Inventing Iraq

Between 1920 and 1932, Great Britain endeavored unsuccessfully to create a modern democratic state in the region that became known as Iraq. The unwieldy patchwork state it fashioned embodied the imperatives of Whitehall while running roughshod over the political sensibilities of the region's inhabitants. When Britain grew weary of holding together its fractious creation, it hastened Iraq toward independence. Democracy was quickly dispensed with by a series of coups, culminating in 1968 with the Ba'ath Party's siezure of power. Britain's failure, Dodge contends, forms the crucial historical backdrop against which the Bush administration's removal of Saddam Hussein and its aftermath must be understood. 

Acknowledgements Chapters One: The Role of Discourse and Agency in Understanding the Mandate in Iraq Two: The Mandate system, the end of imperialism and the birth of the Iraqi state Three: Corruption, fragmentation and despotism; British visions of Ottoman Iraq Four: Rural and urban, collective and individual: the divided social ontology of late colonialism Five: Utilising the shaikhs, the rational imposition of a romantic figure Six: The social ontology of land; state, shaikh and peasant Seven: The imposition of order; social perception and the 'despotic' power of aeroplanes Eight: Conclusion. Understanding the Iraqi Mandate; beyond imperialism and Orientalism Bibliography