The British invasion and occupation of the three Ottoman provinces of Basra, Baghdad and Mosul and their subsequent consolidation into the new state of Iraq under a League of Nations Mandate administered by Great Britain radically changed the political worlds of the inhabitants of these territories. The history of Iraq begins here, not simply as the history of the state's formal institutions, but as the histories of all those who found themselves drawn into the new regime of power. It demanded new forms of identity and new strategies to exploit the opportunities that presented themselves. Narratives that had made sense of people's lives in one setting were being overtaken by changed circumstances as the emerging state became the vehicle for distinctive ideas and forms of order, prefigured by, but not necessarily identical to, those of the late Ottoman state. The Iraqi state became a new centre of gravity, setting up or reinforcing the structures that would shape a distinctively Iraqi politics.

In this project, the commanding visions of the British authorities were clearly decisive, but they varied, being contested both by British officials themselves and by the Iraqis. The British needed and found subjects to constitute the order which they believed best suited the idea of the Mandate and the protection of British interests. In some cases, they invented those subjects, encouraging particular individuals and groups to emerge as their chief interlocutors in shaping the narrative of Iraq's political history.