Britain in Iraq: Contriving King and Country
This study is an assessment of Anglo-Iraqi relations and of Britain’s role in Iraqi affairs during the period of the British occupation and mandate. The eighteen years which are surveyed here are among the most crucial in the country’s recent history, and are of the utmost importance in understanding developments in both pre- and post-revolutionary Iraq.
The book is based primarily on British sources, and much of the more detailed research has been made possible through the use of hitherto unexploited materials now located in the National Archives of India. The papers of the Baghdad High Commission, which were taken to Bombay in 1941 and are now in the National Archives of India, New Delhi, are an invaluable source of information for the day to day working of the mandate as an instrument of government and control within Iraq. Similarly the RAF records in the Air Ministry papers contain a wealth of information on local conditions, and are particularly useful for the study of the changes in rural society and politics brought about by the advent of British rule.
The work has been divided into two sections, the first a chronological account of the eighteen years of the ‘official’ British connection, and the second a series of studies of aspects of policy and administration. Unaccountably, I had missed Briton Cooper Busch’s Britain, India and the Arabs 1914–1921 (University of California Press, 1972) when making my final revision of Chapter 1, but although Professor Busch covers a wider canvas, I do not think that he will disagree with my briefer survey and conclusions. Central political questions, such as the role of oil in Anglo-Iraqi relations, the Mosul frontier question, and the beginnings of the Kurdish problem, are covered in Chapters 2 and 3, while Chapters 4 and 5 discuss the years 1926–1932, with special reference to the question of Iraq’s entry to the League of Nations and the attitudes to this taken by different political groups. | 
