Suez Crisis
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Eurafrica
A vision of a stronger cooperation of Europe and African or Mediterranean countries has existed since before World War II. The elder concepts of Eurafrica, a portmanteau of Europe and Africa, referred to the much elder idea of strategic partnership between Africa and Europe. Already in the 1920s Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, founder of the first popular movement for a united Europe, believed in a Eurafrica alliance using the European colonies as "dowry" to allow Europe to compete against the Americas and Asia. Largely forgotten in the present, in the 1920s Europe's future survival and continued role in history was seen in close connection with a successful merger with Africa. As a genuine political project, it played a crucial role in the early development of the European Union.
France was one of the staunchest supporters of Israel in the 1950s and shared till the 1960s a strategic interest, due to its Algerian territories, against radical Arab nationalism with its heyday in the Suez Crisis. The scientific literature sees the military and diplomatic blunders of the strongest European colonial powers, Great Britain and France, in the Suez Crisis and with respect to France, the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and the start of the Algerian War, as markers of failed ambitions. The Eurafrica narrative cuts that short and starts after the USA assumed its current role as ally of Israel with the Six-Day War in 1967 and France started taking sides with the Arab world to improve its relations after the independence of Algeria.
The rather bleak Eurabia narrative lacks any positive vision of Europe. It ignores as well differences within Europe (compare Olim L'Berlin) with regard to welcoming Jewish or Israeli immigrants. Actual Muslim elites in Europe have completely different, rather differentiated and overall much more positive impressions of Europe and are rather outspoken against religious fundamentalism.
