Understanding the mandate in Iraq -- The mandate system, the end of Imperialism, and the birth of the Iraqi State -- Corruption, fragmentation, and despotism: British visions of Ottoman Iraq -- Rural and urban: the divided social imagination of late colonialism -- Using the shaikhs: the rational imposition of a romantic figure -- The social meaning of land: state, shaikh, and peasant -- The imposition of order: social perception and the "despotic" power of airplanes -- Iraq's past and possible Iraqi futures.