Published 13 Apr, 2021 by Mohja Amer in
History, International
When the Suez Canal was blocked last month, it became a viral news story. But
Mohja Amer noticed a lack of acknowledgment of the canal s colonial history.
After learning of joint French and British plans to invade Egypt in 1956, Anthony Nutting, Britain’s then-minister for foreign affairs, titled his book on the Suez Canal Crisis No End of a Lesson: The Story of Suez. Originally, Rudyard Kipling penned this famous phrase in his 1901 poem The Lesson, in reference to The Second Boer War (1899-1902); but this premise of, if nothing else, learning from imperial ventures was eminently still relevant over half a century later.