Egypt and American foreign assistance, 1952-1956

Between the Egyptian revolution in 1952 and the Suez Canal Crisis four years later, the American-Egyptian relationship changed fundamentally. From the first days of the Free Officers' coup, the United States government sought to curry Egyptian friendship. However, what began as a close and hopeful alliance had--by the time Secretary of State John Foster Dulles withdrew funding for the construction of the Aswan High Dam in July 1956--become an increasingly tense and distrustful mutual antagonism.A divisive issue through this period was American economic assistance. This work evaluates American assistance to Egypt in this period from both American and Egyptian perspectives. It begins by situating the aid relationship in its historical, political and intellectual contexts. It then examines three case studies: a poultry improvement project, a land reclamation and resettlement project, and the Aswan High Dam proposal.This dissertation concludes that the US-Egyptian relationship failed because the aid projects in question became areas of contention rather than of partnership. Further, Americans viewed themselves as being in a life-and-death struggle against international Communism, and Egyptians viewed themselves as being in a life-and-death struggle against poverty and backwardness. The aid projects addressed both countries' concerns but failed to unify their goals.This dissertation draws on the Egyptian Foreign Ministry archives, the U.S. National Archives, interviews with numerous Egyptians and Americans in both leadership and operational roles during the period under study, and scholarship and contemporaneous periodicals in Arabic and English.