Becuase Everything Else Sucks

This Week in Capitalism: July 14th 1958

By Manila Ryce
Published Friday, July 14th, 2006, 6:42 pm
Filed under: This Week in Capitalism

After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the borders for Iraq were created by Great Britain and France. Just as in Africa, conflicting ethnic and religious groups in the Middle East were massed into countries for the benefit of their European orchestrators. Iraqis were beginning to revolt against British military occupation so an Iraqi monarchy was established in 1921 to rule the country. In 1927 oil fields were discovered in Iraq which would’ve been able to bring huge economic improvement to the area. However, the Iraqi monarchy was merely a puppet government to Great Britain so the exploration rights were granted to British oil companies.

After much exploitation and political oppression, Iraqis began to look towards President Nasser of Egypt and his Arab nationalist policy for inspiration. On July 14th, 1958 revolution finally came. A group of Iraqi Army officers staged a coup and overthrew the Iraqi monarchy. Baghdad radio praised the coup, describing the Army as liberators who delivered Iraq from the domination of “imperialism”. The royal family was assassinated and their bodies put on public display. The British Embassy was also ransacked and set ablaze. At the time of the event, the BBC reported the following:

“While Iraqis are celebrating on the streets of Baghdad, the news is a cause for concern for western powers worried about their oil interests and instability in the region…There are fears the Iraq coup will have a domino effect and that the pro-Western oil regimes of Kuwait, Bahrain and the Trucial States may fall to Arab nationalists.”

Oh no, countries actually owning their resources? What an outrage! Though as we all know, with the noble goal of spreading independence and democracy throughout the world, the western powers decided to support Iraq’s revolution and there was never any more bloodshed over oil again. The end.

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2 Responses to “This Week in Capitalism: July 14th 1958”

  1. Has the middle east, besides Iran, ever actually been divided into ethnically homogenous states? Before it all became one big Ottoman blob, it was ruled by various arab dynasties that had little in common with the people they ruled, and their borders were constantly moving. Before that, they were ruled by the Romans. So I guess the question is, what is Iraq supposed to look like? There’s no precedent for ethnically defined borders in the middle east, or really anywhere else in the world. Should they divide up the country at the present day demographic lines? What happens when those change in a few generations?

    Kaziglu Bey
    07/14/06 at 8:08 pm

  2. To quote a great line from an equally great movie, with just a little artistic license,
    “I think [the entire world] would be so much better off if God had taken his goddamn oil and shoved it under Brooklyn.”

    PapaFigue
    07/14/06 at 8:30 pm

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