Old Boundaries for a New State: The Creation of Iraq's Eastern Question
This paper chronicles critical chapters in the delimitation of Iraq's boundaries with Iran and Kuwait, paradoxically in the period preceding the Great War. For such territorial definition took place before the Iraqi state was even formed, yet it would create many of the strategic problems that Iraq has since faced with its two neighbors. Narrowing the Perso-Ottoman land frontier in the mid-19th century had been an Anglo-Russian project, though it was largely Britain's interests that proved conclusive in its final settlement in 1914. The discovery of oil in Persia in the first decade of the 20th century added a new dimension to settling the southern end of the frontier along the Shatt al-Arab river. Britain's interest in maintaining the Persian Gulf as a British lake in order to defend British India was the chief determinant of the contemporary territorial definition of Kuwait. In shaping these territorial limits and dealing with the Ottoman Empire, Britain could not have realized that it was essentially creating the explosive contemporary strategic issue of Iraqi access to the Persian Gulf. With hindsight, it seems that Britain bequeathed to the Iraqi state an eastern question of its own.
Frontier Fictions: Shaping the Iranian Nation, 1804-1946
IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsChronology of Major EventsGlossaryIntroduction. Frontier Fictions31A Manifest Destiny Diverted, 1804-1896152Limning the Landscape: Geographical Depictions of the Homeland, 1850s-1896473From Riches to Ruins: The Political Economy of Frontiers, 1897-1906754Political Parables: Iran's Frontier Crucible, 1906-19141015Coercing Camaraderie: The War, the Military, and the Myth of Riza Khan, 1914-19261446Parenting Little Patriots: Domesticating the Homeland, 1921-1926180Conclusion. What's in a Name? From Persia to Iran, 1926-1946216Notes227Bibliography285Index301
The End of Empire in the Middle East: Britain's Relinquishment of Power in her Last Three Arab Dependencies
List of illustrations Foreword Sir Anthony Parsons Preface List of abbreviations Introduction 1. The regional consequences of World War II 2. The Sudan episode 3. The South West Arabian episode 4. The Gulf episode 5. Comparisons, without odium 6. Epilogues and epitaphs.