Russia and Britain in Persia: Imperial Ambitions in Qajar Iran 9780755607921, 9781780763101

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Introduction

This book was published almost half a century ago and has become a standard work on the diplomatic history of Anglo-Russian rivalry in Iran from the middle of the nineteenth century to the First World War. It pleases me that after many decades out of print, it has been resurrected in its original English version while an excellent Persian translation and a pirated Russian edition have made it accessible to readers of those two languages. While writing Russia and Britain in Persia, I was painfully conscious that the inaccessibility of Russian archives could make my work one-sided. Published government sources could not be relied upon, as I knew from a simple comparison of some of the documents in a collection produced by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1911 and the same documents reissued by the Soviet government after the Revolution of 1917. Would the inaccessibility of original documents vitiate my narrative and my conclusions? Yet a relative paucity of original documentation should not stop a historian from attempting to reconstruct the past to the best of his ability. Unanticipated radical change in the life of the Soviet Union made it possible for me in 1990 to work in the archives of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. An examination of relevant materials relieved my anxiety and persuaded me that the basics of my narrative needed no modification and neither did my conclusions. Although a large number of works on Iran has appeared in the last forty years, few have dealt with the topics covered in Russia and Britain. I felt that I needed to make no change in the original text. xiii

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The book ends with the onset of the First World War, but the rivalry of the two great powers continued. The Russian government had not been satisfied with the gains made under the agreement of 1907 and, in 1915, concluded another agreement with Britain that amounted to a virtual annexation to Russia of her sphere of influence in Persia at the small price of ceding to Britain the insignificant neutral zone. Exigencies of war muted the old conflict. The collapse of the Russian Empire and the establishment of the Soviet regime created an entirely new situation. Russia withdrew from the War and concluded a humiliating peace with Germany, creating a grave threat to the Allies on the Western Front. Russian troops withdrew from Persia and left behind a vacuum that Britain hastened to fill, out of fear that Persia would descend into anarchy and open the door to an ideology that called for an armed struggle against European imperialism and the overthrow of the old colonial order. Appealing to all peoples of colonial and semi-colonial countries, the Soviet government repudiated various treaties that had given Russia rights and privileges in countries such as Persia and China. This would, of course, undermine Britain’s position throughout the colonial world. Thus the old rivalry was resuming under new names and new flags. In 1919, hoping to consolidate Britain’s position and assure the defense of India, Lord Curzon bribed a number of leading Persian officials to sign an agreement which, had it come into force, would have turned their country into a British protectorate. Persia’s parliament, the Majles, refused to ratify the agreement. Curzon’s policy was in shreds. Tribes were in rebellion, the central government under the ineffective Ahmad Shah was paralyzed, and an anti-colonialist movement established itself in the province of Gilan, attracting the support of communist-leaning radicals and welcoming a contingent of Soviet Russian troops. A Soviet Republic of Gilan was proclaimed, hailed by Moscow, and ready to advance on Tehran. The only force that could stop the advance was the Cossack Brigade created by Russia half a century before but now commanded by

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Persian officers headed by Rezā Khan, an energetic and ambitious young officer. Britain, exhausted by a long war, evacuated its troops from northern Persia. At the urging of its minister in Tehran, and in spite of Curzon’s misgivings, the British government decided to back Rezā Khan and the Cossack Brigade as the only force capable of preventing Tehran, and perhaps all of Persia, from falling to the Soviets. Rezā Khan marched on Tehran, staged a coup d’état, and succeeded in stopping the troops of the Gilan Republic. Internal conditions compelled Soviet Russia to abandon the Gilan Soviet, whose leaders fled to Russia, there to form a nucleus of Persian Communist opposition. Soon the Persian government, now entirely dominated by Rezā Khan, concluded a treaty that recognized Soviet Russia, established regular diplomatic relations between the two countries, and helped to stabilize the domestic situation in Persia, permitting Rezā Khan to consolidate his authority, overthrow the Qajar dynasty and have a constituent assembly proclaim him Rezā Shah Pahlavi. Russia’s threat to British interests in Persia was averted, although Rezā Shah proved not to be Britain’s obedient tool. Even before ascending the throne, he created a national army which he successfully used to centralize the country by destroying the autonomy of southern tribal leaders such as the Bakhtiāri khans and the Sheykh of Muhammarah, who had long been Britain’s clients. After 1925, a balance of Russian and British influence was achieved that lasted up to the Second World War and a joint occupation of Iran reminiscent of what had occurred in the First World War. In their sphere of occupation, as elsewhere in Iran, the Soviets proceeded to encourage the growth of Communist parties, while in Azerbaijan and Kurdistan they promoted separatist movements that would, at the War’s end, create a serious crisis, but this time Russia’s principal antagonist would be the new super-power, the United States. Before the Second World War, America had no significant interests in Persia. Regular diplomatic relations between the two were not established until 1882. A few Protestant missionaries had been active

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in Persia since the mid-nineteenth century but Muslims could not be converted and the missionaries worked mostly among Armenian and Assyrian Christians. They were allowed to open a number of schools that educated non-Christian Iranians, including members of prominent families. An American, Morgan Shuster, briefly Iran’s Treasurer General, was forced to leave when Russia demanded his dismissal in an ultimatum and sent troops to occupy northern Persia. The US government neither sponsored nor supported the Shuster mission. The Second World War and the Cold War changed the situation. Fear of the Soviet Union became America’s main concern in the conduct of her foreign policy. Britain might have compromised on the issue of oil and acquiesced in the acquisition of rights to the exploitation of northern Iran’s fields by the Soviets, but the United States took a strong position. The Soviets, not yet in possession of an atom bomb, abandoned their demands for an oil concession and left their protégées in Azerbaijan to their fate. When an upsurge of national sentiment led to the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, Britain had to persuade the US government, apprehensive of a Communist takeover in Iran, to participate in the overthrow of Mosaddeq and the return of the Shah from his brief exile. Russia chose not to support Mosaddeq, concentrating instead on cultivating a network of agents within Iran, a network that was soon smashed by the Shah with the support of the United States. The establishment of the Islamic Republic once again dramatically changed relationships among Iran, Russia, Britain and the United States. For the first time in two hundred years Iran was free to determine its own domestic and foreign policies. Rivalries among great powers had lost much of their relevance, although the history of those rivalries determined, and is determining, many of the actions of the current regime. In novel conditions, under very different circumstances, the past continues to exercise its influence. In the Preface to this book when it was first published, I gratefully acknowledged the assistance of several individuals and institutions.

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I now take this occasion to add my thanks to Professor Rudi Matthee of the University of Delaware for suggesting to I.B.Tauris that they reissue this book. Firuz Kazemzadeh 2013