The Simele massacre as a cause of Iraqi nationalism: How an Assyrian genocide created Iraqi martial nationalism
General Material Designation
[Thesis]
First Statement of Responsibility
Russell A. Hopkins
Subsequent Statement of Responsibility
Klein, Janet
.PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC
Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.
The University of Akron
Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.
2016
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Specific Material Designation and Extent of Item
112
GENERAL NOTES
Text of Note
Committee members: Bouchard, Constance
NOTES PERTAINING TO PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC.
Text of Note
Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-1-369-48945-3
DISSERTATION (THESIS) NOTE
Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree
M.A.
Discipline of degree
History
Body granting the degree
The University of Akron
Text preceding or following the note
2016
SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
Text of Note
Following the First World War, the British relocated the Assyrian Christian community of the Hakkari mountains to the Simele region in northern Iraq. Their close association with the British caused the Sunni Arab power structure to view the Hakkari Assyrians and other Iraqi Assyrian communities as a foreign threat within the newly established kingdom, despite the fact that Assyrians were native to the general area. The British used Assyrian soldiers to protect British military assets in northern Iraq. That created animosity in the local Kurdish and Arab communities and the Sunni Arab state. In 1933, an armed Assyrian group unsuccessfully attempted to emigrate to Syria. On their return to Simele, they engaged an Iraqi Army detachment in an armed skirmish. That engagement provided the pretext for a massacre against the Simele Assyrians while the state orchestrated a larger genocidal campaign against Assyrian communities in the general Mosul area. The military actions against a perceived internal, foreign threat caused the army to become the central focus of a martial Iraqi nationalism and the main basis for the Iraqi state. British primary sources discuss the mass violence and note the rising prominence of the army as a nationalist instrument. Significantly, Arab nationalist writers declined to discuss the genocide, indicating awareness and implicit denial of the violence and an effort to suppress its significance in the construction of the Sunni Arab national identity. That suppression of evidence shows consciousness of the necessity of the genocidal campaign for development of the martial nationalistic state as it actually occurred.
TOPICAL NAME USED AS SUBJECT
Middle Eastern history; History; Ethnic studies
UNCONTROLLED SUBJECT TERMS
Subject Term
Social sciences;1933 simele assyrian genocide iraqi nationalism denial;Assyrian;Created;Genocide;Iraqi;Martial;Massacre;Nationalism;Simele