Churchill's Folly - How Winston Churchill Created Modern Iraq (Paperback, First Trade Paper Edition)

As Britain's colonial secretary in the 1920s, Winston Churchill made a mistake with calamitous consequences and unseen repercussions extending into the twenty-first century. Christopher Catherwood, scholar and adviser to Tony Blair's government, examines Churchill's creation of the artificial monarchy of Iraq after World War One, forcing together unfriendly peoples--Sunni Muslim Kurds and Arabs, and Shiite Muslims--under a single ruler. Defying a global wave of nationalistic sentiment and the desire of subjugated peoples to rule themselves, Churchill put together the broken pieces of the Ottoman Empire and unwittingly created a Middle Eastern powder keg. Inducing Arabs under the thumb of the Ottoman Turks to rebel against rule from Constantinople, the British during WWI convinced the Hashemite clan that they would rule over Syria. However, Britain had already promised the territory to the French. To make amends after the Great War, Churchill created the nation called Iraq and made the Hashemite leader, Feisel, king of a land to which he had no connections. Catherwood examines Churchill's decision, which resulted in a 1958 military coup against the Iraqi Hashemite government and a series of increasingly bloody regimes until the ultimate nightmare of Ba'athist party rule under Saddam Hussein. Photographs and maps are included.

General

Imprint:	Carroll & Graf
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	May 2005
First published:	May 2005
Authors:	Christopher Catherwood
Dimensions:	210 x 140 x 19mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	267
Edition:	First Trade Paper Edition
ISBN-13:	978-0-7867-1557-2
Categories:	Books > Humanities > History > Asian / Middle Eastern history > General Books > History > Asian / Middle Eastern history > General Promotions
LSN:	0-7867-1557-X
Barcode:	9780786715572

Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate? Let us know about it.

Does this product have an incorrect or missing image? Send us a new image.

Is this product missing categories? Add more categories.

Review This Product

No reviews yet - be the first to create one!