This paper will provide the political-economic setting to Baghdad of the 1950s, allowing a more contextual and layered account of the aesthetic, cultural and ideological aspects of the place and time. It begins with a survey of Iraq’s nascent political institutions, installed by the British after the First World War. Next, economic structures and conditions are assessed. These reveal that substantial change occurred in Iraq’s political economy in the two decades preceding the 1950s, including the increasing importance of oil income (along with correspondingly lighter taxation of agriculture) and the growth of a substantial middle class. It is also shown that (even by the late 1950s) Iraq’s economy was a highly unbalanced one: the modern and highly developed oil sector (employing few workers) existed alongside an under-developed agricultural sector (which employed most of the population). Consequently, large numbers of people (especially in rural areas) lived in grinding poverty; their continued migration to the cities would carry crucial implications for urban politics in the decade and beyond. The discussion raises a number of pertinent questions. These include, on a macro-level, why, despite objectively favorable resource endowments, the monarchy that ruled Iraq was unable to adequately consolidate power: even relatively weak actors (e.g. in the army) were able to capture the state (before the 1950s and since). On a micro-level, the paper raises questions over the investment allocations of the ‘development board’: namely could oil revenues have been used better to strengthen public institutions and build human capabilities—or did the monarchy’s reliance on powerful landowners preclude this?

With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, a new class of modern intellectuals was to emerge in Iraq, notably in Baghdad. In the public sphere, they progressively replaced the traditional intellectuals from religious backgrounds, by promoting secular and nationalist ideas. Consequently, print capitalism has played a role of major importance in spreading the words and ideas of these Iraqi literati. This impetus – whose pinnacle was reached in the period following the 1932-independence was part of a wider phenomenon--the formation of a strong nationalistic Iraqi middle class. The effects of these social changes were thus remarkable on the Baghdadi urban scene. The impact would be significant on all religious communities, though in different ways such as for the Jewish community. While the Iraqi Jews traditionally lived in the old city (Taht al-Takiyya, Qanbar Ali, and Suq Hanun), the richer among them started to move out eastwards, from the 1930’s onwards and settled in new residential areas (Bustan al-Khass, Battwin, and ?Alwiyya). This important territorial movement altered the perception of vicinity, the social function of the house, and the relation to the city, among other things. More specifically, the strong social division that rose between the poor classes living in the old city and the middle and upper classes settled in the residential areas such as of Battawin awakened a solid social consciousness in the minds of the Jewish Iraqi intellectuals living in Baghdad. This paper thus proposes to examine some of these aspects through the eyes of its actors, thanks to the very prolific literature these modern Jewish intellectuals produced between the 1920’s and the 1950’s. It will analyze the perceptions of these authors in the documents produced at the time, such as the press, novels, short stories and poetry.

This paper will consider the ways in which Baghdad in the 1940s and 1950s is remembered today. Based on contemporary Iraqi newspaper accounts, popular journal articles, photography collections and oral histories of Iraqis this paper will argue that due to the chaotic and violent situation in Baghdad today, many Iraqis seek refuge in the memory of a more peaceful, progressive, and revolutionary Baghdad. Yet this nostalgic depiction stands in contrast with the reality of the political violence, corruption, and unequal distribution of wealth of earlier decades. The bridge between these opposing poles and contradictions, I will argue, is nostalgic nationalism. In the case of Iraq, history and memories of the past are heavily influenced by nostalgic sentiments that may have little or no relation with what actually happened. In nostalgic nationalism, these nostalgic emotions find their way into a rational, intellectual system and worldview: nationalism. Together they provide a compelling, and safe, interpretation of the past. The nostalgic nationalism of 1950s and 60s Baghdad is an integral part of an Iraqi modernity. Longing for a lost past is not merely about recreating a “utopia” of earlier decades but is rather based on a progressive concept of time that is forward looking but at the same time seems to assume the possibility of reverse trajectories. It remembers a youthful past in which the individual remembers him or herself as an idealistic young person brimming with potential. By looking back they see now that all of their dreams did not materialize. Yet they remember a time when they were optimistic and had faith in the future. Nostalgic nationalism is thus both linear and circular. Progress and disappointment are alter egos forming a dialectic that creates a new synthesis in which the spirit of the past is invoked in hopes for the future. Nostalgic nationalism strives to re-create that optimism – that innocent and youthful naïveté that the future will inevitably bring better times.

Baghdad in 2011 is a wounded city, divided symbolically and physically by the ubiquitous protective barriers, the concrete walls that break its space, its movement, its breath. Known as T-Walls, they have become the city’s new visual markers. But on the disfiguring concrete barriers that scar the city fabric, we see are neither portraits of martyrs or ayatollahs, as in Lebanon or Iran, nor slogans of death as in Palestine, nor political protests as in Belfast. T Walls have become the city’s new canvas. Are these dream narratives or official make-up? Whether spontaneous or ordered, naive or sophisticated, what we see are scenes from the Arabian Nights, legendary heroes of antiquity, pastiches of Iraqi 20th Century masters, pastoral landscapes importing rural imagery at the core of the capital, or simply the image of Baghdad itself. These include the daily city, with its markets, domes, bridges, modern illuminated buildings, its Ottoman houses along the Tigris, and even churches: as if normal life itself now an inaccessible reality is only to be seen in two dimensions, or by in these concrete dreams. This paper highlights this little noticed chapter of a visual Baghdad and is based on numerous visits featuring photos taken in 2009, 2010 and 2011 and recording recent interviews with painters, journalists, teachers, by-passers, to provide clues about the varied narratives told by those paintings and their impact on those that view them. Some of these frescoes have become part of urban ephemera and do not exist any longer such as those which protected the Governorate of Baghdad building, partially destroyed in a suicide-bomb in December 2009, a few days only after they their images were taken. Seen from outside, contrasts make today Baghdad looking somehow surrealistic. One may ask is this official making-up? Is it simply a pathetic failed bureaucracy resorting to denied identity or dignity? What is this deviance of past artistic mastery? Can we assume that it is simply the desire to escape from a daily desolation – or, is it a mixture of the many contradictory trends reflecting the perplexity of Baghdad’s current population and their confused state of mind?