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The United Arab Republic
The 1958 union of Egypt and Syria, the high-water mark of pan-Arab nationalism
The United Arab Republic was the boldest attempt of the twentieth century to turn the dream of Arab unity into a single state. In February 1958 Egypt and Syria, two countries without a common border, merged under Egypt's president Gamal Abdel Nasser, whose stand during the 1956 Suez Crisis had made him the most popular figure in the Arab world. Crowds in Damascus cheered the union, and other Arab governments faced pressure to join it. Within three and a half years it had collapsed, when Syrian officers seized power and took their country out. Egypt kept the name until 1971, and the episode still shapes debates over Arab nationalism and the limits of political unity.
The republic covered about 1.2 million square kilometers in two separate pieces, divided by Israel, Jordan, and the Gulf of Aqaba. Egypt, officially its Southern Region, was by far the larger: the Nile valley and delta, where nearly all Egyptians lived, framed by the Western Desert, the Eastern Desert, and the mountains of Sinai. Syria, the Northern Region, stretched from the Mediterranean coast and the mountains above Latakia across the farmland around Aleppo, Homs, and Damascus to the Euphrates and the steppe of the Jazira. Cairo, already the largest city in Africa and the Arab world, was the capital. The union's territory is now divided again between Egypt and Syria, its two original members, which have remained separate states since 1961.
Syria's leaders, worried about instability and rising communist influence at home, pressed for the union, which was proclaimed on February 1, 1958, and approved by plebiscites in both countries later that month. Nasser became president, political parties were dissolved, and power concentrated in Cairo. A looser confederation with the Kingdom of Yemen, the United Arab States, was linked to it the same year. Syrian landowners, merchants, and officers grew resentful of land reform, nationalizations, and Egyptian officials in Damascus, and on September 28, 1961, a coup by Syrian officers ended the union. Talks among Egypt, Syria, and Iraq on a new federation in 1963 failed. Egypt became the Arab Republic of Egypt in 1971, the year a looser Federation of Arab Republics with Libya and Syria was agreed, which never became a working state.