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Who colonized Iraq?

Middle East — the powers that ruled Iraq, the dates, and what independence did and did not change.

In short

Who colonized Iraq?

Britain. After Ottoman defeat in 1918, Britain took Iraq as a League of Nations mandate, put down the 1920 revolt with aerial bombardment, and retained bases and oil rights long after nominal independence in 1932.

Iraq was assembled from three Ottoman provinces to suit British strategic and oil interests and given a king from another country.

Reference

Who ruled Iraq, and when

1534–1918
Ottoman provinces of Baghdad, Basra and Mosul
1920–1932
British mandate
1932–1958
Kingdom of Iraq under British influence

At a glance

Key facts

Colonising powers
Britain, Ottoman Empire (previously)
Independence
3 October 1932
Air policing
Britain used aerial bombing of villages as routine administration
Borders
Drawn in wartime European negotiations, not by inhabitants
Oil
The Iraq Petroleum Company was foreign-owned until nationalisation in 1972

Chronology

Key dates

  1. 1916

    Sykes–Picot agreement divides Ottoman Arab lands.

  2. 1920

    Iraqi revolt; the RAF pioneers air policing against villages.

  3. 1921

    Faisal installed as king.

  4. 1932

    Nominal independence with British bases retained.

  5. 1958

    Revolution ends the British-installed monarchy.

Context

What the record shows

The 1920 revolt was suppressed by the Royal Air Force in what its own officers described as an experiment in governing by bombing — a technique later exported across the empire.

Questions

Frequently asked

Who colonised Iraq?
Britain, as a League of Nations mandate from 1920, after four centuries of Ottoman rule.
Who drew Iraq's borders?
British and French negotiators, following the 1916 Sykes–Picot agreement and post-war mandate settlements.
When did Iraq become independent?
Formally on 3 October 1932, though British bases and influence persisted until the 1958 revolution.

Read on

Related in the archive

References

Sources — colonial Iraq

  1. [1]Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (Seville, 1552).
  2. [2]Noble David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650 (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
  3. [3]Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America (Monthly Review Press, 1971; English 1973).
  4. [4]Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost (Houghton Mifflin, 1998).
  5. [5]Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa (Random House, 1991).
  6. [6]Shashi Tharoor, Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India (Hurst, 2017).
  7. [7]Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya (Henry Holt, 2005).
  8. [8]Alfred W. McCoy, Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State (Wisconsin, 2009).
  9. [9]Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019).
  10. [10]Jürgen Zimmerer, "The birth of the Ostland out of the spirit of colonialism", Patterns of Prejudice 39:2 (2005), on the German South-West Africa → Holocaust lineage.
  11. [11]Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1972).
  12. [12]Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I (1867), Chapter 31 ("Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist").

All works cited in good faith for documentary, educational and critical use. Errors and omissions: contact the archive.