The Sydney Herald is first published in 1831. (As the Sydney Morning Herald, it is today is the oldest continuously published newspaper in Australia.)

The Penghulu of Naning, Dol Said, is enraged over the British claim to Naning as part of Malacca.

The British demand that Naning pay ten percent of its produce as tribute to Malacca.

Dol Said, of course, refuses, resulting in a British attack upon Naning in 1831.

Dol Said manages to fend off the attack with help from his allies.

The Ottoman army under Ali Riza Pasha marches from Aleppo into Iraq in 1831.

Baghdad, devastated by floods and an epidemic of bubonic plague, capitulates after a token resistance.

Daud-Pasha, facing opposition within Iraq on the part of local clergy, surrenders to the Ottomans and is treated with favor.

He will end his life in 1851 as custodian of the shrine at Medina; the remaining Mamluks are exterminated.

The arrival of the Sultan’s new governor in Baghdad in 1831 signals the beginning of a direct Ottoman rule in Iraq.

Iraq at this period is nominally part of the Ottoman Empire but in practice largely autonomous.

Mamluk rulers have governed in the territory that has become Iraq, acquiring increasing autonomy from the Sultan, from 1704 to 1831.

Mamluks were originally freed slaves who had converted to Islam, and were assigned to military and administrative duties in the Ottoman Empire.

The history of modern Iraq’s boundaries can be traced to 1749, when the Sultan extended the authority of the Mamluk vali (governor) of Basra to include the eyalet (province) of Baghdad, initiating a period of Mamluk rule that lasts until 1831.

After seizing control in 1816-17, Dawud Pasha had initiated modernization programs that included clearing canals, establishing industries, and reforming the army with the help of European instructors.

The political and economic policies of Dawud Pasha have united these eyalets, although their external borders are ill-defined.

Following Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt, the British government had recognized the strategic importance of the Middle East in defending its eastern empire and commercial ambitions against the French (and later against Russia), and at the beginning of the nineteenth century had negotiated inter alia the establishment of a British consulate in Baghdad.

Dawud had reduced the influence of the British Consul, and, perhaps more controversially, had compelled the British East India Company to begin paying duties on imported goods.

It was at the instigation of the British government that the Sultan seized back control of Baghdad, facilitating a resurgence of British influence in the region.

In 1830, the Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II decreed Dawud Pasha's dismissal, which is enforced the following year by an army under Ali Ridha Pasha, which ousts Dawud and reimposes direct Ottoman rule on Iraq.

Ali Rıza Pasha still has to deal with the Mamluks who remain in Baghdad.

In order to preserve his power and pacify the Mamluks, he gives many of them positions in his government.

In the days following his conquest of Baghdad, Ali Rıza Pasha publishes a firman, or decree, that makes him the governing authority over the cities of: Baghdad, ...

The Governor-General of India, Lord William Bentinck, tours the upper Ganges with revenue officers tn 1831 to explore new areas for poppy farming.

Within the decade, cultivation will double to one hundred and seventy-six thousand acres.