This book delves into the legal and labour history of Hashemite, Iraq to explore the role international law and its institutions played in Iraq's state formation.

Focusing on this specific time and place in international legal history, it shows how Iraq was a laboratory for experimentation with the concept of sovereignty. One direct result of this was the development of the doctrine of semi-peripheral sovereignty. This study traces how this doctrine impacts on the everyday lives of working class Iraqis by looking at its influence on imperial law, land law, the transnational law of oil concessions and pipeline agreements, criminal law and emergency law. It takes case studies including the production and trade of the oil fields in Kirkuk, railways in Baghdad and Basra, looking at how workers organized themselves.

This unique approach shows in a very real way how international law was the force for key employment practice developments in an emerging nation state.