Landless peasants, soilless cultivation: British agricultural experimentation and intervention in post‐independence Iraq (1932–1958)

Societal Impact Statement ‘Greening’ is often depicted as an inherently benevolent practice, turning arid stretches of land into arable and fertile plots. However, by considering a longer history of place and taking archival records into account, such transformations are rendered more complex and, often, more fraught. This article traces the entanglement between Britain's imperialist politics and Iraq's agricultural modernisation. It will be argued that seemingly innocuous technoscientific ‘innovations’—like soilless cultivation and power agriculture—were, throughout the 1940s and 1950s, incorporated into political strategies of displacement, obfuscation and exclusion. When considering Iraq's current environmental, climatic and agricultural issues, it is vital to take this history of foreign intervention into account. Summary On October 3, 1932, Iraq was admitted to the League of Nations as an independent state, effectively ending twelve years of British intervention and occupation via the Mandatory Regime. However, it can be argued that newly circulating terms like ‘sovereignty’, ‘autonomy’ and ‘independence’ had little to no impact in the post‐Mandate period, with Britain retaining control over most spheres of life – from the economy to education and agriculture. In this paper, I explore Britain's use of Iraqi land and labour in the development of several contentious agricultural and horticultural programs – particularly the development of drought‐resistant varieties and aridity‐proof methods of cultivation. Through analysing declassified archival correspondence between governmental officials, scientists, civil servants and other key stakeholders, this article highlights the process through which British agricultural concepts and techniques were implemented in Iraq. Much of the archival material, particularly Raymond Henry Stoughton's research on soilless cultivation, forms an unexamined chapter in both Britain and Iraq's agricultural history. By exploring previously restricted/redacted governmental and institutional correspondence, I argue that the period between 1932 and 1958 saw the intensification of indirect administration in Iraq, in addition to the use of agriculture in diplomacy and the suppression of a nascent land rights movement via promises of technological modernisation. I will also show how agricultural programs linked Iraq to an imperial network, facilitating a flow of technologies and materials into the country from India, America and elsewhere. This research highlights the entanglement between imperial agricultural strategies and advancements in soilless cultivation, with Iraq providing an ideal testing ground for adaptive technologies. The article also demonstrates the connection between scientific experimentation in Iraq and the suppression of local peasant activism concerning land rights. Finally, the article problematise the terms ‘soilless’ and ‘landless’ and agitates for a historically engaged form of crop science in managing the effects of intensifying drought and aridity in present‐day Iraq.