A great many excellent books and articles have emerged in recent years providing a welter of empirical detail on the Iraqi Kurdish question (i.e. McDowall 2004, Aziz 2011, Stansfield 2003, 2005, 2007, Natali 2005, 2010, Danilovich 2014, to name but a few). Noticeable for its absence from the literature is, however, an attempt to assemble and rationalise recent economic and political trends according to a larger pattern of historical development. In adopting a historicist approach, this chapter seeks to address this shortfall by investigating where precisely Kurdish society is going.1