Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation-building and a History Denied - Hardcover

Dodge, Toby

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1850657289 ISBN 13: 9781850657286

Publisher: C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd, 2003

Synopsis

Between 1920 and 1932, Great Britain endeavored unsuccessfully to create a modern democratic state in the region that became known as Iraq. The unwieldy patchwork state it fashioned embodied the imperatives of Whitehall while running roughshod over the political sensibilities of the region's inhabitants. When Britain grew weary of holding together its fractious creation, it hastened Iraq toward independence. Democracy was quickly dispensed with by a series of coups, culminating in 1968 with the Ba'ath Party's siezure of power. Britain's failure, Dodge contends, forms the crucial historical backdrop against which the Bush administration's removal of Saddam Hussein and its aftermath must be understood.

About this title

Review

'an illuminating new book.' -- Martin Woollacott, The Guardian, Friday October 17, 2003

[...] Dodge's book is a powerful warning to look at countries in their own cultural and historical context. -- The Guardian, 20 March 2004

About the Author

Toby Dodge is a senior research fellow at the ESRC Centre for the Study of Globalisation at the University of Warwick, England, and an associate fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London. He has acted as a consultant on Iraq for ABC News and has written for the Guardian. He is coeditor, with Stephen Simon, of Iraq at the Crossroads: State and Society in the Shadow of Regime Change and, with Richard Higgott, of Globalisation and the Middle East: Islam, Economics, Society, and Politics.

Edition details

• Publisher: C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1850657289
• ISBN 13: 9781850657286
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288