Black, Edwin, Banking On Baghdad, Inside Iraq’s 7,000-Year History of War, Profit, and Conflict, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2004
Edwin Black’s Banking On Baghdad, Inside Iraq’s 7,000-Year History of War, Profit, and Conflict joins his later The Farhud, Roots of the Arab-Nazi Alliance in the Holocaust as two horrible books on Iraq. That’s because in both volumes Iraqis disappear from their own history. The first third of Banking is fine covering ancient Iraqi history. When it gets to the later Ottoman times to almost the end the narrative is dominated by Western desires to exploit Iraq’s oil. It then gets sidetracked by the Mufti of Jerusalem making an alliance with the Nazis. Most of the story is dominated by Western governments, oil companies and the Mufti of Jerusalem rather than Iraqis.
The opening of Banking On Baghdad is the best part. Black tries to explain how Mesopotamia the cradle of civilization was surpassed by the West. He goes through all the famous empires that arose in the region like the Sumerians, Babylonians, Akkadians, etc. and the constant invasions. Out of that came the wheel, mathematics and more. The decline began with the Mongols followed by the Tartars who completely destroyed Baghdad, a political and cultural center, and the massacre of the population. Eventually Mesopotamia was neglected by the Ottomans as a border region with the Persians. What was once the center of the world became a backwater.
After that Black largely forgets that his book is supposed to be about Iraqis. Instead he spends chapter after chapter going into great detail about how the British wanted to exploit Mesopotamia’s oil starting in the late Ottoman era. That didn’t happen until after World War I and then there is another long discussion about how the Americans got involved. The author believed that was the only reason why the foreign powers were interested in Iraq. Other histories would say India was a big concern for London but the author misses that. More importantly Iraqis are not included. It’s all about England, France, Turkey, America and an Armenian businessman.
Things get worse when the story turns to Jews. Black goes through the Zionist movement and its attempt to settle Jews in Palestine. The central figure becomes the Mufti of Jerusalem who was a fierce opponent of Zionism and made an alliance with Hitler during World War II. It also talks about Hitler wanting Iraqi oil completely ignoring the fact that the German dictator was literally obsessed with the Soviet Union and never really cared about the Middle East. Iraqis don’t return until the end of the section when the author goes through the increasing anti-Jewish sentiment in Iraq which led to the 1941 Farhud where hundreds of Baghdad’s Jews were killed. He then continues up to the 1950s when Iraqi Jews were allowed to immigrate to Israel. This whole section is driven by the author’s belief that Jews were persecuted around the world and could only find peace by going to Israel.
Finally, Black proves to be a lazy writer. Large sections of Banking On Baghdad were taken almost word for word and used in his later book The Farhud. That one too fails because it’s really not about Iraq either but rather the struggle of Zionists to create Israel despite using the name of the 1941 pogrom against Baghdad’s Jews.
Edwin Black’s work proves to be completely misleading. It starts like it will be a history of Iraq beginning in ancient times but then becomes about Western oil companies and the Mufti of Jerusalem. It’s simply a waste of time to read it is so bad. The man not only has no respect for Iraqis but his main themes are largely off. Oil was not the only Western concern with Iraq and there were other issues involved with Baghdad’s conflict with England during World War II other than the Mufti who after all was not an Iraqi.
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