NATIONALISM AND CULTURAL PRODUCTION IN IRAN, 1848-1906 by Shiva Balaghi A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (History) in The University of Michigan 2008 Doctoral Committee: Professor Geoffrey Eley, Chair Professor Ronald G. Suny Associate Professor Fatma Müge Göçek Professor Brinkley Messick, Columbia University Professor Timothy Mitchell, New York University Shiva Balaghi © 2008 All Rights Reserved ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Geoff Eley has been a teacher in the truest sense of the word. He understood my desire to write a historical study of nationalism in Iran and what that entailed better than anyone else. He sets an example of how to bridge principles with intelligent scholarship that is truly inspirational. My education would never have been complete without his guidance and wisdom, for which I am eternally grateful. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to study with the extraordinary K. Allin Luther in the last few years of his life. The cohort of students who worked with him in those years understand what a gracious gift he gave us. Müge Göçek reminded me that living a good life was as important as producing good scholarship. Brinkley Messick reminded me what came before was essential to understanding the importance of new cultural formations, an awareness that enriches my writing still. Tim Mitchell and Ron Suny always reminded me of the larger comparative perspectives and broader methodological questions. Ann Larrimore became a close friend; she offered me refuge in her sunny Ann Arbor home, where I wrote this dissertation. Finally, my family's support, especially the continued enthusiasm and encouragement of Fariba and Tommy, has always been a sustaining force in my work. Michael has been everything. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................ ii LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................... iv CHAPTER 1: Introduction: Nationalism and Cultural Production............................ 1 CHAPTER 2: "Between Two Fierce Lions": Iran and Colonialism in the Late Nineteenth Century................................................................................................ 20 CHAPTER 3: "Caravans of Knowledge": Orientalism, Education, and Nationalism in Late Qajar Iran..................................................................................... 50 CHAPTER 4: Print Culture in Qajar Iran ................................................................. 99 CHAPTER 5: "The Power of the Pen in the Service of the Nation": Nineteenth Century Iranian Newspapers ................................................................... 153 CHAPTER 6: The House of Spectacle: Theater and Nationalism in Nineteenth Century Iran .............................................................................................. 217 CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION..................................................................................... 243 BIBLIOGRAPHY......................................................................................................... 274 iii LIST OF TABLES TABLE 3:1 Sales of Persia and the Persian Question .................................................60 TABLE 3:2 Nationality of Instructors at the Dar al-Fanun .......................................83 TABLE 5:1 Persian newspapers published in Iran from my sample ...................... 161 TABLE 5:2 Persian newspapers published outside Iran from my sample.............. 162 TABLE 5:3 Number of newspapers published each day in foreign countries ....... 164 iv CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: NATIONALISM AND CULTURAL PRODUCTION In the summer of 1883, the first American minister to the Persian court, Benjamin traveled to Persia via Bordeaux, Constantinople, and Baku. In his correspondence with the Secretary of State Frelinghuysen, Benjamin discussed his impressions of the capital city of Tehran: No city in the east after Canton, Bombay, Calcutta, and Constantinople surpasses it in appearance of vitality. The number of carriages owned by Persian and European gentlemen is nearly 500, all imported. Teheran also contains a European bakery, a European carriage maker, a European cabinet maker and upholsterer, a corps of foreign instructors of the army, a steam engine at the arsenal, a mint formed on [a] European system, several town clocks, a hose in the public garden imported from the United States, gas in the grounds surrounding the palace, and public squares besides other evidences of a progressive tendency.1 Being the first minister to Persia held many challenges for Benjamin. He was faced with an entrenched power structure which benefited the Russian and British representatives over all other foreign diplomats. In order to further American interests in Iran, which at the time were primarily focused on trade, he had to study the diplomatic situation, learn about Iran and its customs, and communicate this knowledge back to the Department of State. Ten days after arriving in Tehran, he reported: To acquire influence and importance here which we undoubtedly can, we must begin by partially adapting our action to the status and customs established by a people whose ideas have changed but little for 3000 years.2 The two statements warrant some consideration. On the one hand, the presence of things European such as clocks, carriages, hoses, and steam engines are offered as 1 2 “evidence of a progressive tendency.” Progress, it would seem, was connected to material objects that were either European in origin or resembled European forms. And the prevalence of European objects throughout Tehran held a certain promise of progressive change. His second statement, however, stands in sharp contrast. In the realm of ideas, it would seem, Iran had remained unchanging and static for over 3000 years. One imagines that the Persian of the nineteenth century was an odd creature: riding in European-made carriages through a city rivaling Bombay in its vitality while still somehow thinking dusty, aged Achaemenid thoughts. This propensity to separate the material and cultural manifestations of progress remains prevalent in much of the writing on Iran. There has been a tendency to dismiss the cultural history of Iran in the nineteenth century as a tired story of decline, decay, and decadence. The century produced no Sa`di, no Hafiz, no Mawlana. Enough said. The fact remains, however, that by the first decade of the twentieth century, Iran was in the midst of a Constitutional Revolution. The intellectual and cultural developments that led to that event have yet to be fleshed out by historians. A study of the cultural production of the decades leading up to that revolution, which analyzes the cultural forms that were developed and reshaped and the ideas set forth therein, will show that much intellectual and cultural activity was indeed taking place in Iran at the time of Benjamin’s visit. Such an analysis will surely shatter the image of a passive, static realm of ideas which he described in his letters to the U. S. Secretary of State. Indeed in the late nineteenth century, the boundaries of knowledge in Iran were greatly contested. As Emile Durkheim argued, changes in ideas of knowledge and the means by which such ideas are transmitted result from continued struggles among competing groups seeking influence.3 The development of the infrastructure of the Qajar state, the expansion of colonial power, and the formation of resistance to both internal autocracy and the external colonizers were all coterminous and interconnected processes. Cultural formations were a domain in which these groups constructed, legitimated, and deployed power. So the 3 study of Iranian cultural history in the late Qajar era has much to do with examining the complex relationship between knowledge and power. In this dissertation, I study Iranian nationalism at a critical stage of its development, from the beginning of the reign of Nasir al-Din Shah in 1848 until the onset of the Constitutional Revolution in 1906. By fusing cultural and social history, I explore the impetus, contours, and strategies of nationalism which shaped Iran as it entered the twentieth century. In this chapter, I will set the stage for my study. First, I will review some of the key theoretical literature on nationalism, underlining certain debates which are helpful for the study of Iranian nationalism in particular, pointing to the limits of discussing “the nation” as though it were a strictly European phenomenon that was exported in wholesale fashion to the “Third World” in the post-colonial era. In fact, the study of modern Iranian nationalism reveals that socio-cultural and political borrowing was in no way wholesale or universal. Moreover, as Edward Said and others have shown, the Europeans’ sense of their own nationness was intimately linked with the construction of the Oriental Other.4 Nineteenth century European nation-states were configured as mirrored reflections of the colonial other. This perpetually juxtaposing quality of colonialism colored nationalism in the colonized regions to some degree. Yet, I will show that the configuration that emerged from the nineteenth century as “Iran” was not simply an aftermath of the imperial contest of the British and the Russians; Iran’s intellectuals made concerted efforts to map its cultural, social, and political dimensions as well. This study of nationalism in a “semi-colonial