ABSTRACT
The revolution of July 1958 opened a period of far-reaching change in Iraq. The changes were most conspicuous in politics where they took the form of the replacement of the monarchy by a republic and of a landowning political élite by a state-orientated civil and military bureaucracy. They were also evident in matters related to social and economic organization but in these areas the changes incorporated developments which were already in progress under the monarchy and were closely linked to more fundamental processes such as the increase of population and the progress of urbanization. In the quarter of a century from 1958 to 1983 the population of Iraq more than doubled from less than 7 million to about 14 million and the proportion living in towns also doubled from 37 per cent to 75 per cent. By 1983 nearly half the urban population lived in Baghdad, the population of which increased from less than 1 million to nearly 4 million. Mosul and Basra had each become home to between 1 and 2 million people. Such fundamental transformations of the social and economic landscape constituted a revolution to which the political system was obliged to respond but which it did not create. At the end of the period came another cataclysmic event in the form of the Iran—Iraq war, which created its own imperatives. In considering the revolutionary changes in Iraq we are, as elsewhere, obliged to look at two revolutions; the one that was proclaimed and the one that happened. In Iraq the connections are more tenuous even than in other areas and in following the rough melodies of political fortune it is necessary to listen hard for the deeper rhythms of change. An historian must be as aware of what did not happen as he is of what did. And he must also be familiar with other events; revolutionaries are peculiarly the victims of fashion; paradoxically they believe that a revolution should be like other revolutions. In Iraq men always looked over their shoulders at Egypt or spoke the language of the Ba‛th. But nature is more powerful than art and what they contrived was something different from the revolutions of Egypt and Syria.
