Iraq chronicle - From Ottoman Empire to Saddam Hussein
A news article from CBC:
The land occupied by the modern state of Iraq is among the most historic on Earth. Home to humanity’s first civilization, Sumer, it has been the backdrop to thousands of years of momentous human events.
What is currently Iraq resulted from the break-up of the Ottoman Empire after World War One. When France and Britain divvied up the Middle East, Britain got the “Fertile Crescent,” the arc of land including today’s Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Israel and Egypt.
The borders of these nations had no roots in history but were simply agreed upon by France and Britain. Like the nations formed out of the defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire in the same period, or the crumbling of other colonial empires 40 years later, this was to cause many problems.
Initially the government of Iraq was a monarchy. Through the 1920s and 1930s, Iraq slowly gained more independence. There were many factions within the country competing for power and Iraq remained politically unstable. One thing generally agreed on, however, was dissatisfaction with the national borders that had been dictated by foreigners.