British ambitions in Mosul in the nineteenth century

Abstract

The During the nineteenth century, Iraq witnessed remarkable foreign activity and took several forms, including: missionary activity, economic activity and archaeology, and then devoted to political interference in Iraq's affairs. The English had a remarkable role in these activities, especially in the city of Mosul because of its strategic importance and an important civilized, cultural, social, economic and religious legacy in Iraq. Therefore, the study included an introduction in which I spoke about the importance of Mosul and its strategic location in relation to the horizontal and vertical commercial transportation routes that link the eastern mountains, the Mediterranean, and Anatolia in the north, and the Arabian Gulf and the Indian Ocean through Basra in the south. The advantages made Mosul an important market for the import and export of goods to Britain.

The missionary activity that we talked about in the second topic is a means of colonial expansion, as the religious motive was not an important goal for foreign governments as much as they were concerned with controlling and influencing Mosul and its bounties.

The British were very interested in the field of excavation of antiquities, which they gave increasing attention over the years and provided them with funds in order to discover new antiquities that would provide their museums and libraries with valuable information about the country of Mesopotamia. The fourth research included the British political activity in Iraq, as the consuls there presented important reports on the nature of the political and social life of the people of the country, as the people of the country cannot be interested in studying their country as the English did in order to promote it to the ranks of nations, then the research appended a conclusion that included the most important results of the research are attached to it a list of the most important sources and references that included several sources of high value on which the research was based in order to reach the valuable scientific materials in them.