Reflecting on the Social and Economic History of Nineteenth Century Iran
Panel 226, 2013 Annual Meeting
On Sunday, October 13 at 8:30 am
Panel Description
Scholars have yet to produce a detailed social and economic history of Qajar Iran (1795-1925). Much of the recent scholarship on this important transitional period in modern Iranian history has focused on military and political developments related to the Qajar court in Tehran, the circulation of ideas in transnational modernist networks, and discursive analysis of elite cultural production. The intense focus on developments at the center has produced a skewed picture of nineteenth century Iran, in which the exceptional developments in elite circles have been upheld as representative of the whole, and indicative of Iranian "national" attitudes. The Qajar Empire, however, was not a nation state. The political structure of this empire was built on negotiated relationships between the Qajars and a diverse array of loosely integrated provincial communities throughout the Iranian plateau. Social and economic change in nineteenth century Iran must be understood within this context. Indeed, the institutions of provincial society had a powerful role to play in shaping change in various ways within each discrete community. Any comprehensive social and economic history of Qajar Iran must grapple with the great variety of responses from a great variety of actors. Only recently have scholars begun to put this new methodological focus into practice. However, another issue is repeatedly raised by scholars as well: the supposed lack of appropriate source materials for understanding change in the societies of the Iranian plateau beyond the capital city of Tehran. This panel will address these challenges by presenting a group of papers based on new monograph projects from scholars seeking to revive the study of Qajar history with the use of new sources and a methodological focus on a comparative social and economic study of the discrete experiences of Iranian provincial communities. These include studies of local historical and geographical literature, new perspectives on elite households, tribes and tribalism, and the production and circulation of commodities. Together, these papers will reflect on the state of Qajar historiography and suggest new sources and approaches for the next stage in its development.
Disciplines
History
Participants
Prof. James M. Gustafson
-- Organizer, Presenter, Chair
This paper will argue that the management of family estates by provincial elites in Qajar Iran was the single most significant factor shaping social and economic change in local communities. The approach I present in this paper offers a framework for writing the experiences of the provinces into the historiography of the Qajar period. For nearly forty years, the social and economic history of Qajar Iran has revolved around the concept of “modernization.” Does the steady increase in production and foreign trade reflect an era of slow economic growth as Gad Gilbar and Charles Issawi maintained? Or did the reorientation of Iran’s economy towards the export of raw materials simply place Iran in a position of dependency on foreign industrial powers as John Foran has argued? With a growing interest in the varied experiences of Iranian provincial communities in the process of social and economic change, it is now clear that there are major problems with both lines of argumentation. First is the lack of agency granted to Iranians in reshaping the world around them. These works treat “modernization” as a menacing outside force reshaping Iran seemingly by its own will. Secondly, the level of analysis remains tied to the state at a time when the poorly integrated Qajar Empire did not possess anything like a unified political economy. In provincial communities, the state represented just one of several players in the reorientation of local economies. This paper will explore the influence of another important factor in the so-called “modernization” of Qajar Iran through the experience of a provincial community in Kirman. Using local histories, geographical writings, Persian language travelogues, governmental reports, and the observations of foreign administrators, I will discuss the adaptive strategies employed by leading members of the provincial elite. In Kirman, like in other provincial communities, powerful locally rooted families, and not the state, dominated local social, political, and economic institutions. Changes in the strategies of household estate management, in an atmosphere of intense factional competition, drove the commercialization of Kirman’s agriculture, a boom in carpet manufacturing, and an unprecedented level of urban-rural economic integration over the course of the late 19th century. Using the lens of estate management reveals how powerful elements of Iranian provincial communities mediated outside pressures to reshape the world around them, as opposed to conventional views of Qajar Iran as a unified political economy or a passive victim of external forces.
