Permanent URL: https://colonialcommunication.lboro.ac.uk/episodes/airpower-and-myth-in-mesopotamia/
Title: Coloniality and Communications: Airpower and Myth in Mesopotamia (Episode 3)
Creator: Burçe Çelik; Sebastian James Rose
Contributors: Sena Başöz (video production, editing)
Data Provider: Loughborough University
Provider: Coloniality and Communications
Type: Video
Format: Video (MP4)
Is Shown At: https://colonialcommunication.lboro.ac.uk/episodes/airpower-and-myth-in-mesopotamia/
Date: 2025
Language: English
Description: This episode features Sebastian James Rose and Burçe Çelik discussing an aerial image of Mesopotamia that brings together myth and air power in the formation of popular representations of the region in the early twentieth century. From the late nineteenth century onwards, Mesopotamia increasingly entered public imagination as the “cradle of civilisation,” a landscape whose ancient past was made visible through archaeology. This narrative was often accompanied by contrasting portrayals of the region’s contemporary condition, frequently framed in European sources as stagnant or underdeveloped under Ottoman rule. Within this context, British involvement was commonly represented as a civilising and humanitarian endeavour, associated with the introduction of modern science, technology, and infrastructure. The aerial image discussed in this episode reflects how visions of a mythic past and a technologically mediated future were brought together in visual culture, illustrating the ways colonial logics were embedded in representations of air power and modernity.
Subject: Aerial surveillance, Colonial infrastructure, Mesopotamia, Iraq, British Empire, Visual media, Air power, Imperial control
Spatial Coverage: Mesopotamia (Iraq)
Temporal Coverage: 1918–1932
Rights: CC BY-NC 4.0
Rights Holder: Loughborough University
Is Part Of: Coloniality and Communications – Episodes
Source Institutions: British Newspaper Archive
Project Context:
Coloniality and Communications: British Telecommunications in Mesopotamia in the Early 20th Century is an AHRC funded project run by Prof. Burçe Çelik (P.I.), Dr. Sebastian James Rose (Research Associate) at Loughborough University and artist Sena Başöz.
Coloniality and Communications unveils the historical role and legacy of British telecommunications in the making of colonial spatiality in Mesopotamia and the Middle East in the early 20th century. The project aims to advance decolonial research on media and communications through the epistemological force of regional and geopolitical history. By providing historical research on the past of colonial communications, this project aims to shift Westcentric conceptions, theoretical frameworks and received histories on media and communications.
Focusing on the interplay of communications and state building in Mesopotamia and Iraq from 1918 to 1932, the project challenges and questions existing paradigms in communication studies and the history of technology by asking: How were communications repurposed by the local people as forms of resistance? What roles did communications networks play in the making of colonial and national space? How did communications infrastructures, technologies and networks produce and reproduce colonial violence and control?
This video was produced as part of the research project Coloniality and Communications: British Telecommunications in Mesopotamia in the Early 20th Century.
Learn more at the project website: https://colonialcommunication.lboro.ac.uk/
Related content can be accessed at https://colonialcommunication.lboro.ac.uk/episodes/