Mandatory Iraq
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Kingdom of Iraq under British administration الانتداب البريطاني على العراق ( Arabic ) | |||||||||||||||
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1921–1932 | |||||||||||||||
Anthem: (1924–1932) السلام الملكي High Commissioner | | ||||||||||||||
• 1921–1923 | Percy Cox | ||||||||||||||
• 1923–1929 | Henry Dobbs | ||||||||||||||
• 1929–1932 | Francis Humphrys | ||||||||||||||
King | |||||||||||||||
• 1921–1932 | Faisal I | ||||||||||||||
Prime Minister | |||||||||||||||
• 1920–1922 (first) | Abd Al-Rahman Al-Gillani | ||||||||||||||
• 1930–1932 (last) | Nuri al-Said | ||||||||||||||
Legislature | Anglo-Iraqi Treaty | 30 June 1930 | |||||||||||||
• Independence | 3 October 1932 | ||||||||||||||
Currency | Indian rupee | ||||||||||||||
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Today part of | Iraq Saudi Arabia |
History of Iraq |
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Iraq portal |
The Kingdom of Iraq under British Administration, or Mandatory Iraq (
Faisal ibn Husayn, who had been proclaimed King of Syria by a Syrian National Congress in Damascus in March 1920, was ejected by the French in July of the same year. Faisal was then granted by the British the territory of Iraq, to rule it as a kingdom, with the British Royal Air Force (RAF) retaining certain military control, but de facto, the territory remained under British administration until 1932.[3]
The civil government of postwar
History
Early unrest
Three important anticolonial secret societies had been formed in Iraq during 1918 and 1919. The League of the Islamic Awakening (Jam'iyya an-naḥda al-islāmiyya) was organized at
The Grand
The
On 1 October 1922, the
Coronation of Faisal
At the
The final major decision taken at the Cairo Conference related to the
The British decision at the Cairo Conference to establish an indigenous Iraqi army was significant. In Iraq, as in most of the developing world, the military establishment has been the best organized institution in an otherwise weak political system.[citation needed] Thus, while Iraq's body politic crumbled under immense political and economic pressure throughout the monarchic period, the military gained increasing power and influence; moreover, because the officers in the new army were by necessity Sunnis who had served under the Ottomans, while the lower ranks were predominantly filled by Shia tribal elements, Sunni dominance in the military was preserved.
Later years
The Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1930 provided for a "close alliance," for "full and frank consultations between the two countries in all matters of foreign policy," and for mutual assistance in case of war. Iraq granted the British the use of air bases near Basra and at Habbaniyah and the right to move troops across the country. The treaty, of twenty-five years' duration, was to come into force upon Iraq's admission to the League of Nations.
With the signing of the 1930 Treaty and the settling of the
The Mandatory administration continued to operate until 1932.[10]
In 1936 and 1937 various protests and revolts broke out against the Iraqi government, with the main issues centering around agrarian issues and conscription into the armed forces. These were suppressed by the Iraqi government with assistance from the RAF Iraq Command, with Kedourie writing that the "killing, it seems, was indiscriminate, and old men, women and children were the victims." An armed revolt which broke out in 1937 over agrarian issues and conscription was also "put down with the help of indiscriminate aerial bombing."[11] During these disturbances, Shia religious leaders were expelled from Iraq due to being Persians.[9] Kedourie describes the monarchy as despotic, with a record "full of bloodshed, treason and rapine" and "however pitiful its end we may know that it was implicit in its beginning."[12]
In his assessment of the British mandate and the Iraqi monarchy, historians Kanan Makiya considers the British mandate and its institutions more as "agents of modernisation" than colonialism:
The British mandate and the institutions it gave rise to in Iraq, were the agents of a modernisation that did not arise gradually or indigenously as the outcome of a population’s own resourcefulness and engagement with the world. The British in Iraq were modernisers more than colonisers, despite acting out of self-interest.[13]
Kedourie's judgement, however, is different:
When we consider the long experience of Britain in the government of Eastern countries, and set beside it the miserable polity which she bestowed on the populations of Mesopotamia, we are seized with rue- ful wonder. It is as though India and Egypt had never existed, as though Lord Cornwallis, Munro and Metcalf, John and Henry Lawrence, Milner and Cromer had attempted in vain to bring order, justice and security to the East, as though Burke and Macaulay, Bentham and James Mill had never addressed their intelligence to the problems and prospects of oriental government. We can never cease to marvel how, in the end, all this was discarded...[in] Mesopotamia.[14]
If Makiya is referring to economic development in his account of the British modernising legacy in Iraq, an authoritative study demonstrates that Iraq's productivity in agriculture, the most important sector at the time, in fact declined from 275 kg per acre in 1920 to an average of 238 kg per acre between 1953 and 1958.[15]
Under the British mandate a new ruling class of 'government shaikhs' was created. "Many of them [the Shaikhs], reported Major Pulley to the British commissioner in Baghdad in 1920, "were small men of no account until we made them powerful and rich." The Civil Commissioner Wilson reported on his part that the Shaikhs "were in most cases directly dependent on the civil administration for the positions they held; realising that their positions entailed corresponding obligations, they co-operated actively with the political officers."[16]
In a dispatch by a British official to London in 1928, there was a description of how the electoral system worked: the government's provincial governors were in fact election agents who drew up lists of those to be elected and of those who would do the electing.[8] Elections to "the chamber of deputies and appointments to the senate," comments Keeourie, "were an additional weapon in the hands of the government wherewith the better to control the country."[8]
Independence
On 3 October 1932, the
Economy
Nomadic bedouin tribes within Iraq, which had previously traded all throughout the Middle East, became confined to trading only within the borders of the Mandate itself. This decision by the colonial administration proved economically troubling and devastating for the bedouins.[17]
Oil concession
Before the collapse of the
Beginning in 1923, British and Iraqi negotiators held acrimonious discussions over the new oil concession. The major obstacle was Iraq's insistence on a 20 percent equity participation in the company; this figure had been included in the original TPC concession to the Turks and had been agreed upon at Sanremo for the Iraqis. In the end, despite strong nationalist sentiments against the concession agreement, the Iraqi negotiators acquiesced to it. The League of Nations was soon to vote on the disposition of Mosul, and the Iraqis feared that, without British support, Iraq would lose the area to Turkey. In March 1925, an agreement was concluded that contained none of the Iraqi demands. The TPC, now renamed the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC), was granted a full and complete concession for a period of seventy-five years.[18]
British High Commissioners
- 1920–1923: Major-General Sir Percy Cox
- 1923–1928: Sir Henry Dobbs
- 1928–1929: Brigadier-General Sir Gilbert Clayton
- 1929–1932: Sir Francis Humphrys
See also
Notes
- ^ Wright, Quincy. “The Government of Iraq.” The American Political Science Review, vol. 20, no. 4, 1926, pp. 743–769. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1945423. Accessed 21 Jan. 2020
- ^ See original documents here
- ^ Ethnicity, State Formation, and Conscription in Postcolonial Iraq: The Case of the Yazidi Kurds of Jabal Sinjar. JSTOR [1]
- Air University. Retrieved 13 January 2008.
- ^ Overseas commands: Iraq, India and the Far East, section "RAF Iraq." In: Air of authority: A history of RAF organization. Retrieved 2015-06-20.
- ^ Hazelton, Fran 1989. "Iraq to 1963" in CARDRI, "Saddam’s Iraq: Revolution or Reaction?" London 1989. p3
- ^ Kedourie, Elie (1970). The Chatham House Version, and Other Middle-Eastern Studies. Praeger. p. 256.
- ^ a b c Kedourie 1970, p. 438.
- ^ a b Kedourie 1970, p. 250.
- ^ Ongsotto et.al. Asian History Module-based Learning Ii' 2003 Ed. p69. [2]
- ^ Kedourie 1970, p. 237-238.
- ^ Kedourie 1970, p. 239.
- ^ Samir al-Khalil, Republic of Fear London 1989 p. 174
- ^ Ellie Kedourie, 2004, The Chatham House Version and Other Middle Eastern Studies https://archive.org/details/KedourieElieTheChathamHouseVersionAndOtherMiddleEasternStudies p.262
- ^ M.S. Hasan. 1970. The Role of Foreign Trade in the Economic Development of Iraq, 1864–1964: A Study in the Growth of a Dependent Economy, in M.A. Cook, ed., Studies in the Economic History of the Middle East from the Rise of Islam to the Present Day, London. p352
- ^ India Office LP & S, 10/4722/18/1920/8/6305, in Farouk-Sluglett and Sluglett, p277
- ISSN 0022-0094. Retrieved 13 October 2023.
- ^ Iraq: A Country Study, Helen Chapin Metz, in Iraq: Issues, Historical Background, Bibliography, ed. Leon M. Jefferies, Nova Publishers, 2003, page 146
Sources
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain. Country Studies. Federal Research Division.
Further reading
- Barker, A. J.: The First Iraq War, 1914-1918: Britain's Mesopotamian Campaign (New York: Enigma Books, 2009). ISBN 978-1-929631-86-5
- Fuccaro, Nelida: The Other Kurds (London: IB Tauris, 1999).
- Dodge, Toby: Inventing Iraq (2009).
- Fieldhouse, David K.: Western Imperialism in the Middle East, 1914–1958 (2006).
- Fisk, Robert: The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East, (2nd ed. 2006).
- Jacobsen, Mark: "'Only by the Sword': British Counter‐insurgency in Iraq", in: Small Wars and Insurgencies 2, no. 2 (1991): pp. 323–63.
- Simons, Geoff: Iraq: From Sumer to Saddam (2nd ed. 1994).
- Sluglett, Peter: Britain in Iraq: Contriving King and Country, 1914–1932 (2nd ed. 2007).
- Wright, Quincy (1931). "The Proposed Termination of the Iraq Mandate". American Journal of International Law 25(3): 436–446.
- Vinogradov, Amal: "The 1920 Revolt in Iraq Reconsidered: The Role of Tribes in National Politics," International Journal of Middle East Studies 3, no. 2 (1972): pp. 123–39.