab world skyrocketed after his nationalization of the Suez Canal and his political victory in the subsequent Suez Crisis, known in Egypt as the Tripartite Aggression. Calls for pan-Arab unity under his leadership increased, culminating with the formation of the United Arab Republic with Syria from 1958 to 1961. In 1962, Nasser began a series of major socialist measures and modernization reforms in Egypt. Despite setbacks to his pan-Arabist cause, by 1963 Nasser's supporters gained power in several Arab countries, but he became embroiled in the North Yemen Civil War, and eventually the much larger Arab Cold War. He began his second presidential term in March 1965 after his political opponents were banned from running. Following Egypt's defeat by Israel in the Six-Day War of 1967, Nasser resigned, but he returned to office after popular demonstrations called for his reinstatement. By 1968, Nasser had appointed himself prime minister, launched the War of Attrition to regain the Israeli-occupied Sinai Peninsula, begun a process of depoliticizing the military, and issued a set of political liberalization reforms. After the conclusion of the 1970 Arab League summit, Nasser suffered a heart attack and died. His funeral in Cairo drew five to six million mourners, and prompted an outpouring of grief across the Arab world.

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Gamal Abdel Nasser in the context of Northeast Africa

Northeast Africa, or Northeastern Africa, or Northern East Africa as it was known in the past, encompasses the countries of Africa situated in and around the Red Sea. The region is intermediate between North Africa and East Africa, and encompasses the Horn of Africa (Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia), as well as Sudan, Libya,and Egypt in addition to, although rarely, South Sudan. The region has a very long history of habitation with fossil finds from the early hominids to modern human and is one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse regions of the world, being the home to many civilizations and located on an important trade route that connects multiple continents; Gamal Abdel Nasser, the second president of Egypt (which is the most northeastern African country) once described it as "the crossroads of the world, the thoroughfare of its traders and passageway of its armies."

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Gamal Abdel Nasser in the context of Egyptian revolution of 1952

The Egyptian revolution of 1952, also known as the 1952 coup d'état (Arabic: انقلاب 1952) and the 23 July Revolution (Arabic: ثورة 23 يوليو), was a period of profound political, economic, and societal change in Egypt. On 23 July 1952, the revolution began with the toppling of King Farouk in a coup d'état by the Free Officers Movement, a group of army officers led by Mohamed Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser. It ushered in a wave of revolutionary politics in the Arab world, and contributed to the escalation of decolonization, and the development of Third World solidarity during the Cold War.

Though initially focused on grievances against King Farouk, the movement had more wide-ranging political ambitions. In the first three years of the Revolution, the Free Officers moved to abolish the constitutional monarchy and aristocracy of Egypt and Sudan, establish a republic, end the British occupation of the country, and secure the independence of Sudan (previously governed as a condominium of Egypt and the United Kingdom). The revolutionary government adopted a staunchly nationalist, anti-imperialist agenda, which came to be expressed chiefly through Arab nationalism, and international non-alignment.

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Gamal Abdel Nasser in the context of United Arab Republic

The United Arab Republic (UAR; Arabic: الجمهورية العربية المتحدة, romanizedal-Jumhūriyya al-ʿArabiyya al-Muttaḥida) was a sovereign state in the Middle East from 1958 to 1971. It was initially a short-lived political union between Egypt (including Egyptian-governed Gaza) and Syria from 1958 until Syria seceded from the union following the 1961 Syrian coup d'état. Egypt continued to be known officially as the United Arab Republic until it was formally dissolved by Anwar Sadat in September 1971.

The republic was led by Gamal Abdel Nasser as the Egyptian president. The UAR was a member of the United Arab States, a loose confederation with the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen, which was dissolved in 1961. It was a brief pan-Arab union.

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Gamal Abdel Nasser in the context of Suez Canal Company

The Suez Company or Suez Canal Company, full initial name Compagnie universelle du canal maritime de Suez (Universal Company of the Maritime Canal of Suez), sometimes colloquially referred to in French as Le Suez ("The Suez"), was a company formed by Ferdinand de Lesseps in 1858 to operate the Egyptian granted concession of the Suez Canal, which the company built between 1859 and 1869. Initially, French investors held half of the Company's stock, with Egypt's ruler Sa'id Pasha holding most of the balance. In 1875, financial distress forced Sa'id's successor Isma'il Pasha to sell the country's shares to the government of the United Kingdom. The Suez Company operated the canal until Egypt's new president Gamal Abdel Nasser revoked its concession in 1956 and transferred canal operation to the state-owned Suez Canal Authority, precipitating the Suez Crisis.

Following the loss of the canal concession, the Suez Company received financial compensation from the Egyptian government, the final payment of which was made in 1962, and used this resource to reinvent itself as a major investment and holding company in France. In 1958 it renamed itself the Compagnie financière de Suez ("Suez Financial Company"), and in 1967 changed its name again to Compagnie financière de Suez et de l'Union parisienne, a change that was reversed in 1972. It was nationalized in 1982, then privatized in 1987. It acquired control of the Société Générale de Belgique in 1988, and changed name again to Compagnie de Suez in 1990. In 1997, it merged with water utility and construction conglomerate Lyonnaise des eaux [fr] to form Suez-Lyonnaise des eaux. The merged entity renamed itself as Suez in 2001 and underwent several subsequent mergers, spin-offs, and restructurings that led to the creation of the energy company Engie and the water and waste-management utility also named Suez.

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Gamal Abdel Nasser in the context of Non-Aligned Movement

The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is a forum of 121 countries that are not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc. It was founded with the view to advancing interests of developing countries in the context of Cold War confrontation. After the United Nations, it is the largest grouping of states worldwide.

The movement originated in the aftermath of the Korean War, as an effort by some countries to counterbalance the rapid bi-polarization of the world during the Cold War, whereby two major powers formed blocs and embarked on a policy to pull the rest of the world into their orbits. One of these was the pro-Soviet socialist bloc whose best known alliance was the Warsaw Pact, and the other the pro-American capitalist group of countries, many of which belonged to NATO. In 1961, drawing on the principles agreed at the Bandung Conference of 1955, the Non-Aligned Movement was formally established in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, through an initiative led by Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito, Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah, Indonesian president Sukarno, and United Arab Republic president Gamal Abdel Nasser.

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Gamal Abdel Nasser in the context of North Yemen civil war

The North Yemen civil war, also known in Yemen as the 26 September Revolution, was a civil war fought in North Yemen from 1962 to 1970 between partisans of the Mutawakkilite Kingdom and supporters of the Yemen Arab Republic. The war began with a coup d'état carried out in 1962 by revolutionary republicans led by the army under the command of Abdullah al-Sallal. He dethroned the newly crowned King and Imam Muhammad al-Badr and declared Yemen a republic under his presidency. His government abolished slavery in Yemen. The Imam escaped to the Saudi Arabian border where he rallied popular support from northern Zaydi tribes to retake power, and the conflict rapidly escalated to a full-scale civil war.

On the royalist side, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Israel supplied military aid, and Britain offered covert support. The republicans were supported by Egypt (then formally known as the United Arab Republic or UAR) and were supplied warplanes from the Soviet Union. Both foreign irregular and conventional forces were also involved. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser supported the republicans with as many as 70,000 Egyptian troops and weapons. Despite several military actions and peace conferences, the war sank into a stalemate by the mid-1960s. Egypt's commitment to the war is considered to have been detrimental to its performance in the June 1967 Six-Day War against Israel. Once the Six-Day War began, Nasser found it increasingly difficult to maintain his army's involvement in Yemen and began to pull out his forces. The surprising removal of Sallal on November 5 by Yemeni dissidents, who were supported by republican tribesmen, resulted in an internal shift of power in the capital, as the royalists were approaching from the north.

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Gamal Abdel Nasser in the context of Statue of Ramesses II

The Statue of Ramesses II is a colossal 3,200-year-old figure of Ramesses II, depicting him standing. It is 11 meters tall, made from red granite, and weighs 83 tons.
The statue was discovered in 1820, broken into six pieces, at Mit Rahina near ancient Memphis, Egypt, where it lay for several decades.

Early attempts at restoration in situ failed, but in 1955, Egyptian Prime Minister Gamal Abdel Nasser moved the fragments to the large Bab Al-Hadid Square in Cairo, outside Cairo's main railway station; the square was then renamed Ramses Square. There the statue was restored to its full height and erected on a three-metre pedestal at the edge of a fountain. It was stabilized by iron bars inside the body.

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Gamal Abdel Nasser in the context of Free Officers movement (Egypt)

The Free Officers (Arabic: حركة الضباط الأحرار, romanizedḤarakat al-dubbāṭ al-ʾaḥrār) were a group of revolutionary Egyptian nationalist officers in the Egyptian Armed Forces and Sudanese Armed Forces that instigated the Egyptian revolution of 1952. Initially started as a small rebellion military cell under Abdel Moneim Abdel Raouf, which included Gamal Abdel Nasser, Hussein Hamouda, Khaled Mohieddin, Kamal el-Din Hussein, Salah Nasr, Abdel Hakim Amer, and Saad Tawfik, it operated as a clandestine movement of junior officers who were veterans of the Palestine War of 1948–1949 as well as earlier nationalist uprisings in Egypt in the 1940s.

The nationally respected Arab-Israeli War veteran Mohamed Naguib joined the Free Officers in 1949. Naguib's hero status, and influence within the army, granted the movement credibility, both within the military and the public at large. He became the official leader of the Free Officers during the turmoil leading up the revolution that toppled King Farouk in 1952. The Movement was succeeded by the Revolutionary Command Council after the overthrow of Farouk that was later succeeded by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

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