What is your research for?

Very briefly:

• the British made Iraq out of three Ottoman provinces, Mosul, Baghdad and Basra. These three provinces were fairly well-integrated under the Ottoman Empire and at various times in history the three provinces were administered by a single governor. But the new, defined national borders split these areas from regions they'd historically been connected. In the north and west, families were split apart between Iraq and Syria and Turkey; in the south tribes were split from Kuwait and the central Arabian desert. This also had an effect on trade, as it disrupted tradition economic links between former Ottoman territories.

• The British implemented a monarchy in 1921, crowning Feisal of the Bani Hashem as King after a trumped up 'referendum'. Feisal, who had worked with the British during the Arab Revolt and briefly crowned himself King of Syria. Feisal was from the Hedjaz, so had no powerbase native to Iraq. Therefore the actions taken by him to create his government is strongly tied with the creation of modern Iraq.

• Of Iraq's Muslim population, roughly 60% were Shia and 40% were Sunnis. There were also 100,000 Jews, mostly in Baghdad, and up to around 20,000 Yazidi Kurds. Kurds were the most populous ethnic minority, comprising about 20% of the population. So you can see Iraq had a very diverse population. King Feisal adopted a pan-Arab nationalist philosophy to his regime which permeates through the military and education systems. Pan-Arabists like Sati' Al-Husri were in charge of the school syllabi, which imported nationalist teachers and text books from Palestine and Syria. Anti-imperialist thought came hand-in-hand with Arab nationalism.

• not everyone was happy of course. The Kurds, Turkmen and other minorities clearly lost out. Some Kurds were strongly pro-British as a result and advocated for direct British rule, while others attempted to gain independence immediately (Sheikh Mahmud, the tribal head of Sulaymaniyah, rebelled twice against the British in 1919 and 1923). At the same time, Turkey was pressing its claim on Mosul province at the League of Nations, so Britain has to convince the Kurds that it was in their interests to stay in Iraq. In this they were successful, making proclamations for greater Kurdish autonomy and respect for their minority rights, which turned out to be empty but at the time helped sway Kurdish opinion away from independence or Turkish domination.

• then again there were some groups which benefited greatly. The minority Sunni population benefited by virtue of Feisal being Sunni. Some of the Shia Arabs also benefited due to the Arab nationalist agenda successfully cutting across religious boundaries. The same was true of the Baghdadi Jews, who were early adopted of pan-Arabism and heavily incorporated into the 1920s administration. This changed in the late 1930s, when pan-Arabism took a decidedly anti-Zionist turn, and the lines between Zionism and Jewish religious became blurred in the view of many nationalists.

I can add more books tomorrow.

Nelida Fuccaro, The Other Kurds: Yazidis in Colonial Iraq

Sluglett, Peter, Britain in Iraq: 1914-1932

Tripp, Charles, A History of Iraq