World War I in Mesopotamia

ISBN: 9781784531461 出版年：2015 页码：277 Nadia Atia Bloomsbury Publishing

The Mesopotamian campaign during World War I was a critical moment in Britain's position in the Middle East. With British and British Indian troops fighting in places whiwell-known in t2003 invasion of Iraq, such as Basra, the campaign led to the establishment of the British Mandate in Iraq in 1921. Nadia Atia believes that in order to fully understand Britain's policies in creating the nascent state of Iraq, we must firthe war shaped Britons' conceptions of the region. Atia does this through a cultural and military history of the changing British perceptions of Mesopotamia since the period before World Warunder Ottoman rule. Drawing on a wide variety of historical and literary sources, including the writing of key figures such as Gertrude Bell, Mark Sykes and Arnold Wilson, but focusing mainly on the views and experiences of ordinary men and women whose stories and experiences of the war have less frequently been told, Atia examines the cultural and social legacy of World War I in the Middle East and how this affected British attempts to exert influence in the region.