Documents on Australian Foreign Policy
Australia and the Suez Crisis, 1950–1957
Australia and the Suez Crisis 1950–1957 focuses on the evolution of Australian policy before, during and after the Suez Crisis. The central theme of the volume is how, in the development of the Australian policy response to that crisis, questions of identity became entangled with shifts in the relativities of national power.
The documents in this volume reveal the contending perspectives among officials in Canberra, London and Washington shaping the advice provided to the Menzies Government, and the considerable gap between Prime Minister Menzies and External Affairs Minister Richard R. G. Casey regarding the British approach. It includes a robust exchange of correspondence between Menzies and US President Dwight D. Eisenhower regarding US policy, the diplomatic handling of which fell largely to Casey; correspondence, minutes and records of conversation from a range of government departments; and discussions between senior Cabinet ministers, which provide new insights into the policymaking process.
Dr Robert Bowker (PhD, Australian National University) retired from Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in 2008 after a 37-year career focussed on Middle East issues. He was the Australian Ambassador to Egypt from 2005 to 2008. He was Ambassador to Jordan from 1989 to 1992 and served in Syria (1979–81) and Saudi Arabia (1974–76). He has published extensively on the Middle East, including Beyond Peace: The Search for Security in the Middle East (Lynne Rienner, 1996); Palestinian Refugees: Mythology, Identity and the Search for Peace (Lynne Rienner, 2003); and Egypt and the Politics of Change in the Middle East (Edward Elger, 2010). From 2008–19 he was an Adjunct Professor, and later an Honorary Visiting Fellow, at the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University.
Dr Matthew Jordan (PhD, University of Sydney) is Head of the Historical Research Section in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and General Editor of Documents on Australian Foreign Policy. He has published mostly in the area of Australian foreign policy history, focusing especially on the role played by ideas of race and nation in shaping Australia’s attitudes to the world. This includes a number of articles and book chapters on the origins and nature of the White Australia policy and, more recently, a documentary study of Australia and the Rhodesian Problem, 1961–1972 (UNSW Press, 2017). He is working on a follow-up volume covering Australia’s approach to Zimbabwean independence and a documentary history of the liberalisation and abolition of the White Australia policy from the 1940s to the 1970s.
