This paper examines the geopolitical effects of telegraphic development in the Ottoman provinces of Baghdad and Basra. Drawing from diplomatic and governmental sources from the Ottoman, British, and International Telecommunication Union archives, this paper highlights episodes of cooperation and contestation between the Ottoman and British Empires over telegraphic development in Ottoman Iraq. Overall, this paper argues that the telegraph should be viewed as a site for both the construction of Ottoman territorial sovereignty, as well as for challenges to such sovereignty in the form of British imperialism and the emerging practices of internationalism. Construction of the line to connect Constantinople to Baghdad was initiated by the Ottoman administration in 1858, with the encouragement of British officials. While the Ottomans hired British engineers to supervise the construction of the project, they ultimately insisted on self-administration of the infrastructure. Telegraph offices that were staffed by British workers, such as the one at Fao on the Persian Gulf, were to be supervised by Ottoman administrators, and the autonomy of British operators was restricted. However, despite these Ottoman efforts to assert telegraphic sovereignty, the actual power dynamic of the communications network was more complicated than the agreements portray. While British complaints over the quality of the Ottoman lines and administrative practices reflect the frustrations of a superpower which, at times, was forced to respect Ottoman territorial sovereignty, it is also clear from Ottoman complaints over British circumventions of restrictions that the British imperial aims often trumped such deference to Ottoman sovereignty. In addition, the use of an internationalist discourse on the part of both the Ottoman and British authorities—such as their citation of International Telegraph Union conventions—demonstrates the view of the telegraph network as being a shared resource, above the control of a single state. In examining the paradoxical effects of the technology, which was used to both assert and undermine Ottoman sovereignty, this paper connects the telegraph with the contradictions of the globalization of the late nineteenth century, which led to an increasingly interconnected world while also heightening awareness of national boundaries. Through examining episodes of collaboration and confrontation between the Ottomans and British over the telegraph network in southern Iraq, this paper seeks to contribute to a larger discussion on the role of technology and infrastructure in constructing the geopolitics of the late nineteenth century.

This paper examines the intersections of modern and ancient infrastructures amidst the creation of the eastern border between Syria and Turkey. The Ankara Accord of 1921 between France and the Ottoman Empire used infrastructural arteries to divide a region littered with ruins of previous empires. From Çobanbey to Nusaybin, the Baghdad Railway stood as the border between the two countries. East of Nusaybin, the line would be "the Old Road" to Cizre on the TIgris. When it came to the Old Road, however, the French and Turkish governments disagreed about how to define “old.” The French cited the most authoritative German archaeologists they could find to support their argument that the road used in Roman times was to the north; the Turks, for their part, appear to have encouraged peasants in the region to plant their fields in such a way as to cover the alleged Old Road to bolster an argument for a border further to the south. As humans on both sides of the border argued about Roman road bricks and fields of wheat, locusts made use of ancient infrastructure in a decidedly different way. As cultivation expanded in the fertile regions south of the Taurus Mountains along the border, invasions of the Moroccan locust continued. For laying eggs, the insects preferred clay outcrops above the rapidly expanding lands of wheat and cotton; these outcrops were not natural geological formations, however, but rather the remnants of Assyrian and Hittite settlements. In other words, the locusts used for their own propagation the very same physical structures whose attestation to past glory had attracted profit-seeking capitalists and power-hungry imperialists in the first place. Relying on French and Turkish government as well as local Kurdish sources, this paper explores the technical arguments marshaled in the process of creating a border between Turkey and Syria while also questioning the divide between nature and culture in the first place through an exploration of the tangled webs of agency involved in these infrastructural networks. In the process, the paper brings the approaches of Science and Technology Studies as well as Environmental History to the construction of the map of the modern Middle East.

Iraq’s entry into the world economy as an oil producer was the culmination of a series of long and protracted struggles for the control of oil supplies between oil companies, European powers, and Ottoman and later Iraqi governments. While the history of this diplomatic wrangling and commercial negotiations has been well documented, the contentions that arose over the development of an effective infrastructure to transport and distribute Iraqi oil to European markets have often been overlooked. However, the control of oilfields in Iraq was intimately bound up with the question of the construction of a pipeline to transport Iraqi oil to the Mediterranean coast. This paper examines the negotiations over the route of the Iraq-Mediterranean pipeline carried out between the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC), and the British, French and Iraqi governments between 1928 and 1931. Completed in 1935, the Iraq-Mediterranean pipeline consisted of two lines running from the oilfields in Kirkuk that split at Haditha, with one line taking a northern route through Syria to Tripoli, Lebanon and the other passing through Jordan and terminating in Haifa, Palestine. The decision to adopt a bifurcated route was not based on financial or engineering considerations alone, but rather was a result of attempts to reconcile French and British imperial ambitions, commercial and political disputes within the IPC, and Iraq’s status under Mandate rule. Using British archival sources, this paper focuses on British policymaking in relation to the pipeline’s route. It considers the ways in which British officials sought to navigate a triangular set of commitments to the IPC and the French and Iraqi governments, while also upholding its imperial and strategic goals. This paper argues that British officials continued to address issues of oil and infrastructural development in terms of the establishment of political and economic ‘spheres of influence’ and Anglo-French imperial rivalry. In doing so, this paper points to considerable continuities in British imperial policy in the region, despite the changed post-war international context.