Gertrude Bell and the Formation of the Iraqi State: The Kurdish Dimension

Author(s):  
Saad B. Eskander

Almost all scholars agree that Gertrude Bell played a key role in the establishment of an Arab state in Mesopotamia, following the end of the First World War. But it is little known that her attitudes had a fateful effect on the political future of Southern Kurdistan (the present Iraqi Kurdistan). Some political analysts attribute the present ethnic and religious troubles in Iraq to Bell’s unrealistic plans. This chapter looks at Bell's position on the Kurdish situation within the context of the formation of the Arab state. It will examine how Bell’s insistence on subjecting Southern Kurds to Arab Hashemite rule was influenced not only by political and strategic considerations, but also by personal, cultural and social factors, her friendships with Arab notables and leaders, and her deep knowledge and appreciation of Arabic language, traditions and history.

Author(s):  
James Muldoon

The German council movements arose through mass strikes and soldier mutinies towards the end of the First World War. They brought down the German monarchy, founded several short-lived council republics, and dramatically transformed European politics. This book reconstructs how participants in the German council movements struggled for a democratic socialist society. It examines their attempts to democratize politics, the economy, and society through building powerful worker-led organizations and cultivating workers’ political agency. Drawing from the practices of the council movements and the writings of theorists such as Rosa Luxemburg, Anton Pannekoek, and Karl Kautsky, this book returns to their radical vision of a self-determining society and their political programme of democratization and socialization. It presents a powerful argument for renewed attention to the political theories of this historical period and for their ongoing relevance today.


Südosteuropa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 274-281
Author(s):  
Dubravka Stojanović

AbstractThe author comments on the political and economic options in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic that started at the beginning of 2020. She revisits responses to the crises of the First World War, the Great Crash of 1929, and the Second World War, sorting them into ‘pessimistic’ and ‘optimistic’ responses, and outlining their respective consequences.


2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
JESSICA REINISCH

In 2005Contemporary European Historypublished a special issue on transnationalism, edited by Patricia Clavin and Jens-Wilhelm Wessels. The articles presented six examples of ‘transnational’ connections between Europeans from different countries, focusing primarily on contacts in the political and economic realms, and documenting a multitude of ties and links between Europeans at all levels from the end of the First World War to the early 1960s.


Author(s):  
Kirill V. Vertyaev ◽  

The article develops the stadial formation thesis of the proto-statehood among the Iraqi Kurds. The concept of national identity of the Iraqi Kurds remains the subject of a complex and long-lasting discussion. The main obstacle for the emergence of the Kurdish integral nationalism is still the fact that the Kurds speak different dialects of Kurdish language, and still maintain political and inter-clan conflicts over the distribution of power (not to mention the futility of any attempts to define political boundaries of Iraqi Kurdistan). Ironically, Great Britain faced practically the same contradictions during its occupation of Mesopotamia at the end of the WWI (following the Mudros armistice in October 1918), when British attempts to create an independent Kurdish state failed for a number of reasons, which are discussed in the article. In our opinion, this period was responsible for the formation of proto-statehood in Kurdish area (Kingdom of Kurdistan, for example, obtained classic characteristics of a chiefdom, but at the same time had a vivid anti-colonial, anti-imperialist orientation). The phenomenology of the British government’s political relations with such ‘quasi-states’ presents the subject for this article’s analysis.


2020 ◽  
Vol 65 ◽  
pp. 309-314
Author(s):  
Kirill A. Solovyov

In the center of the article author’s attention is the book “Twilight of Europe” by G. A. Landau, which is sometimes regarded as direct predecessor of O. Spengler’s works. The article is devoted to G. A. Landau’s views on the nature of political, social, and legal processes in Europe after the First World War. The special attention is paid to the circumstances that Landau believed to be the signs of European civilization ill-being: the collapse of empires, nationalism, and the inclusion of the masses in the political life. Accordingly, the emphasis is placed on Landau’s evaluation of such concepts as “militarism”, “empire”, “nation”, etc.


Author(s):  
Benjamin Ziemann

It is a commonplace to see the First World War as a major caesura in German and European history. This article records the war years from 1914–1918 in Germany. Not least, such an interpretation can rely on the perceptions of influential contemporary observers. In Germany, as in other belligerent countries, many artists, intellectuals, and academics experienced the outbreak of the war as a cathartic moment. While it is straightforward to see the mobilization for war and violence as a major caesura for any of the belligerent countries, it is much more complicated to account for causalities and for German peculiarities. Difficult methodological questions arise, which have not always been properly addressed. While Germany was facing a ‘world of enemies’, as a popular slogan suggested, the semantics of the political shifted to an articulation of emotions, excitements, and promises, contributing to a dramatized narrative centered around the notions of sacrifice and fate. The effect of World War I concludes the article.


Cliocanarias ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-43
Author(s):  
Miguel Ángel Perfecto García ◽  

The regime of general Francisco Franco imposed a nationalist model from two ideological sources: the nationalcatholicism, an antiliberal proposal of the Catholic Church that identified Spain with catholicism; and the anti-liberal and fascist alternatives born in the heat of the European political-social crisis and Spanish of the First World War. The political model was strongly centralist, authoritarian and interventionist around Castile and the Castilian language, rejecting the other nationalist models. At the social level, the corporate proposal stood out by means of the compulsory framing of workers and businessmen in the Spanish Organización Sindical, the unique trade union of Francoism led by the unique party Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las JONS


2009 ◽  
pp. 155-175
Author(s):  
Steven Forti

- Nicola Bombacci was an important PSI's leader during the First World War and the biennio rosso (1919-1920). After his expulsion from the PCd'I, of which was one of the founders, he approached fascism and became one of the last supporters of it since he had been shooted by partisans and died in Como Lake, and had been exposed in Loreto Square beside to Mussolini. After a short historical mention of the Bombacci's political life, these pages will analyse deeper the question of the passage from the left to fascism in interwar Italy, through the analyse of his political language. The method executed in order to analyse the question foresees the use of a biography by dates and the identification of the political interpretation's categories, which permit to carry out a comparison between the social-communist and fascist period. In conclusions, the article proposes a thesis of interpretation: the political passion.Parole chiave: Fascismo, Nazione, Rivoluzione, Classe, Guerra, Passione politica Fascism, Nation, Revolution, Class, War, Political passion


1966 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. H. S. Hatton

This article deals with the reaction of the Colonial Office to the problems—commercial and military—posed for the Gambia by the outbreak of the First World War. It argues that in the Colonial Office discussions about these problems two distinctly different attitudes can be distinguished. The younger junior officials tended to advocate government intervention to ameliorate specific economic problems, while the political heads and senior officials remained firmly attached to the dogmas of laissez faire. Conversely, the former group did not share the doubts of the latter as to whether the dogmas of patriotic bravery should be made to apply to African natives.The subject-matter—the dislocation of commerce consequent upon French failure to purchase her usual share of the groundnut crop, the ensuing financial difficulties of the Gambia government, defence problems revealed after the mis-identification of H.M.S. Highflyer—is based on material from the Colonial Office archives.


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