1. Writing the Modern History of Iraq East and West
Falah Raheem
Iraqi Canadian Researcher, Writer and Translator

2. Main Periods of the Modern History of Iraq:
Ottoman Recentralization (1638–1914) 
British Occupation and the Iraqi Monarchy (1914–1958)
The Growth of the Republican Regimes and the Emergence of Baathist Iraq (1958–1979)
The Rule of Saddam Hussein and the Difficult Legacy of Dictatorship (1979–2003)
The War in Iraq (2003–2016)
Hayden White, The Content of Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation, The Jhons Hopkins University Press, 1987.

3. The Question of Objective Knowledge in History:
Hayden White: 1. the Anglo-Saxon philosophy of History: History is equivalent to the natural sciences in tools and method. 2. French Annales : categorically rejecting narrativity in history as lacking scientific validity. 3. The semiological philosophy: History is only one discursive ‘code’ among other codes which may or may not respond to reality. 4. The hermeneutic philosophy: History is a type of discourse, reflecting a specific consciousness of time and its syntheses.
Hayden White, The Content of Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation, The Jhons Hopkins University Press, 1987.

4. The Binary Classification of Historians The hermeneutic philosophy
1. Position: The position of the historian in place and time is a deeply influential element in his historiography.
2. Historical Configuration: The historian’s method in collecting the historical events in a consistent narrative.
3. The Ethical Position: there is practically no historiography without an ethical position.
4. Utopia: A historian is in need of a particular configuration of an ideal of history .

5. Local Histories: Ali Al-Wardi (1913-1995)
The plot of the search for civilization: - the conflict between civilization and nomadism as the main motivator of the history of Iraq. - Asabiyya (the tribal solidarity for power) vs the values of civilization and urbanity. - “The Great Discord" in the history of early Islam. - The sectarian controversy is only one aspect of this same conflict.
Ali Al-Wardi, Social Glimpses of Iraq's Modern History ( )

6. Local Histories: Hanna Batatu (1926-2000)
- The class struggle of Great entities. - James Madison, Karl Marx and Max Weber. - Great historical entities rather than individual agents. - "camel owners" (Sunni tribes) over the "Cattle owners” (Shia farmers tribes). - The Utopia implied in this tale is the principle of social justice to wide sections of Iraqis regardless of sect or ethnicity.
Hanna Batatu, The old social classes and the revolutionary movements of Iraq: A study of Iraq's old landed and commercial classes and of its communists, Ba'thissts, and free officers, London, al-Saqi Books, 2000.

7. Local Histories: Faleh Abdul-Jabbar
- Hermeneutic Phenomenological Approach. - Essentialist cultural tendency is reductionist by nature because it presupposes fixed religious and sectarian identities. - Structures "are fluid and in continuous change." - Individual agents form the historical content of the event. - The transformation from "the fragmented agricultural stage to the modern central era.”
Faleh Abdul-Jabbar, The Shi'ite Movement in Iraq, 2003

8. Local Histories: Abbas Kadhim
- Fratricide plot. - solving ethnic and sectarian conflicts in the area is the only way to achieve reform. - The 1920 Revolution and the founding of the Modern state.
Abbas Kadhim, Reclaiming Iraq:The 1920 Revolution and the Founding of the Modern State, University of Texas, 2012.

9. Western Histories: Reeva Simon
- The pan-nationalist Obsession. - Iraq between the Two world Wars: The Militarist Origins of Tyranny (2004). - An unexpected point of departure. - The establishment of the Iraqi state: a pan-Arab nationalist drive towards reviving Arab glories and uniting all Arabs in one nation similar to Germany.

10. Western Histories: Phebe Marr
- The Modern History of Iraq (Westview, 2004). - Counting down towards Dictatorship. - Three stages in this sad tale: First, the establishment of the Iraqi state under the British mandate, 1920 Revolution which forced the British to abandon the idea of a direct rule of Iraq, unrestricted powers the British allocated to the king. - The second stage: republican governments after 1958, military dictatorships. - The third stage: the decline of the Iraqi state followed the 1970s after a decade of an economic and social progress.

11. Western Histories: Charles Tripp
- History of Iraq (Cambridge,2007) - oil/patrimony plot. - three influential factors: patrimonialism in which the state is the sponsor to a network of beneficiaries, the political economy of oil and its role in concentrating authority in hands of the state, and state violence as the first choice.

12. Narrative strategies: What reform?
Evidence from the post 2003 situation in Iraq indicates that the major local conflicts run along the following lines:
- Ethnic and sectarian rights
- religion versus secularism
- Revenge and reconciliation
- economic and administrative corruption
- Security

13. History and Justice: The Contractarian Approach
Two concepts of Justice in Western political philosophy (according to Amartya Sen): 1. Contractarian approach (Thomas Hobes, John Lock, J. J. Rousseau and Immanuel Kant) the main source of justice is to establish “just” institutional arrangements for a society, which would lead a corresponding contract. Justice lies in these institutional requirement. Transcendence.

14. History and Justice: Comparative Realizations
2.Comparative Realizations (Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, Mary Wollstonecraft, Karl Marx, and John Stuart Mill) Comparative approaches, aiming at removing identifiable injustices in the world such as slavery, bureaucracy induced poverty, cruel penal code, exploitation of labour or subjugation of women. Comparison rather than transcendence.

15. History and Justice: An Open Question
- In the United States, the Supreme Court debates the admissibility of invoking arguments in courts of other countries. - Multiculturalism in Canada. - Stoning adulterous women by Taliban. - Wide spread use of capital punishment (China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the United States led the world in 2008). - Pollution. - Terrorism. - Colonialism.

16. Old History of Iraq
- Iraq, the First Society (Prehistory to 539 B.C.E.)
- From the Persian Empire to the Sassanians
(539 B.C.E.–651 C.E.)
Iraq under the Umayyad Dynasty (651–750)
Abbasid and Post-Abbasid Iraq (750–1258)
- Turkish Tribal Migrations and the Early Ottoman State (1256–1638)