University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2012 The Most Sovereign of Masters: The History of Opium in Modern Iran, 1850-1955 Ram Baruch Regavim University of Pennsylvania,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Asian History Commons, Economic History Commons, and the Islamic World and Near East History Commons Recommended Citation Regavim, Ram Baruch, "The Most Sovereign of Masters: The History of Opium in Modern Iran, 1850-1955" (2012). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 687. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/687 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/687 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. The Most Sovereign of Masters: The History of Opium in Modern Iran, 1850-1955 Abstract This study surveys a century of commercial opium production in Iran, from 1850 to 1955. From an insignificant contributor to the global opium market, Iran became within a few decades an important exporter, turning to the market between 5-10% of the entire global production of opium. Opium-poppy cultivation and opium production formed part of a larger process of transition within the agricultural sector to cash-crop production. Under the growing pressure of increasing imports of European manufactured goods and the collapse of the local manual industries, the production of cash-crops, and particularly opium, was intended to balance Iran's trade deficit. The combination of timely political changes in China, technological improvements in steamboat navigation and a high-quality product, enabled the successful integration of Iranian opium within the global opium market.