British Imperialism in Qajar Iran: Consuls, Agents and Influence in the Middle East

ISBN-13: 9781784535025 / Angielski / Twarda / 2017 / 320 str.

H. Lyman Stebbins

Opis

Spurred by a Russian threat to India and the weakness of the Qajar dynasty (1796-1925), Britain established an extensive consular network to further its interests in southern Iran in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 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 Bushehr, 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.

Spis treści

Introduction1Part I: Consuls and the Great Game, 1889-1907Chapter 1: Imperial Intelligence: Official British Images of Qajar Iran11Chapter 2: Imperial Inroads: Commerce, Conflict, and Cooperation48Chapter 3: Imperial Partition: Forging the Anglo-Russian Convention 81Part II: Consuls and Revolution, 1905-1915Chapter 4: The Revolutionary Vortex: Ideology, Faction, and Empire116Chapter 5: Divide et Impera: the Consolidation of British Control151Part III: Consuls at War, 1915-1921Chapter 6: Proxy Wars: The Battle for Southern Iran185Chapter 7: Centering Tehran: The End of British Imperialism in Southern Iran220Conclusion256End Notes266Bibliography326Index[340]

O autorze

Lyman Stebbins is Assistant Professor of History at La Salle University, Philadelphia. He holds a PhD from the University of Chicago.