Imperialism's Impact on Iraq and Iran: A Historical Analysis
This paper analyzes the impact of imperialism on Iraq and Iran from the Ottoman era through the early twenty-first century. It traces how British colonial decisions—including the drawing of Iraq's borders, the installation of a Sunni monarchy, and the partition of Kurdish territory—created structural conditions for sectarian conflict and political instability. The paper also examines how oil interests drove Western intervention in Iran, culminating in the 1953 CIA-backed coup that installed the Shah, and how the subsequent Iranian Revolution reshaped regional dynamics. Additional sections address the Iran-Iraq War, the rise of ISIS, the de facto independence of Iraqi Kurdistan, and China's growing imperialist role in the region's energy sector.
- Introduction: Ottoman and British Imperialism in Iraq: Ottoman rule, British mandate, and Iraq's colonial origins
- Governance in Iraq: British-imposed Sunni monarchy and long-term sectarian consequences
- The Kurdish Quasi-Independence: Partition of Kurdish territory and de facto autonomy
- ISIS and the Legacy of Imperial Destabilization: ISIS origins in imperial disruption and sectarian rivalry
- Iran and the Roots of Western Imperialism: 1953 coup, Shah's rule, and the Iranian Revolution
- Oil as the Engine of Imperial Ambition: Oil as the primary driver of Western imperialism
- China's Rising Imperial Role: China's energy interests and growing influence in the region
- Conclusions: Enduring legacy of imperialism in Iraq and Iran
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper sustains a single clear analytical lens—imperialism as the primary driver of political outcomes—across multiple countries, time periods, and actors without losing coherence.
- It draws productive comparisons between Iraq and Iran, showing how different forms of imperialism (direct colonial rule versus proxy economic control) produced different but related consequences.
- The inclusion of China as an emerging imperial actor gives the analysis contemporary relevance and prevents the argument from being purely historical.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper uses historical causation as its core analytical method, tracing how specific imperial decisions—the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the Treaty of Lausanne, the 1953 coup, the U.S. invasion—created cascading consequences visible in present-day conflicts. This technique of linking discrete historical moments to structural outcomes is a hallmark of strong political history writing.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with Iraq's Ottoman and British colonial history, then moves through governance failures, the Kurdish question, and the rise of ISIS. It pivots to Iran's distinct but parallel experience with economic imperialism, the 1953 coup, and the Islamic Revolution. Thematic sections on oil and China broaden the argument before the conclusion synthesizes all threads into a unified assessment of imperialism's enduring legacy in both countries.
Introduction: Ottoman and British Imperialism in Iraq
The modern nation of Iraq was formed in 1932 when the Kingdom of Iraq gained independence from the United Kingdom. It had been placed under the authority of Great Britain as the British Mandate of Mesopotamia by the League of Nations in 1920. Prior to that, it was part of the Ottoman Empire. This delineates the history of imperialism in Iraq as beginning with the arrival of the Ottomans in the fifteenth century and extending through independence from Great Britain. These two stages of imperial rule had several different impacts on modern-day Iraq.
The first impact concerns the borders of the current state of Iraq, which were the direct result of British rule. The Ottomans had administered Iraq differently, organizing it into three main provinces. Under Ottoman rule, Baghdad, Mosul, and Basra were all provinces within the empire. Iraq was not Iraq in the sense of a modern nation-state; rather, it comprised governed territories delineated largely along ethnic lines. In Basra, the population consisted predominantly of Shia Arabs. In Baghdad, the population was more mixed—predominantly Sunni, but with a one-quarter Jewish population and a sizeable Shia presence as well. In Mosul, the population has long been predominantly Sunni. The Ottomans recognized and respected the demographic divisions, knowing that Shia holy sites, and therefore the Shia population, were concentrated in the south of the country. There was no attempt by the Ottomans to tie the different regions of modern Iraq together in any unified way—they were simply Ottoman provinces, unrelated to each other administratively.
The British redrew the internal boundaries of the region. The Sykes-Picot Agreement between England and France was the first attempt at creating such boundaries. The San Remo Agreement subsequently redrew the boundaries of the modern nations of Iraq and Syria (Stansfield, 2014). This resulted in the creation of what would become the modern state of Iraq. The country ended up with a Shia majority, a large Sunni minority, and a Kurdish region. In the post-colonial years, the entire country bled minorities—especially the Jewish and Christian communities—to the point where modern Iraq is 99% Muslim of some denomination (Stansfield, 2014).
The governance structure of Iraq, as the Kingdom of Iraq, was put into place by the British during their mandate. Stansfield (2014) argues that the British had greater trust in Sunni Arabs than in Shia Arabs at this time, and that this is why they chose to put the Sunni in charge of the new country, even though they were in the minority. He also argued that the state of Iraq today would not exist without the British: they created the idea of it, and the Sunni who were put into power built up the national story along their own vision. A unified Iraq came about only because the British invented it.
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