Continuity and Change in Iraqi History-Writing today-A Revisionist View Contrary to much which is written, the finding here is that Iraqi culture and in particular history-writing remains today what it has been during the modern period despite the disasters inflicted on the country in recent years and the attempts to impose an Orientalist reconstruction thereafter. History-writing has generally been a pursuit of the middle strata in relation to the state and the society. The strategy used by the state to rule, it can thus be hypothesized, has had a profound influence on the form history-writing takes. In nation states such as Iraq with its cosmopolitan major cities and its Nomenklatura poised atop a hierarchy of caste and class groups, the predominant form of modern history writing was and remains that of state-oriented productions-diplomatic, political, military, international or institutional history somewhat related to the state as on law, education, or economic development, some of it more liberal and positivist, some more romantic. Such history writing includes even oppositional writing, for example, accounts of class or caste in their relation to the state. Such writing –at least for the modern period-and most history writing is on the modern period has been and remains somewhat constant. While it might be assumed that the series of disasters Iraq faced over the past quarter century would totally change the academic structure, evidence from recent writings in history, however, does not suggest this is what is occurring. The paper concludes turning to the question of change in history-writing. It hypothesizes that some change is taking place. It has been imposed on history professions around the world over the past quarter century as states became increasingly more connected to each other than they did to their own societies. Under such conditions, historians in countries such as Iraq given the tradition of the strong link between the historian and the state feel a particular bind. Evidence is drawn from a range of recent historical studies.