CAIRO, Egypt - The elections were dominated by calls for a boycott, religious edicts prohibiting voting and accusations of foreign meddling, including by a dominating superpower. But this wasn't just Iraq over the last few weeks - it was Iraq from the 1920s to 1958 as well.

Sunday's vote has been painted as Iraq's introduction to democracy, but elections were held under British control, too. Some older Iraqis may have even participated in the 1954 elections, considered relatively free by some historians.

But the majority of Iraq's old parliamentary elections would not pass today's Western standards, and regardless of how fair the polls were, there was no hope for a true representative democracy in a country controlled by Britain.

"The historical memory (Iraqis) have of democracy is of weak governments that were beholden to the British," said Vali Nasr, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.

"Once there were elections, the British tried to get the governments that they would like," said Nasr. "That ended up completely destroying democracy in Iraq."

Britain gained control of Iraq from the Ottoman Empire in World War I, but limited resources and a violent Iraqi revolt in 1920 eventually prodded London into allowing the League of Nations to grant Iraq independence in 1932, though Britain retained de facto control over the country.

"When Gen. (Stanley) Maude went in, he said he was coming to liberate Iraqis, just like us," said Phebe Marr, author of "Modern History of Iraq," who describes the country in the 1920s as "much more chaotic" than it is today.

The first election under the British was "very difficult to get going," Marr said, noting that a 1923 poll to pick representatives to write a constitution was similar to Sunday's vote for a constitutional assembly. Elections eventually became "more orderly," said Marr, but the British ran into many of the problems the United States now faces.

Shiite Muslim clerics as early as 1922 issued fatwas, or religious decrees, declaring participation illegal, said Orit Bashkin, a professor of modern Middle Eastern studies at the University of Chicago. That opposition made it impossible to have elections in the Shiite-dominated city of Karbala that year, she said.

Eighty years later, some clerics - this time Sunni instead of Shiite - have issued similar fatwas against the new election. Much of the focus Sunday will be on the Sunnis. High Sunni turnout would repudiate the insurgents' boycott calls, while low turnout could hurt the new government's legitimacy.

Marr said the Shiites learned their lesson from the 1920s. After they boycotted the 1922 vote and led rebellions against the British, the British cracked down on them, prompting prominent Shiite leaders to flee to Iran.

"The people in parliament who held their noses and cooperated with the British were the Sunnis," Marr said. "The Shiites are not going to make the mistake again of boycotting ... and finding themselves out of power."

Previous stabs at Iraqi democracy were also hampered by manipulating British "advisers," domineering landlords and tribal leaders.

"If you were a political party, you would persuade tribal sheiks and landowners to join you, and they then marched their people to the polls or made up the results," said Roger Owen, a professor of Middle East history at Harvard University.

Eventually the facade cracked. In the 1930s and 1940s, the Iraqi communist and social democratic parties accused the government of "having a fake democracy," according to Bashkin.

But one high point occurred in the early 1950s. Marr said there was a "lively political life" at the time, including a "very free election" in June 1954 when opposition parties gained seats in parliament.

That was quickly cut short. The new parliament was dissolved after it held its first session and the government cracked down on the opposition to pave the way for Iraq to join with Turkey in the anti-Soviet alliance called the Baghdad Pact.

The British bargained with kings and parliaments throughout its rule to retain control, but growing Iraqi nationalism slowly eroded their power. British control ended in 1958 when military officers orchestrated a coup and killed the last royal family of Iraq. A decade of turmoil and coups ensued until the Baath Party seized control in 1968.

Bashkin said a popular phrase during British control was "al watha al-shadh" - perplexing predicament - and that it referred to the idea that Iraq was "ruled by a local government and also a foreign government."

"I think something similar is going on now," she said.