This updated edition of Charles Tripp's A History of Iraq covers events since 1998, and looks at present-day developments right up to mid-2002. Since its establishment by the British in the 1920s Iraq has witnessed the rise and fall of successive regimes, culminating in the dictatorship of Saddam Husain. Tripp traces Iraq's political history from its nineteenth-century roots in the Ottoman empire, to the development of the state, its transformation from monarchy to republic and the rise of the Ba'th party and the ascendancy of Saddam Husain. This is a story of social conflict, of power struggles between rival clans, of hostility and wars with neighboring states, as well as of their aftermath, and Iraq's deteriorating relations with the West. The book offers an incisive analysis of the making of a modern state and how it creates its own distinctive politics.