Mesopotamian Campaign

The Mesopotamian Campaign began in 1914 when British Indian forces entered Ottoman Mesopotamia to protect strategic interests around the Persian Gulf and the oil facilities connected to Abadan. An advance up the Tigris ended disastrously at Kut in 1916, after which the British command reorganised and reinforced its forces before resuming the offensive.

Baghdad fell to British forces in March 1917. Occupation did not end military danger or political uncertainty: Ottoman forces remained active to the north, communications depended heavily on rivers and rapidly expanded railways, and British authorities had to operate within a complex society whose Arab, Kurdish, Jewish and other communities had their own interests and responses to wartime rule.

The campaign continued until the Ottoman armistice in 1918 and helped shape the post-war creation of British-controlled Iraq. It provides the historical setting for fiction about soldiers, railway personnel, intelligence work, occupation and the contested transition from Ottoman administration to British power.