British influence
During the First World War, which broke out in
1914, Turkey became a German ally along with Austria in a global
conflict against Britain and France. Just before that time Arab
independence
movements were picking momentum. Arab leaders in many parts of the
Arab world -including the Hashemite family of Hussein ibn-Ali promised
to aid Britain by revolting against the Ottoman Turks.
Arab cooperation came about when Britain agreed
to recognize Arab independence after the war. The Ottoman empire
collapsed when British forces invaded Mesopotamia in 1917 and occupied
Baghdad. An armistice was signed with Turkey in 1918.
Arab leaders expected to work out the details
of Arab independence. But in 1920 the international League of Nations
assigned pieces of the Ottoman empire to the victors, putting
Mesopotamia under a British administration.
This arrangement, called a mandate, meant that
Britain would establish a responsible Arab government in the territory
according to a league-approved timetable. The failure of the British to
fulfill their promises of independence encouraged
Arab nationalism.
Now the country became a British Mandate - due,
in no small part, to the British interest in Iraqi oil fields, and
because they wanted to build a transcontinental railroad from Europe,
across Turkey, and down through Iraq to Kuwait on the Persian Gulf. This
railroad would allow a direct trade route with India without having to
skirt Africa. Local unrest (Thawrah), however, resulted in an Iraqi
uprising in 1920, and after costly attempts to quell this, the British
government decided to draw up a new plan for the state of Iraq.
The British government had laid out the
institutional framework for Iraqi government and politics; the Iraqi
political system suffered from a severe legitimacy crisis; Britain
imposed a Hashimite (also seen as Hashemite) monarchy, defined the
territorial limits of Iraq with little correspondence to natural
frontiers or traditional tribal and ethnic settlements, and influenced
the writing of a constitution and the structure of parliament.
The British also supported narrowly based
groups--such as the tribal shaykhs--over the growing, urban-based
nationalist movement, and resorted to military force when British
interests were threatened, as in the 1941 Rashid Ali Al-Gaylani coup.
Iraq was to be a kingdom, under the rule of
Emir Faisal ibn Hussain, brother of the
new ruler of neighboring Jordan, Abdallah, a member of the Hashemite
family, and although the monarch was elected and proclaimed King by
plebiscite in 1921, full independence was not achieved until 1932, when
the British Mandate was officially terminated. In 1927, discovery of
huge oil fields near Karkuk brought many improvements to Iraq.
The Iraqis granted oil rights to the Iraqi
Petroleum Company -a British dominated, multinational firm. Iraq joined
the League of Nations in the October of that year, and was officially
recognized as an independent sovereign state. On
Faisal's death in 1933, he was succeeded by his son,
King Ghazi I.
In March 1945, Iraq became a founding member of the League of Arab
States (Arab League), which included Egypt, Transjordan, Lebanon, Saudi
Arabia, Syria, and Yemen. And in December 1945, Iraq joined the United
Nations (UN).