Inventing Iraq : the failure of nation building and a history denied

Author(s)
    • Dodge, Toby
Bibliographic Information

Inventing Iraq : the failure of nation building and a history denied

Toby Dodge

Hurst, c2003

Search this Book/Journal
Note

Bibliography: p. [227]-247

Includes index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

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.

Table of Contents

  • 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

by "Nielsen BookData"

Details
Page Top