In 1904, the government of British India sent a commercial mission to the southeastern provinces of Qajar Iran. This Mission was composed of a select group of specialists led by Arthur Hills Gleadowe-Newcomen (1856-1928), who was an officer in the British army, member of the Royal Geographical Society, and Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. The North India Chamber of Commerce and the India Tea Cess Committee sponsored this mission with the express goal of developing stronger commercial ties with Iran. Newcomen was to survey the state of commerce in Iran, explore obstacles to the region’s natural development, expand Indo-Persian trade, introduce Indian merchants and goods to potential customers, and to collect statistics. The 156-page report produced by the Newcomen Mission is a fascinating document, full of detailed information and recommendations on creating a productive space in Iran by creating a modern ecology. Even more remarkable, we have a covert Persian counter-narrative to this Mission’s report. The Qajar government was understandably wary of the activities of a group of British commercial agents roaming about unsupervised in the remote corners of its southern provinces. They arranged for a military attaché to accompany the mission, which Newcomen credited with helping to make introductions with important people and dealing with logistical challenges. What he was unaware of was that the military officer, Mirza Riza Muhandis, was also reporting back on their activities to the court in his own counter-narrative while also subtly subverting their access to information and discouraging people to speak with them. Read together, Newcomen’s Report and Muhandis’ counternarrative highlights tensions in the goals of an early form of developmentalism, between a model built around the needs of a tributary state promoting taxable activities, and the interests of the sponsors of this mission to deploy technical knowledge and capital to direct a flow of resources. Each envisions a different political ecology, transforming nature into something useful for a set of political or fiscal goals. While sharing a mutual interest in development schemes, especially in improving irrigation, transportation, communication, and light processing of things like carpets, the underlying goals behind these schemes reveal some of the underlying tensions over what it means to create a modern Iran.