The Repressive Regime of the Vigilant State

Sophia Hoffmann

doi:10.21039/jpr.2.1.27

Abstract

Review of: Lisa Blaydes, State of Repression: Iraq under Saddam Hussein (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018). 376 pp. USD 35 (hb). ISBN: 9781400890323

Highlights

In 2005, the Iraqi Memory Foundation, a private organization founded by the Iraqi–British scholar Kanan Makiya, struck a deal with the US Army to ship an enormous archive of official Iraqi documents from Baghdad to the US
The American Association of Archivists, in a 2008 statement strongly protested the removal of these documents, referring to it as a possible ‘act of pillage, which is forbidden by the 1907 Hague Convention’
Senior Iraqi scholars unsuccessfully called for a return of the archive, which has since been housed in the Hoover Institution at Stanford University – where Lisa Blaydes and her research assistants were able to mine it for her impressive second book State of Repression: Iraq under Saddam Hussein, published by Princeton University Press in 2018

Summary

Introduction

In 2005, the Iraqi Memory Foundation, a private organization founded by the Iraqi–British scholar Kanan Makiya, struck a deal with the US Army to ship an enormous archive of official Iraqi documents from Baghdad to the US. Review of: Lisa Blaydes, State of Repression: Iraq under Saddam Hussein (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018).

Results

Conclusion