This product is listed under Edwin Black, History collections

Inside Iraq's 7,000 Year History of War, Profit, and Conflict
by Edwin Black

Banking on Baghdad is the first history of Iraq presented in a global context. Woven through the boardrooms and war rooms of London, Paris, Berlin, Istanbul, Washington, and the other centers that set the agenda for its tragic history, Black has pieced together the corporate hegemony, oil politics, religious extremism, Nazi alliances, and intersecting global upheaval—all with a compelling, contemporary perspective.

Now, with foreign troops once more occupying the “cradle of civilization,” Banking on Baghdad gives us the opportunity to consider the present and future of Iraq through the lens of its complicated and turbulent history. While demonstrating that Iraq's tribal, religious, and political turmoil has combined to punish the nation, Black does not shy away from the uncomfortable truth that foreign governments—including our own—have played a defining role in creating the Iraq we know today. With his trademark mix of deeply mined history and investigative journalism, Black documents a long record of war profiteering in Iraq and takes a hard look at the corporations currently doing business there. With access to numerous oil company archives, the papers of a half dozen governments, and numerous other primary sources yielding some 50,000 documents gathered by an international team of some 30 researchers, Banking on Baghdad promises to tell a monumental story 7,000 years in the making. Banking on Baghdad was submitted by editors for the Pulitzer Prize.

Vivid characters bring Banking on Baghdad to life. The followers of Islam consumed Iraq as the epicenter of a struggle between the minority Shiites and the Sunnis. The Mongol chieftain Hulagu utterly destroyed Iraq, but its remnant later came back to life. Winston Churchill solidly set the course of British petropolitics and military oil dependence on a collision course with Iraq and Iran, as the government-controlled company that became British Petroleum literally invented the geopolitical Middle East. During World War I, the British invaded Iraq for the oil they knew one day would be indispensable to all industry and militaries. C. S. Gulbenkian, the legendary Mr. Five Percent, through intrigue and high-drama created the Red Line Agreement monopoly, dividing Iraq's fabulous oil wealth between British, American, and French cartels. The Hashemites, from Sharif Hussein and King Faisal to his brutally-murdered progeny, fought alongside Lawrence of Arabia to achieve independence in Syria, but were given Iraq instead; in consequence the Arabs aborted a planned peaceful co-existence with Israel. The Mufti of Jerusalem, in his war against Zionism, using Iraq's oil and strategic location as bait, sealed an alliance with Hitler during World War II and lead a pro-Reich coup in Baghdad met by a British invasion to oust it. The post-World War II Ba'ath predecessors of Saddam Hussein ravaged Iraq's minorities and paved the way for the deposed—and eventually deceased—tyrant.

After Banking on Baghdad, no reader will ever see Iraq the same way.

...builds up a compulsion to study the often wretched history steeped in greed, cruelty and corruption, that has dominated this part of the world for thousands of years.
-- City to Cities, No.32, April May 2005

Black succeeds admirably in covering 7,000 years of history...
-- Lloyds List International, 26 November 2004)

Americans also often don't quite grasp how dangerous the Iraq misadventure is. One key to the overall U.S. response to the jihadist threat is understanding how U.S. actions affecting one of these four concentric circles affects the others.
--Richard A. Clarke, Washington Post Book World

IMPRESSIVE... THOUGHTFUL AND METICULOUS. Edwin Black's Banking on Baghdad underlines Iraq's long history of exploitation by Western powers and powerful corporations struggling for advantage and domination. His impressive analysis, which included looking at more than 50,000 original documents and hundreds of scholarly books and articles, provides a comprehensive history of Iraq that explains why the West's record in the region so complicates nation-building there today. Black's book is thoughtful and meticulous, though many readers may find the breadth of analysis too ambitious... His analysis, nevertheless, highlights the deficit of legitimacy the United States faces in Iraq and the wider Middle East.
--Richard A. Clarke, Washington Post Book World
 
POWERFUL. EVOCATIVE AND TAUT. [Banking on Baghdad is] Edwin Black's powerful new study of Iraq's place in the world... Black's prose is solid and evocative throughout. His taut description of the atrocities visited upon the region's Moslems, first by each other, and later, Genghis Khan's Mongols, is vivid and chilling. For those interested in business history, his study of the relationship between commercial and political interests, especially the company that eventually became British Petroleum, is well worth the price of admission. There's also ample material to draw from to consider the future path of Iraq... Black is committed, if not obsessed, with hyper-intensive research and documentation. His books are copiously footnoted and referenced. Given the seriousness and scope of the subjects, this is an absolute necessity.
--Richard Pachter, Miami Herald
 

For more about this book:  https://bankingonbaghdad.com/

508 pages

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