Dissecting the Mountains: The Place of Kurdistan in the Policies of the British Empire in the Aftermath of The First World War

Abstract

This thesis deals with the questions of how the British Empire envisioned the place of Kurdistan and the Kurdish population within the Middle East after the First World War. During the war the British colonial interests expanded into the areas populated by the Kurds. But when Kurdistan became important it was only because the region became the frontier where the interests of the colonial superpowers met; it held no significance to any of them on its own. In the Peace Conference in Paris after the war some Kurds approached with pleas for a state of their own and for British assistance in establishing their independence. The British were not forthcoming with such aid and felt that the Kurdish interference with the Conference was annoying. The British were only interested in establishing their own desires for the new order in the Middle East. There were provisions for the establishment of an independent Kurdistan in the final peace treaty with the Ottoman Empire, but due to the long delays in laying down the details of that treaty those provisions were never carried out.