Historians on Nasser
Robert Stephens Nasser (1971)
Although afraid of creating a military dictatorship, Nasser and the Free Officers banned opposition
parties, student groups, and trade unions, in hopes of creating a mass movement of the people behind
the Liberation Rally – but Nasser was dismayed to find the masses did not follow the army’s charge, but
hung back as on-lookers.
Anthony Nutting from Nasser (1972) 1
But at the outset, Nasser’s aims and ambitions were strictly limited to the eviction of the British. Far
from being directed against the throne, his initial object was, so he subsequently told me, to try and put
some stuffing into the king and by creating a military opposition to British imperialism within the army,
to strength Farouk’s resistance to further encroachments on Egypt’s sovereignty. Neither Nasser nor his
conspirators had any love for the king or his palace clique.
Peter Mansfield, A History of the Middle East (1991)
The years 1956-1959 marked the high tide of Nasserism as he seemed to sweep all before him. His
appeal to the Arabs – especially the younger generation, who formed the majority – was overwhelming.
They saw him as a modern Saladin who would unite them in order to drive out the Zionists, the
crusaders of the 20th century. The danger for Nasser was that he was rising expectations which neither
he nor Egypt could fulfill.
Said Aburish, Nasser: The Last Arab (2004)
There is no escaping the conclusion that Nasser represented an odd type of dictator. He manifested a
need to be loved. . . which most other dictators do not have. His dictatorship was a mixture of
populism and a need to be accepted as a man of principle.
Anne Alexander’s Nasser (2005)
By the 1952 coup, Nasser’s claim that parliament democracy would return seemed highly unlikely and
Nasser himself claimed “in a year and half we have been able to wipe out corruption. If the right to vote
were restored, the same landowners would be elected – the feudal interest. We don’t want the
capitalists and the wealthy back in power. If we open the government to them now, the revolution
might just as well be forgotten . . .” Despite widespread poverty and illiteracy, Egyptian agriculture was
actually highly capitalized, mechanized and well integrated into the world economy. But the Officers’
campaign struck a social and emotional chord with millions.
Martin Meredith, The State of Africa (2006)
Yet whatever disasters befell Egypt, Nasser never lost his popularity with the masses. When after the
1967 defeat , he announced his resignation, popular protests propelled him back into office. His
reputation as the man who stripped the old ruling class of their power, nationalized their wealth, booted
out foreigners, restored to Egypt a sense of dignity and self-respect and led the country towards
national regeneration – all of this counted for far more than the setbacks.
Eric Hobsbawm in Revolutionaries (2007)
Although illegal in the use of force, the military takeover was a genuinely innovating military regime of
the type that appear where the necessity of social revolution is evident, where several of the objective
conditions of it are present, but also where the social bases or institutions of civilian life are too feeble
to carry it out. The armed forces, being in some cases, the only available force with the capacity to take
and carry out decisions, may have to take the place of civilian forces, even to the point of turning their
officers into administrators.
1
Nutting had served as under-secretary to PM Eden and negotiated the British withdrawal from Suez In 1956