Using Iranian, British, and Danish archival documents as well as oral accounts from Iran, this paper examines how tribal groups in the southwestern Iranian province of Lorestan responded to the increased presence of the centralizing state in the Reza Shah period (1926-41). During this period, the Pahlavi state launched various construction projects in Lorestan, including the Trans-Iranian Railway and the Khorramabad Road while implementing such policies as the forced sedentarization of tribes, the sartorial uniformity law, and the expansion of modern education. In this context of increased state interventions, how did state-society relations change in tribal areas? What role did the coming of transportation infrastructure play in the process of change? How did it impact the socioeconomic structure of Lorestan? Until recently, Iranian historiography internalized the urban elites’ view and considered the confrontation between the centralizing state and tribes as an inevitable consequence of modernization. While recent scholarship challenges this view and presents an erratic narrative imbued with various contingencies, the basic paradigm of the Foucauldian notion of discipline versus subaltern resistance remains largely intact. In contrast, by looking at tribal groups who lived along the routes of the newly constructed Trans-Iranian Railway in Lorestan, this study proposes another way to analyze the changing state-society relations in the Reza Shah period. This paper argues that for some Lor and Arab tribes along the routes, such as the Papis, engagement with the state from within the evolving power relations was a viable option. The coming of transportation infrastructure enabled new ways of engaging with various branches of the state and quasi-state institutions, including the Scandinavian-administered railway consortium and the Railway Organization (bongah-e rah ahan). Even for Lor subtribes who were considered the most “barbaric” and “recalcitrant” by urban elites, the response to the new state presence was not necessarily resistance. They actively gauged the changing situations and sought to remain an indispensable part of local socioeconomic structure by pursuing employment as guards and construction laborers.

This paper discusses the development of the so called Lynch or Bakhtiary Road along the Karun river, a project which preoccupied various generations of Iranian, British, Russian, Dutch, and German imperialists, engineers, developers and bureaucrats, over a time spanning from the 1870s to the 1970s and the present. For over half a century Britain and Russia had systematically prevented any larger infrastructural developments in Iran. At the same time, this meant a continual, almost obsessive concern with transportation issues, haphazardly realized road construction, and in the Karun case also geo-strategic concerns and development projects such as irrigation works, dam construction and energy production, the exploitation of oil as well as the founding of a nuclear power industry. Although a stalemate of interests between Britain and the Iranian central government (as well as local interests) intermittently obstructed a pragmatic implementation of projects, the navigation of the Karun with a connecting road has captured the imagination as well as real importance of development in Iran. Over a century and a half, the Karun emerged into one of Iran’s strategically and economically most important regions with major impact on industrial, political, and regional social developments. A closer examination of the building of the Lynch/Bakhtiary Road, the construction of large-scale river dams since the 1950s as well as the later Pahlavi fantasy of a chain of nuclear power plants along the Karun provides an alternative view of the most central themes of Iranian history in the 19th and 20th centuries. Standard approaches to modern Iran have largely worked to explain change and modernization through political history. Researching the Lynch/Bakhtiary Road and development schemes along the Karun, this paper will use the deliberations and construction (or non-construction) of roads as an alternative model to trace modern Iranian history. The paper considers political implications, environmental ramifications as well as socio-economic consequences entailed by the road and industrialization schemes. Besides published materials including Persian and European newspapers, memoires and histories this paper draws from British Foreign Office documents, oral histories, and company papers involved in building of the Lynch/Bakhtiary Road.

This paper will examine how the development of Iranian Khuzistan affected the Iranian Arab community with regard to identity formation and socioeconomic mobility. In particular it will focus on how the Khuzistan Development Program, one of the Iranian government’s regional development schemes, affected the Arabs between the late 1950s and the Iranian Revolution. My preliminary research has demonstrated that the program had a profound effect on Iranian Arab identity and social mobility. David E. Lilienthal, architect of the Tennessee Valley Authority, established the Development and Resources Corporation (D&R) in 1955. D&R, a consulting firm, focused on drawing up plans for and implementing public works projects, similar to those of the TVA, in the developing world. Shortly after the company’s creation, Iran signed a contract with D&R to develop Khuzistan. The resulting plan, the Khuzistan Development Program (KDP), sought to build dams, power plants, roads, electrical grids, factories, and communication networks in the province. Lilienthal and the Shah believed the effort would green the Khuzistani desert, destroy the vestiges of feudalism, and curb the power of regional elites by providing the people of the region with what Lilienthal called “a better life.” Although many elements of the KDP never came to fruition, and others were unsuccessful, the program’s impact on the region and its people was substantial. Although historians have examined Iran’s non-Persian ethnic groups, they have focused primarily on the Azeris and the Kurds. A few anthropologists have examined the Iranian Arabs during the Pahlavi era, yet the historical scholarship on the Arabs remains lacking. Thusly, this study aims to help fill this conspicuous gap in the historiography of 20th century Iran. This paper will utilize the David E. Lilienthal Papers and the Development and Resources Corporation Records, both of which are located at Princeton University. These two collections not only include the technical plans for the various projects of the KDP, but also provincial employment and salary statistics, interviews with Khuzistani farmers and laborers, and reports on tribal structures, urbanization trends, and assessments of socioeconomic mobility. Other sources utilized will include reports compiled by Iranian government ministries and agencies (e.g. the Plan Organization, the Planning and Budget Organization); World Bank assessments; diaries and letters written by Iranian officials (e.g. the Shah, Abolhassan Ebtehaj, Manoucher Eqbal) and D&R board members and their associates (e.g. Gordon Clapp, the Lazard brothers, and Henry Luce); and firsthand accounts from Iranian Arabs.