Occupation and Resistance in Southern Iraq: a Study of Great Britain's Civil Administration in the Middle Euphrates and the Gr
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DePaul University Via Sapientiae College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences 3-2018 Occupation and resistance in southern Iraq: a study of Great Britain’s civil administration in the Middle Euphrates and the Great Rebellion, 1917-1920 Scott Jones DePaul University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/etd Recommended Citation Jones, Scott, "Occupation and resistance in southern Iraq: a study of Great Britain’s civil administration in the Middle Euphrates and the Great Rebellion, 1917-1920" (2018). College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations. 241. https://via.library.depaul.edu/etd/241 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at Via Sapientiae. 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Occupation and Resistance in Southern Iraq: A Study of Great Britain’s Civil Administration in the Middle Euphrates and the Great Rebellion, 1917-1920 A Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts March, 2018 BY Scott Jones Department of International Studies College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences DePaul University Chicago, Illinois Jones 1 Occupation and Resistance in Southern Iraq: A Study of Great Britain’s Civil Administration in the Middle Euphrates and the Great Rebellion, 1917-1920 Scott Jones International Studies Master’s Thesis Thesis Committee Advisor – Kaveh Ehsani, Ph.D., DePaul University Reader – Rajit Mazumder, Ph.D., DePaul University Reader – Eugene Beiriger, Ph.D., DePaul University Introduction – Occupation and Resistance in Southern Iraq 1. Introduction 3 2. A Note on Sources 6 3. Iraq in WWI, the British Occupation, and the Great Rebellion in History 7 Chapter 1 – Great Britain and Southern Iraq in WWI 1. Great Britain and the Ottoman Empire on the Eve of WWI 13 2. The Indian Army and the Invasion of Southern Iraq 16 3. The Mesopotamian Campaign and the Civil Administration 17 4. The Design and Functions of the Civil Administration 20 5. Anglo-Indian Defeats and the Hashemite Revolt 22 6. The Middle Euphrates, the Epicenter of Conflicts to Come 24 7. The Shrine Cities and the Shi’i Clergy 25 8. The Tribes and the Ottomans 29 9. The Tribes and the British 32 10. Conclusion 34 Chapter 2 – The British Occupation of the Middle Euphrates, 1917-1919 1. The Civil Administration and the Agrarian Political Economy of Hilla 35 A. The Arrival of the Civil Administration in Hilla 41 B. Taxation and Resistance in the Hilla Division 43 C. Labor Recruitment in the Hilla Division 45 D. British Interference in Hilla’s Irrigation Patterns 46 E. Arnold Wilson’s Plebiscite and the Shi’i Clergy in Karbala 47 2. The Civil Administration, Rice Cultivation, and Political Autonomy in Shamiya 50 A. The Arrival of the Civil Administration in Shamiya 54 B. Food Shortages, Price Inflation, Taxation and Unrest in Najaf 55 C. British Interference in Shamiya’s Irrigation Patterns 58 3. The Civil Administration and the Nomadic Tribes of Samawa 59 A. The Sheikhs and Labor Recruitment 61 B. Tax Collection and the Royal Air Force 62 C. The Consolidation of Samawa and Diwaniya and Disarming the Tribes 63 Jones 2 Chapter 3 – The Rebellion and Political Upheaval in the Middle Euphrates, 1920 1. Introduction 66 A. The Arrest of Sha’lan Abu al-Chon and the Revolt at Rumaitha 71 B. Political Upheaval in Hilla and Shamiya, and the Spread of the Rebellion 73 C. The Formation of an Independent Government in Karbala and Najaf 78 D. British Victories, “Water Domination,” and the Collapse of the Gov. in Karbala 81 Conclusion – The Aftermath of the Rebellion and the Legacy for the Modern State of Iraq 1. The Middle Euphrates and the Aftermath of the Rebellion 85 A. The Occupation and Disarmament of Karbala and Najaf 87 B. The Return of the Civil Administration and the Formation of the Iraqi Army 89 C. The Role of the Royal Air Force in Iraq 91 D. The Middle Euphrates and the Formation of the Iraqi State 92 E. Conclusion 95 F. Bibliography 98 Jones 3 Introduction: Occupation and Resistance in Southern Iraq Introduction The topic of this thesis is the complex history of the British occupation of the Middle Euphrates region of Iraq near the conclusion of the First World War and in its aftermath, which culminated in a massive rebellion in the summer of 1920. At the time, the former Ottoman provinces of Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul were suspended in a moment of historical transition.1 On the eve of WWI, Great Britain was faced with a combination of the disruption of its commercial pursuits in the Persian Gulf, fears of Russian expansionism in Persia and Central Asia, and German expansionism in Iraq. Seeking the opportunity to secure its imperial interests in the Ottoman territories of Iraq, and to join France and Russia in the European conflict with the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire, Great Britain declared war on the Ottomans in November 1914. An Anglo-Indian force from British India captured the commercial port of Basra in November 1914 and set up a Civil Administration to govern the local population and the territories of Ottoman Iraq as they came under British occupation. For nearly four years, Great Britain was engaged in a brutal conflict with the Ottomans that utterly devastated the landscape of the three Ottoman provinces, inflicting starvation, disease, and displacement upon local societies. By the time Anglo-Indian forces finally captured the city of Baghdad in March 1917, British civil and military authorities had attempted to fill the administrative vacuum left by the Ottoman 1 Throughout the thesis, “Iraq” serves as a geographic designation, rather than a political identity, referring to the former Ottoman provinces of Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul, which under British occupation and the British Mandate constituted thirteen to fifteen administrative divisions stretching from the city of Mosul near the Turkish-Syrian border to the city of Basra at the head of the Persian Gulf. For an investigation of the origins and development of Iraqi political identity in the period under study, see Fanar Haddad, “Political Awakenings in an Artificial State: Iraq, 1914-1920” International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies 6 (2012): 3-25. Jones 4 authorities in the southern Basra province and along the Tigris and Shatt al-Arab Rivers and regions bordering Persia. After the capture of Baghdad, British authorities imposed their Civil Administration on the Middle Euphrates region, an irrigated flatland stretching along the Euphrates River System roughly from the town of Falluja near Baghdad to Nasiriya in the south. The Civil Administration intended to extract local resources and labor power for the use of the Indian Army, and to establish an administrative presence with objectives subject to broader British imperial ambitions in Iraq and in Great Britain’s empire between India and the Mediterranean. In the Middle Euphrates, local society had little direct contact with the British invaders since 1914, but nevertheless had experienced immense economic dislocation because of the war. Further, the political, social, and economic landscape of the Middle Euphrates was complex. Local society had lived with a significant amount of political autonomy from a neglectful Ottoman regime in recent years. It’s Shi’i shrine cities were home to Shi’i clerics deeply committed to protecting the autonomy of the Middle Euphrates, as well as Muslim societies elsewhere from autocratic regimes and foreign, non-Muslim powers such as Great Britain. At the same time, the cities in this region were also home to wealthy merchants and landowners, who were ready to benefit from the new commercial traffic which the vast British military occupation was providing. Yet, the Shi’i clergy had a strong spiritual and political connection to a considerable, armed society of Shi’i tribes who survived on agricultural and pastoral occupations in the rural areas of the Middle Euphrates and the hinterlands of its cities. These tribes also lived by their own customs and traditions that were often free from interference by a centralized government. These complexities were Jones 5 among many others presenting an enormous challenge to the machinery of the Civil Administration in the Middle Euphrates. This thesis focuses on the ways that the British civil and military authorities interacted with political, economic, and social patterns in the Middle Euphrates region to answer a series of interrelated questions about the manners in which the Civil Administration attempted to govern the Middle Euphrates, and how their efforts impacted political, social, and economic life in the region. It will investigate how local actors responded to British efforts to govern the Middle Euphrates, precipitating a massive armed rebellion and political upheaval in 1920. Further, the thesis will shed light on the consequences of this rebellion for the British, and the consequences of its outcome for local society in the Middle Euphrates. This thesis argues that the British occupation and its process of blending components of state-building with efforts to extract local resources and labor power to meet military ends brought the British into conflict with various segments of local society, including Shi’i clerics, Sayyids, tribal Sheikhs and their constituencies. Despite widespread disaffection with British rule, and a series of violent episodes of local resistance to it throughout 1917-1920, the Civil Administration continued to impose its politically and socio-economically repressive policies on local society. The accumulated frictions between local actors and the British sparked a widespread armed rebellion and political upheaval in the Middle Euphrates in the summer of 1920.