Beyond Sea and Desert: Journeying Between London and Baghdad in the Interwar Years

Drawing on microhistorical approaches to mobility and connectivity, this chapter provides new insights into the transregional connections that developed between London and Baghdad in the 1920s and 1930s by examining the journeys of Yusuf Ghanima and Freya Stark. Instead of focusing primarily on the transport system that placed these two cities within nine days of travel in the interwar years, the chapter foregrounds the experience of these two travellers as they journeyed through the spaces in between. Their travel narratives, examined alongside other sources, expose how they became aware of and reshaped their perceptions of space, distance and alterity. Their travel accounts also reveal the coexistence of different forms of mobility along the same routes and demonstrate that people on the move enjoyed different travel conditions and different treatment by states, based on social, racial and gender categories that underpinned different mobility regimes. In examining the travel experience of Yusuf Ghanima and Freya Stark, this chapter contributes to moving beyond the sometimes overly simplistic narrative of accelerated mobility and increased connectivity put forward in global history and mobility studies.