| Summary/Abstract |
This article examines two sites of British investment in nineteenth-century Iraq, exploring the different interests and ideologies – both British and Ottoman – underlying each one, and using the funding controversies which plagued both projects as windows on the political and economic relationships which crystallized through these ventures and informed post-war governance. Ottoman Iraq provides an important perspective on global British economic interests: although it encompassed zones of Britain's informal empire, the Ottoman state intensified its own imperial ambitions towards the end of the nineteenth century. This created tensions within Ottoman policies towards the British, which were complicated by the friction between British state and commercial interests. By 1914, the controversies which plagued both projects seemed close to a breaking point. The outbreak of the First World War, however, entrenched existing patterns of financial and infrastructural involvement as part of the occupation, and encouraged the creation of a development paradigm in the Mandate.
|