There are lots of studies on the Suez Crisis, which show us why the British government carried out such an infamous military intervention in Egypt in 1956. Various reasons of the intervention have been discussed since 1960s; some explain British intentions of regaining control over the Suez Canal, dealing a heavy blow to Nasser's regime and holding the British Empire in the Middle East, while others refer to political inside stories of Anthony Eden's administration, especially impact of hawks in the Tory, “Suez group” and Eden's health conditions.
These interpretations can be persuasive for understanding the crisis, but we should also view the problem from a different perspective: that is, why could Eden carry out his plan despite the fact that some of his ministers and the Foreign Office opposed to Eden's belligerent attitude. One of the keys to reconsider the crisis is to examine senior government bureaucrat in the Whitehall who personally supported Eden's foreign and military policy, but it has been difficult to follow these senior staffs' influence on the crisis. When Anthony Nutting, ex-Minister of State for Foreign Affairs published his book, No End of a Lesson in 1967 (which is still one of the basic works for Suez watchers), the British Government censored the book and eliminated most secret matters, including names of senior bureaucrat alleged to have an involvement with the crisis decision-making. However the British National Archives opened record of the censor and we come to know their roles, especially Ivone Kirkpatrick, Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and Patrick Dean, Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee and Kirkpatrick's subordinate at the Foreign Office.
Recent studies such as Whitehall and the Suez Crisis (2000) and Reassessing Suez 1956 (2008) reveal the role of the senior officials during the crisis. This essay also focuses on the influence of the Permanent Under-Secretary's Department (PUSD) on the crisis decision making, which Kirkpatrick and Dean were involved in. Documents released at the National Archives, Kew, oral history records of the Liddell Hart Center for Military Archives, King's College London and private papers of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford would give us a chance to reconsider the crisis.

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In April 1985, the regime of Muhammad Ja'far Numayri in the Sudan (which was called the "May Regime" after the May coup d'etat of 1969) was overthrown as a result of the popular uprising. In April 1986, just one year after the uprising, an election was held, and the Sudan, after the 16 years of the May Regime, began to tread the path of parliamentary democracy once again. The result of the election was described as a "return to the traditional pattern" in the sense that the political powers such as the Umma Party and the Unionists, which had been influential in the pre-May period, returned to the power. At the same time, however, some changes were observed, for "the Umma Party, which had been a rightist power, turned into a middle-leftist power, while the Unionists, which had been a middle-leftist power, turned into a rightist power". It was also observed that the Sudanese intelligentsia, which had been one of the main props of the communist party, became largely "Islamized" and turned into the main supporters of the Islamic National Front. In this thesis, we attempt a brief analysis of the meaning of these phenomena and try-through this analysis-to throw a light upon the social and political changes the May Regime caused in the Sudanese society. In chapter 2, we deal with the historical and ideological basis of the Umma Party, which is characterized by its emphasis upon the "Sudanese" nationalism (as a thing distinguishable from the "Egyptian" nationalism), emphasis upon the "Africanism" (as a thing distinguishable from the "Arab" nationalism), and its insistence upon being an "Islamic" party based on the historical experience of the Sudan. We consider why the Umma Party (which was a symbol of the reactionary forces in the pre-May period) is able to play-to a certain extent-a "national and progressive" role in the present political situation in the Sudan. And-through this analysis-we look into some of the fundamental problems caused by the May Regime, i.e., the economic, political, and military dependency upon the outside world (which was typically expressed on one hand, in the intimate relationship with Egypt, and was expressed, on the other hand, in the increasing influence of the oil-producing Arab Gulf states on the political process in the Sudan), and the so-called "Southern Problem" which was caused and intensified by this very nature of the May Regime. In chapter 3, we deal with the historical and ideological basis of the Unionists, which is characterized by the features just opposite to those of the Umma Party, and consider the meaning of the so-called "retrogression" of the Unionists in the present political scene in the Sudan. In chapter 4, we look into the role of the intelligentsia in the Sudanese politics, and proceed to consider the meaning of the increasing influence of the Muslim Brotherhood among the Sudanese intelligentsia. And in this phenomenon of the "Islamization" of the intelligentsia-which is a direct result of the May Regime's policy aimed at the containment of the communism, and has been eagerly supported and encouraged by the oil-producing Gulf states-we observe another "heritage" of the May Regime, an element of continuity between the May Regime period and the present period, which threatens the struggle of the Sudanese people for the liberation from dependency.

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