Abstract
The onset of World War One (WWI) in 1914 transformed the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire into a battleground that facilitated the rapid spread of European power across the region. The subsequent collapse of Ottoman power following the end of the war in 1918 consolidated the hold of European power in the region and inaugurated the rise of new episodes of contentious politics. The Egyptian Revolution unfolded in 1919 followed shortly by the Iraqi revolution against the British occupation in 1920, and subsequently by the Great Syrian Revolt against the French occupation between 1925 and 1927. This early postwar period was thus characterized by momentous political changes accompanied by the rise of new patterns of political contestation. As such, this period offers a fertile ground for analyzing the emergence of new political actors and the rise of new patterns of resistance vis-à-vis the spread of European power across the region. Accordingly this chapter focuses on the case of Iraq in the postwar period and examines the emergent patterns of contention during this pivotal historical moment.
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Notes
A. Kadhim, Reclaiming Iraq: The 1920 Revolution and the Founding of the Modern State (Texas: University of Texas Press, 2012).
D. McAdam, S. Tarrow, and C. Tilly, Dynamics of Contention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 7–8.
The disjuncture between Baghdad and the mid-Euphrates movement is reflected in historiographical debates over which area provided the driving force for the movement. For the argument that the mid-Euphrates area was the driving force, see F. Firon, Al-Haqa’iq al-Nasi‘ah fī Thawrat al-Iraqiyah 1920, Vol.1 (Baghdad: Al Najah Press, 1952);
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For a more balanced approach see M. M. Al-Khalesi, Batal al-Islam: Sheikh Mohammad Mahdi Al-Khalesi: Documents for the Events of the Jihad and Revolution 1914–1925 (Markaz Wathaiq al-Imam Khalesi: Tehran, 2007).
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Luizard maintains the fatwa was issued on June 21, 1920, see P. Luizard, “Shaykh Muhammad al-Khlalisi (1890–1963) and His Political Role in Iraq and Iran in the 1910/20s,” in The Twelver Shi’a in Modern Times: Religious Culture and Political History, ed. R. Brunner and W. Ende (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill, 2001), 230. In contrast Al-Bazirgan argues it was issued after June 30, see Al-Bazirgan, al-Waqai, 178.
T. Asad, “The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam,” Qui Parle, 17, no. 2 (2009): 14.
Abu-Tabikh, Mudhakkarat, 174. However, Bazirgan maintains that coordination on military took place between the Haras and the tribes of Diyala A. Bazirgan, Min Ahdath Baghdad of Diyala Ethna Thawrat al-Ashreen fi al-Iraq, ed. H. A. Barzingan, (Baghdad: al-Matba’ah al-’Arabīyah, 2000), 30–33.
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Quoted in M. Al-Durrah, Al-Harb al-Iraqiyah al-Baritaniyah 1941 (Beirut: Dar al-Tali‘ah, 1969), 37–38.
See also A. A. Allawi, Faisal I of Iraq (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 537.
Aylmer Haldane, The Insurrection in Mesopotamia 1920 (London: William Blackwood & Sons, 1922), 105; Firon, Haqa iq, 311–13.
P. Satia,”The Defense of Inhumanity: Air Control and the British Idea of Arabia,” The American Historical Review 111, no. 1 (2006): 36.
R. Guha, Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 24.
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F. Cooper, Colonialism In Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 18.
B. Badie, The Imported State: Westernisation of the Political Order (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), 86.
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Hariri, A. (2015). The Iraqi Independence Movement: a Case of Transgressive Contention (1918–1920). In: Gerges, F.A. (eds) Contentious Politics in the Middle East. Middle East Today. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137530868_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137530868_5
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