Proto-political conceptions of Iraq in late Ottoman times

Abstract

This article criticizes the so-called artificiality paradigm concerning the emergence of the modern state on Iraq, according to which the kingdom of Iraq that came into being in 1921 was nothing but a random collection of Ottoman provinces that had little in common. On the basis of documents from the late Ottoman period, the article shows that the opposite appears to be the case: In many ways, the modern state of Iraq had regional antecedents that predated the British invasion in 1914. The article shows that for long periods before 1914 there existed a pattern of administrative centralization of Basra, Baghdad and Mosul under Baghdad as a paramount regional capital, that this regional entity was often described as Iraq in administrative and diplomatic correspondence, and that the local inhabitants often referred to Iraq in a patriotic sense.