"In 1888, there were just four British consulates in the country; by 1921 there were twenty-three. H. Lyman Stebbins investigates the development and consequences of British imperialism in Iran in a time of international rivalry, revolution and world war. While previous narratives of Anglo-Iranian relations have focused on the highest diplomatic circles in Tehran, London, Calcutta and St. Petersburg, this book argues that British consuls and political agents made the vast southern borderlands of Iran the real centre of British power and influence during this period. Based on British consular archives from Bushihr, Shiraz, Sistan and Muhammarah, this book reveals that Britain, India and Iran were linked together by discourses of colonial knowledge and patterns of political, military and economic control. It also contextualizes the emergence of Iranian nationalism as well as the failure and collapse of the Qajar state during the Iranian Constitutional Revolution and the First World War."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

In 1888, there were just four British consulates in the country; by 1921 there were twenty-three. H. Lyman Stebbins investigates the development and consequences of British imperialism in Iran in a time of international rivalry, revolution and world war. While previous narratives of Anglo-Iranian relations have focused on the highest diplomatic circles in Tehran, London, Calcutta and St. Petersburg, this book argues that British consuls and political agents made the vast southern borderlands of Iran the real centre of British power and influence during this period. Based on British consular archives from Bushihr, Shiraz, Sistan and Muhammarah, this book reveals that Britain, India and Iran were linked together by discourses of colonial knowledge and patterns of political, military and economic control. It also contextualizes the emergence of Iranian nationalism as well as the failure and collapse of the Qajar state during the Iranian Constitutional Revolution and the First World War.

In 1888, there were just four British consulates in the country; by 1921 there were twenty-three. H. Lyman Stebbins investigates the development and consequences of British imperialism in Iran in a time of international rivalry, revolution and world war. While previous narratives of Anglo-Iranian relations have focused on the highest diplomatic circles in Tehran, London, Calcutta and St. Petersburg, this book argues that British consuls and political agents made the vast southern borderlands of Iran the real centre of British power and influence during this period. Based on British consular archives from Bushihr, Shiraz, Sistan and Muhammarah, this book reveals that Britain, India and Iran were linked together by discourses of colonial knowledge and patterns of political, military and economic control. It also contextualizes the emergence of Iranian nationalism as well as the failure and collapse of the Qajar state during the Iranian Constitutional Revolution and the First World War.

This study of the Anglo-Iranian relationship analyses the opening up of the Karun trade, discussing the region's demography, commerce and industry before the Karun advent, and the impact of British political and commercial penetration.

"At the height of her imperial power Britain clashed with Russia at many points from Turkey to China. But it was only in Persia and Central Asia that these two expansionist empires met face to face. The fear of a Russian drive against India had initially impelled the British to oppose the extension of Russian influence. Russia's subsequent advance into Central Asia and her spectacular conquests in the second half of the nineteenth century both startled Europe and narrowed the gap separating the Russians and the British. This classic work by distinguished historian Firuz Kazemzadeh provides an outstanding history of Anglo-Russian relations in Persia in the half century preceding the First World War. It affords both a comprehensive overview of British and Russian policy in Iran and detailed coverage of the most important events. The new introduction includes reflections upon of events after the First World War. Long unavailable this new edition will be welcomed by scholars and students alike and provides a fascinating backdrop to the motivations behind Iran's diplomatic posture today."--Bloomsbury publishing.

Using newly-uncovered private papers, as well as public and private archives in three countries, this book tells the definitive history of the first discovery of oil in Iran - the first discovery of oil in the Middle East. Exploring the formal and informal dealings of politicians, investors, civil servants and intermediaries Leonardo Davoudi charts the development of Persian petroleum from uncertain beginnings to becoming one of Britain's largest oil companies with the British government as its principal shareholder. Assessing the relationship between economic and political forces within the British empire and the relationship of foreign economic forces and domestic political forces in Persia, the book also explores the role of intermediation, informal empire, the Anglo-Russian rivalry over Persia, British naval developments and Persian political developments.

Tribes and Empire on the Margins of Nineteenth-Century Iran traces the history of the Bakhtiyari tribal confederacy of the Zagros Mountains through momentous times that saw the opening of their territory to the outside world. As the Qajar dynasty sought to integrate the peoples on its margins into the state, the British Empire made commercial inroads into the once inaccessible mountains on the frontier between Iran and Iraq. The distance between the state and the tribes was narrowed through imperial projects that included the building of a road through the mountains, the gathering of geographical and ethnographic information, and the exploration for oil, which culminated during the Iranian Constitutional Revolution. These modern projects assimilated autonomous pastoral nomadic tribes on the peripheries of Qajar Iran into a wider imperial territory and the world economy. Tribal subjects did not remain passive amidst these changes in environment and society, however, and projects of empire in the hinterlands of Iran were always mediated through encounters, accommodation, and engagement with the tribes. In contrast to the range of literature on the urban classes and political center in Qajar Iran, Arash Khazeni adopts a view from the Bakhtiyari tents on the periphery. Drawing upon Persian chronicles, tribal histories, and archival sources from London, Tehran, and Isfahan, this book opens new ground by approaching nineteenth-century Iran from its edge and placing the tribal periphery at the heart of a tale about empire and assimilation in the modern Middle East.