Abstract
The first challenges Roosevelt faced in the Midle East occurred in Iraq and Egypt, where the British sought to remove governments hostile to their interests. The Americans disagreed over the proper course of action when the British overthrew the government of Rashid Ali in the spring of 1941 and restored the pro-British faction. Washington debated how to reconcile Wilsonian principles with the realities of Alliance politics. The British invasion of May 1941 occurred three months prior to the Atlantic Charter and more than six months before America entered the war. No one in Washington seriously discussed supporting the Iraqis, or even issuing statements of concern about British actions. The American minister in Baghdad, Paul Knabenshue, supported British objectives throughout the crisis.
It is no doubt partly because Iraqi and Arab standards generally have not achieved a high level that we occupy our present position of predominance in the Middle East.
Sir Basil Newton, Ambassador to Iraq, September 1940.1
We have certainly treated the Arabs very well, having installed King Feisal and his descendants upon the Throne of Iraq and maintained them there.
Winston Churchill, April 1943.2
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Notes
Charles Tripp, A History of Iraq (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 30.
Hans Georg von Mackensen, Ambassador to Rome, to Foreign Ministry Berlin, September 14, 1940, Documents on German Foreign Policy, Series D, 1940–1941, Vol. XI (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1960), 75–76.
Memorandum by Wilhelm Melchers, December 9, 1940, Documents on German Foreign Policy, Series D, 1940–1941, Vol. XI (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1960), 826–828.
Sir Basil Newton to Anthony Eden, January 17, 1941, FO 371/27100; Baggallay to Mallaby, June 20, 1940, FO 371/24558; “Political situation in Iraq: Desired Removal of Italian Legation in Baghdad,” December 1940, FO 371/24559; “Political Situation in Iraq: Desired Removal of Iraqi Prime Minister,” December 2, 1940, FO 371/24559. Daniel Silverfarb has argued that the Iraqis forced the confrontation upon the British. See Silverfarb, Britain’s Informal Empire in the Middle East: A Case Study of Iraq, 1929–1941 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 125.
Brief for the Fuhrer, by Ribbentrop, April 27, 1941, Documents on German Foreign Policy, Series D, 1941, Vol. XII (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1962), 655–656.
Joseph Grew, Memorandum of Conversation with Nuri Said, May 29, 1945, FRUS, 1945, Vol. XIII, 49–51; Richard Park to President Roosevelt, April 12, 1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Papers as President, Official File 713, FDRL.
Peter Sluglett, Britain in Iraq: Contriving King and Country (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).
Salim Yaqub, Containing Arab Nationalism: The Eisenhower Doctrine and the Middle East (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004).
Matthew Elliot, Independent Iraq: The Monarchy and British Influence, 1941–1958 (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 1996);
Wm. Roger Louis, “Britain and the Crisis of 1958,” in Wm. Roger Louis and Roger Owen, eds. A Revolutionary Year: The Middle East in1958 (Washington: I.B. Tauris, 2002).
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© 2012 Christopher D. O’Sullivan
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O’Sullivan, C.D. (2012). Iraq Between Two Empires: Great Britain, Arab Nationalism, and the Origins of American Power. In: FDR and the End of Empire. The World of the Roosevelts. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137025258_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137025258_3
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