Getting Out of Iraq—in 1932: The League of Nations and the Road to Normative Statehood
TL;DR: The admission of the Kingdom of Iraq to the League of Nations in 1932 as discussed by the authors was a watershed moment in the history of the Mandate system, and it would remain the only Mandated territory to shed its tutelary status and be granted independence through collective agreement.
Abstract: ON OCTOBER 3, 1932, THE thirteenth annual assembly of the League of Nations voted unanimously to admit the Kingdom of Iraq to membership. Part of the Ottoman territory occupied by the Allied powers during the First World War and then turned over to British administration under League of Nations oversight, Iraq was the first—and would, in fact, remain the only—mandated territory to shed its tutelary status and be granted independence through collective agreement. The significance of the moment was not lost on the assembled delegates, and British foreign secretary Sir John Simon, speaking “as representative of the country whose privilege it had been to guide the State of Iraq through the period of adolescence to the full status of manhood,” insisted that it vindicated the mandates system itself. “When that regime was instituted there were not wanting critics and cynics who hinted that the whole Mandatory system had been devised merely as a cloak for colonization and annexation . . . The admission of Iraq to the League was a sufficiently emphatic answer.”2 But behind the scenes, and even within the hall itself, many were not so sure. Neither the League Council nor its Permanent Mandates Commission (PMC), which oversaw the administration of the mandated territories, had welcomed Britain’s plan. Indeed, as one Colonial Office official admitted privately in late 1931, practically all the members of the Commission “were wholly unconvinced that Iraq was fit to be released from the Mandate and were most reluctant to agree to her eman-
Citations
More filters
Book•
17 Jan 2019TL;DR: Parfitt as discussed by the authors develops a new'modular' legal history to make sense of the paradoxical relationship between sovereign equality and inequality, and exposes the conditional nature of the process through which international law creates and disciplines new states and their subjects.
Abstract: That all states are free and equal under international law is axiomatic to the discipline. Yet even a brief look at the dynamics of the international order calls that axiom into question. Mobilising fresh archival research and drawing on a tradition of unorthodox Marxist and anti-colonial scholarship, Rose Parfitt develops a new 'modular' legal historiography to make sense of the paradoxical relationship between sovereign equality and inequality. Juxtaposing a series of seemingly unrelated histories against one another, including a radical re-examination of the canonical story of Fascist Italy's invasion of Ethiopia, Parfitt exposes the conditional nature of the process through which international law creates and disciplines new states and their subjects. The result is a powerful critique of international law's role in establishing and perpetuating inequalities of wealth, power and pleasure, accompanied by a call to attend more closely to the strategies of resistance that are generated in that process.
72 citations
01 Jan 2019
56 citations
Book•
26 Jun 2017
TL;DR: Dietrich as mentioned in this paper analyzes the tensions faced and networks created by anti-colonization oil elites during the age of decolonization following World War II, and examines how these elites brokered and balanced their ambitions via access to oil, the most important natural resource of the modern era.
Abstract: Through innovative and expansive research, Oil Revolution analyzes the tensions faced and networks created by anti-colonial oil elites during the age of decolonization following World War II. This new community of elites stretched across Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Algeria, and Libya. First through their western educations and then in the United Nations, the Arab League, and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, these elites transformed the global oil industry. Their transnational work began in the early 1950s and culminated in the 1973–4 energy crisis and in the 1974 declaration of a New International Economic Order in the United Nations. Christopher R. W. Dietrich examines how these elites brokered and balanced their ambitions via access to oil, the most important natural resource of the modern era.
51 citations
DOI•
01 Jan 2013
TL;DR: Genell et al. as mentioned in this paper explored the relationship between international law, imperial expansion and state formation in the late Ottoman Empire against the joint reconfiguration of ideas of sovereignty and imperial control during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Abstract: Empire by Law: Ottoman Sovereignty and the British Occupation of Egypt, 1882-1923 Aimee M. Genell This dissertation is an analysis of the Ottoman-European legal contest over Egypt. I explore the relationship between international law, imperial expansion and state formation in the late Ottoman Empire against the joint reconfiguration of ideas of sovereignty and imperial control during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The British occupation of Egypt (1882-1914) was a novel experiment in quasi-colonial administration, where legal justifications for the occupation demanded the retention of Ottoman institutions and shaped administrative practices. My research examines the significance and consequences of maintaining Ottoman sovereignty in Egypt during the British occupation in an effort to explain the formation of a distinctive model of sovereignty, both for late empires and for successor states in the post-Ottoman Middle East. I argue that a new model of client-state sovereignty, produced during the course of the occupation, emerged out of the intense imperial rivalry between the Ottoman and Europe Empires in Egypt. This model had lasting significance more generally for how we define states and sovereignty today. These findings recast the Ottoman Empire as a major, albeit weak, actor in European diplomacy. Though Ottoman and European history have developed as separate fields of academic inquiry, my research shows that nineteenth and early twentieth century European and Ottoman political practices and ideas were inextricably intertwined. The Ottoman Empire contributed to and was perhaps the key testing ground for enduring political and administrative experiments in the post-imperial international order.
49 citations
Book•
12 Dec 2011TL;DR: The true horrors of Hussein's regime have been exposed for the first time through a massive archive of government documents captured by the United States after the fall of Saddam Hussein this article, which have been translated and analyzed by Joseph Sassoon, an Iraqi-born scholar and commentator on the Middle East.
Abstract: The Ba'th Party came to power in 1968 and remained for thirty-five years, until the 2003 US invasion. Under the leadership of Saddam Hussein, who became president of Iraq in 1979, a powerful authoritarian regime was created based on a system of violence and an extraordinary surveillance network, as well as reward schemes and incentives for supporters of the party. The true horrors of this regime have been exposed for the first time through a massive archive of government documents captured by the United States after the fall of Saddam Hussein. It is these documents that form the basis of this extraordinarily revealing book and that have been translated and analyzed by Joseph Sassoon, an Iraqi-born scholar and seasoned commentator on the Middle East. They uncover the secrets of the innermost workings of Hussein's Revolutionary Command Council, how the party was structured, how it operated via its network of informers and how the system of rewards functioned.
47 citations