Tariffs, Treaties, Trade: Integrating Tsarist Russian and Qajar Persian Markets under the Nineteenth Century Global Condition
Paper Submitted for the Sixth International Conference on Iran’s Economy of the International Iranian Economic Association (IIEA)
to be held at
Department of Asian, African and Mediterranean Studies, University of Naples 'L'Orientale' (May 2019)
William Bullock Jenkins
London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and University of Leipzig
15 January 2019
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
Contents
ABSTRACT ...... III
KEY TERMS, ABBREVIATIONS AND A NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION ...... IV
TRANSLITERATIONS ...... V
LIST OF FIGURES...... VI
1 INTRODUCTION ...... 1
1.1 RESEARCH QUESTION ...... 1
1.2 ARGUMENT ...... 2
1.3 SCOPE ...... 3
1.4 RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY ...... 3
2 LITERATURE REVIEW, CONTRIBUTION, AND SOURCES ...... 7
2.1 LITERATURE ...... 7
2.2 CONTRIBUTION...... 15
2.3 PRIMARY SOURCES ...... 16
3 THE TERMS AND COMPOSITION OF RUSSO-PERSIAN TRADE ...... 18
3.1 TERMS AND BALANCE OF TRADE ...... 18
3.2 COMPOSITION OF TRADE ...... 26
4 CUSTOMS, TRADE NETWORKS, AND TRIBULATIONS UNDER THE GLOBAL CONDITION ...... 30
4.1 THE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS OF RUSSO-PERSIAN TRADE ...... 32
4.2 INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK OF RUSSO-PERSIAN TRADE ...... 34
4.3 THE NATURE OF PERSIAN MERCANTILE SOCIETY AND NETWORKS ...... 36
4.4 OVERSTATING STATE CAPACITY ...... 40
5 FINDINGS: INTEGRATION OR CAPITULATION TO GLOBAL MARKETS? ...... 42
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 44
ii
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
Abstract
This paper explores and explains how Russo-Persian commerce in the 1800s was shaped by the persistence of early modern commercial dynamics, in the first era of globalisation.1 Continuity in early modern trade practices prevailed across the period, even as both economies changed and integrated under the distinct nineteenth century global condition. Compared to other regions, the transition to modern trade occurred late in the Russo-Persian connection. This is reflected in the positive Persian balance of trade with Tsarist Russia. Terms, composition, and dynamics of trade constructed from primary sources show, contrary to reigning historiography, that: o the robust continuity of early modern trade, commercial practices and institutions generally favoured Persia and not Russia in the 1800s, o Russo-Persian commercial interactions reveal the agency of real historical merchants and Tsarist and Qajar state incapacity in trade between their territories, o claims of 'economic penetration' as regard Persia’s commercial relations with Russia in the nineteenth century lack historicity. This paper contributes to two research agendas by examining these historical dynamics. Firstly, through an economic history account of Russo-Persian trade that synthesises social and political history reconstructions of nineteenth century Eurasian interconnection and economic life. Secondly, the Iranian case is distinguished from generalised economic history of the Middle East, a neglected field of investigation.
By assessing these findings Tsarist Russian and Qajar Persian market integration in the historical context of globalisation, a vivid picture of global entanglement at the local and transregional levels emerges to challenge assumptions of imperial dynamics defining commerce.
1 ‘(Tsarist) Russia’ and ‘Russian Empire’ are used interchangeably as are ‘(Qajar) Persia’ and ‘Persian Empire’. ‘Iran’, the immutable name in the Persian language itself, is also used to a lesser degree as interchangeable with ‘Persia’, the conventional Western name for the state and region until 1935. iii
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
Key Terms, Abbreviations and a Note on Transliteration
Asnaf (sing: senf): artisanal, craft-based ‘guilds’, an early modern Persian system of corporate organisation.
Balance of Trade (BoT): the difference in value between a country's imports and exports for a given period. A country importing more goods and services than it exports has a trade deficit. BoT is a simple economic measure of the relative strength of an economy.
Dallal: a Persian commercial credit broker.
FTWT: Federico World Trade Historical Database.
Globalisation: the permanent existence of trade where exchange of goods, ideas, and people is continuous and on a scale with lasting impacts on all trading partners.2 A constantly integrative dynamic that dissolves autonomous entities and fragments the world even as it unifies.
Global Condition: the specific circumstances of globality that are historically bound to particular periods or places, both integrating and fragmenting local and global dynamics.
Kargozar: a Persian legal apparatus and semi-legal title, with distinct aspects of the principal- agent problem for contract enforcement and trade.
Tojjar (sing: tajer): ‘merchants’, a particular class of traders in Persia operating on traditional, pre-modern commercial practices usually in wholesale.
Market Integration: ‘soft’ globalising market integration is assessed by change in volume or composition of trade, growth of trade along particular routes or in particular commodities, the ratio of trade to output, or trends in total trade; ‘hard’ globalising market integration is evidenced by price convergence of uniform commodities in separate markets.
MFN: Most Favoured Nation.
Non-Competing Goods (NCG): traded and treadeable commodities and manufactures with sufficient difference in type, quality or price as not to substitute for others. NCG’s are not susceptible to price convergence.
2 Jan De Vries, “The Limits of Globalization in the Early Modern World,” The Economic History Review 63, no. 3 (2010): 710. iv
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
Price Convergence: prices of uniform, competing goods when traded with price flexibility and absence of trade frictions (including transaction costs) should converge to a single price in different locations, through the mechanism of arbitrage (Law of One Price).
RCR: Russian Customs Receipts
Sarraf: A traditional Persian banker for currency and credit.
Terms of Trade (ToT): the ratio (of an index) of a country's export prices to its import prices.
Transaction Costs: transportation and communication costs, barriers to trade, and costs including insurance charges, capital raising costs, commissions, storage and porter charges that introduce a price gap – even when goods traded are adjusted to account for differences in quality.3
Transliterations
As exampled above with kargozar and toijar, Persian and Russian terms are romanised in this paper according to the Library of Congress system for Russian and the Journal of Persianate Societies for Persian. Foreign terms are italicised. Exceptions are words commonly transliterated differently into English such as bazaar, firman etc. and those preserved in citations; thus I accept there may be some discrepancies in style.
3 Giovanni Federico and Karl Gunnar Persson, “Market Integration and Convergence in the World Wheat Market, 1800-2000,” in The New Comparative Economic History: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey G. Williamson, ed. Tim Atton, Kevin O’Rourke, and Alan M. Taylor (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2007), 97-98. v
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
List of Figures
FIGURE 1: TOTAL RUSSO-PERSIAN TRADE VOLUME, 1830-1900 ...... 19
FIGURE 2: RUSSO-PERSIAN TRADE RETURNS, 1830-1896 (ACCOUNT ROUBLES) ...... 21
FIGURE 3: RUSSO-PERSIAN TRADE RETURNS, 1830-1900 (GOLD ROUBLES) ...... 22
FIGURE 4: RUSSIAN TRADE VOLUME WITH PERSIA, 1833-1900 (RICARDO) ...... 23
FIGURE 5: RUSSO-PERSIAN TERMS OF TRADE, 1830-1900 ...... 24
TABLE 1: AVERAGE TERMS OF TRADE, 1833-1900 ...... 25
TABLE 2: COMPOSITION OF TRADE IN EXPORT GOODS ...... 27
TABLE 3: COMPOSITION OF TRADE IN IMPORT GOODS ...... 27
vi
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
1 Introduction
Few regions of the world escaped colonisation by European powers, the instrument ne plus ultra of nineteenth century globalisation. Core European economies industrialised and experienced modern economic growth as the nation-state consolidated. Great material wealth strengthened fiscal-military states to propel European power around the globe. Colonisation directly and forcefully integrated far-flung regions into a nineteenth century globalisation, but the expansion of trade and the market meant that regions globalised to differing degrees through falling transportation costs and improved communication. This weighed heavily on the gains from trade realised by ‘regional economies operating and interacting (through trade in commodities, capital flows, labour migration and the diffusion of useful knowledge) within a global economy.’4 Persia, an erstwhile empire with a tradition of statehood, remained uncolonised, but was subject to the vagaries of the global market.
The idea in recent scholarship that integration into the world economy occurred in uneven and historically contingent ways in different parts of the world has thrown the ideal type of colonial expansion into sharp relief. Regions that avoided direct colonisation, such as Qajar Persia, or fiscal-military imperial states that lagged industrially or financially on the edge of Europe, such as Tsarist Russia, provide a valuable foil to understanding the complex historical contingency of nineteenth century globalisation. While British and Russian colonialists coveted and rebuffed Persia, the market drew her into its fold in varying ways, not least through exposure to British and Russian commerce. Iranian economy, state and society were both globalised and deglobalised. Together, the Persian economy's relations with Russian commerce and industry provide a challenge to the ideal type of nineteenth century globalisation and market integration. The two regions worked differently in their own specific peripheral interplay and furnish a new case for understanding the nineteenth century global condition.
1.1 Research Question
This paper poses two related questions for assessment:
4 Patrick Karl O’Brien, “Colonies in a Globalizing Economy: 1815-1948,” Working Papers of the Global Economic History Network (GEHN) (London, 2004), 1-2. 1
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
A. How, when and on what terms did markets of trade integrate between Persia and Russia in the nineteenth century?
B. What do trade dynamics between Tsarist Russia and Qajar Persia reveal about the extent of globalisation and market integration of Iran in nineteenth century global trade, in light of 'dependent development' and 'economic penetration' historical narratives?
1.2 Argument
The process of globalisation as market integration was constrained by very practical difficulties for the historical actors that pursued commerce. Traversing tough terrain, negotiating and enforcing commercial contracts, ensuring supply of goods and navigating fraught political dynamics at home and abroad created significant transport and communication costs. These were exacerbated by lack of capital and infrastructure. In the Russo-Persian commerce of the 1800s this effectively prolonged the operation of early modern trade networks in the face of modern models, which only began to emerge there in the final years of the nineteenth century.
In this article, I argue and demonstrate that:
o The transaction costs, volume, composition and practices of Russo-Persian trade indicate that it remained basically early modern through the nineteenth century,
o The terms of trade (ToT) favoured Persia in its trade with Russia throughout the 1800s,
o This imbalance runs contrary to the prevailing historiographical consensus on Russian imperial domination of Persian commerce, transhistorically projected as 'dependent development' and 'economic penetration' and based on counterfactual readings of documentation such as the 1828 Treaty of Turkmanchay’s Commercial Annex,
o That the Persian advantage in the ToT during the 1800s, and its neglect, resulted from a combination of fundamentally economic factors, including: (i) the comparative advantage of early modern Persian merchant networks vis-à-vis Russian merchants; (ii) Russian industrial and financial underdevelopment, especially in Persian commerce; (iii) Tsarist and Qajar state incapacity to induce and regulate commercial relations
I conclude that lagging industrial and financial development in the Russian metropole, prohibitive transaction costs, and immature modern trading practices compared to robust early
2
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB modern Persian trading forestalled Russian commerce with Persia and resulted in terms of trade favourable to Persia until the twentieth century.
1.3 Scope
I confine analysis to the nineteenth century proper, avoiding a longue durée nineteenth century for the set research purposes of indicating Persia’s resilience in trade with Russia during the 1800s. Longer institutional and industrial trajectories separated Russia and Persia’s developmental levels by the early- to mid-twentieth century, whose roots certainly lay in political, economic, and legal change afoot in each polity in the nineteenth century. Regrettably, however, a broader analysis of that change is outside this work’s defined scope.
1.4 Research Design and Methodology
To assess trade and market integration as aspects of Persia and Russia’s globalisation I combine:
A. a simple quantitative and graphical analysis of the terms of the bilateral trade and an account of the trade's composition in competing versus non-competing goods,
B. qualitative analysis of the political-economic and historical practices of the trade, and;
My approach is positivist but both empiric and interpretive in epistemological method. I adopt empiricism in quantitative calculation of the terms and composition of trade and synthesis of the economic life of actors between Russian and Persian societies, drawing on primary material and scholarly reconstruction. I apply interpretive methods to the complex historical dynamics in the object and sources of the study.
Analysis of market integration and commerce in nineteenth century Persia, and to a lesser extent, Russia, presents substantial pitfalls. A fundamental issue is the absence or patchiness of documentation and therefore data. The Iranian government did not keep consistent data on revenues and expenditures until the 1920s, it didn't have a dedicated budget (other than the Shah's court funds) until 1911, and systematic records of customs revenue only began in 1901.5 By contrast, extensive Russian customs statistics, though largely unretrieved in state archives, combined with primary accounts could conceivably constitute a dataset susceptible to
5 Kamran Dadkhah, “Book Review: Guilds, Merchants, and Ulama in Nineteenth-Century Iran by Willem Floor,” Iranian Studies 44, no. 1 (2011): 132. 3
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB econometric methods of time series analysis in future.6 Formal testing of the market integration of Russo-Persian trade in the 1800s by price convergence would require construction of a currently non-existent set of data on commodity prices.7
I therefore examine the key economic factors that determined Russo-Persian market integration as well as the available import-export data from primary and secondary sources. In doing so, I establish the bilateral ToT and the commercial practices and actors that conducted that trade across Russian and Persian territories. I focus in particular on the middle decades of the century (1830-1880s), as its beginning and end are better historically documented. I uniquely analyse the historical circumstances which determined the Russo-Persian trade by also synthesising recent reconstructions of Qajar Persian and Tsarist Russian political, social, and economic life.
An important grounding and outcome of this study arises from the second major pitfall of the subject: methodological nationalism in the literature. The fluidity of historical actors' engagement with commerce and communal identities is part of the puzzle of Russo-Persian imperial entanglement. A challenge that emerges from this paper's argument is, therefore, a problematisation of the identification of trade in this era with monolithic states and the reductionism that freights. This enduring feature of the literature has abetted erroneous assertions of Russian imperial domination over Russo-Persian commerce. I depart from the assumptions that commerce between trading polities was conducted between the Russian and Persian states by examining real historical actors as individuals and groups in a variety of overlapping local, regional and trans-imperial societies and economies. This approach elucidates the limits of state actions in this commerce and exposes prevalent state-centrism in historical accounts.
Certain simplifications are necessary for analysis of trade between two supranational entities, broadly Russia and Persia, particularly for the empirical analysis. Even though these entities were imperial polities as well as states-in-formation, I proceed on the basis that Russia and Persia did,
6 “Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv (RGIA) [Russian State Historical Archive]” (St Petersburg: Federal’noe arkhivnoe agentstvo Rossii (Rosarkhiv) [Federal Archival Agency of Russia], n.d.); Arcadius Kahan, Russian Economic History: The Nineteenth Century, ed. Roger Weiss (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); Marvin L. Entner, Russo-Persian Commercial Relations, 1828-1914 (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1965). Kahan: pp. 212-14, Entner: pp. i-ii. 7 Furthermore, testing market integration by price convergence requires the existence of bulk trade in competing, uniform goods, a distinctly modern situation which this article shows to likely emerge at scale in Russo-Persian commerce only in the early 1900s. 4
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB in the period under investigation, constitute distinct trading polities incorporating state, merchant and kin networks, travellers, and an assortment of other historical characters in their interactions.8
Realising the varied multitude of actors has three correlated implications and rounds out the pitfalls. Firstly, it was almost exclusively state actors or state-sponsored actors who left economic records. This raises the problem of commerce being 'seen like a state', in both the primary and scholarly literature.9 The second implication is that historians have accorded the state an over- sized role in the formation and conduct of Russo-Persian commerce. Thirdly, greater balance should be achieved between relativising critique and thorough engagement with partial and limited source material in assessing the state’s true significance for commerce.
This is not to say that the state's impact on Russo-Persian commerce was negligible. Instead, it is to say that the state's revenues, customs receipts and primary historical accounts do not represent a full understanding. Though the state and state-sponsored records are our closest and most extensive documentary source, the state and state actors played an historically dynamic role in the development of commerce. They provide a particular viewpoint, reifying what was only then emerging. I therefore emphasise the agency of the real historical actors ‘on the ground’ who conducted commerce to tilt it in Persia's favour across the nineteenth century even while referencing sources derived from state-sponsored programs.
The Russian state’s powerlessness in commercial activities and the Qajar state's general incapacity and vacillating defence, including disregard of its merchants and subjects, help account for the success of Persian over Russian commerce in their bilateral trade during the 1800s. The significance of this trade, especially for Persia, is hard to overstate. As Mohammad-ali Jamalzadeh noted in 1917, if Persia's trade in the nineteenth century was divided into eight parts, Russia would account for four and a half of that; Britain two and a half.10 Indeed, much of the insight that Persian exports fared well in terms of ToT against Russian exports derives from the fact that
8 In this, I adopt a definition consistent with the Giovanni Federico and Antonio Tena Junguito, “Federico-Tena World Trade Historical Database : List of Trading Polities (World Countries)” (e-cienciaDatos, 2018), https://doi.org/doi/10.21950/WNX68S. 9 James Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (London: Yale University Press, 1998). Ganj-e Shayegan: Or The] گنج شایگان: یا اوضاع اقتصادی ایران ,[Jamalzadeh Seyed Mohammad Ali] سید محمد علی جمالزاده 10 .Kaviani], 1917, 9]: کاویانی Economic Conditions of Iran]( Berlin 5
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB society - or certain strata of it - was commercially capable in a period of historic state incapacity in Persia. Apparent Russian military and political might as its fiscal-military state strengthened belied a scarcity of capital at home and undeveloped infrastructure in target markets abroad. The underdevelopment of Russian commerce and industry is precisely what enabled the early-modern Persian approach to commerce to prevail.
6
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
2 Literature Review, Contribution, and Sources
2.1 Literature
In general economic history literature, Iran/Persia merits little mention. It is even neglected in major recent monographs on Middle Eastern/Eurasian economic history, despite being the largest non-Arab, non-Ottoman polity in the modern and early modern Middle East and a source of administrative emulation throughout Eurasia. In Timur Kuran’s book The Long Divergence it garners seven mentions, while Jared Rubin’s Rulers, Religion, & Riches neither mentions Iran/Persia as case nor quantitative subject.11 In the Long Divergence Kuran largely outsources the trading practices of Iran to its minorities and thus fails to account for the tojjar class of merchants-cum-entrepreneurs that dominated trade with Iran’s largest trading partner, Russia. Kuran assumes away the Persian mercantile communities’ credit-raising mechanisms through sarraf, forms of commercial association such as asnaf, distinct economic institutions like the kargozar and even obvious formal differences in treaty capitulations by simple analogy with Ottoman legacies.12
Furthermore, innovative estimates of Middle Eastern economic growth back to 1820, investigated as part of the ‘Great Divergence’ debate, by Şevket Pamuk (incorporated into the Maddison Project), are based on distant extrapolation of trade data and limited sectoral studies.13 Pamuk’s best data are derived from Egypt and the Ottoman Empire, the region’s leading nineteenth century economies. Estimates for the rest of the region are derived by comparative observation and assumption. Pamuk simply notes that better ‘trade price data… may be of some use for our purposes.’14
As such, estimates of most regional economies’ performance, including Iran, are based largely on extrapolation and regional analogy rather than thick source interrogation, with the exception of some references to Charles Issawi. Issawi’s Economic History of the Middle East and North Africa
11 Timur Kuran, The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011); Jared Rubin, Rulers, Religion, & Riches: Why the West Got Rich and the Middle East Did Not (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 12 Kuran, The Long Divergence, 28, 105, 109. 13 Jutta Bolt et al., “Rebasing ‘Maddison’: New Income Comparisons and the Shape of Long-Run Economic Development,” Maddison Project Working Papers (Groningen, 2018), 15, 33, 38; Şevket Pamuk, “Estimating Economic Growth in the Middle East since 1820,” The Journal of Economic History2 66, no. 3 (2006): 809–28, 811. 14 Pamuk, “Estimating Economic Growth in the Middle East since 1820”, 822. 7
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB similarly contains some insights in its regional synthesis, but regularly subsumes Iran in regional generalisation and analogy.15
Though dated, Charles Issawi’s works present the most serious engagement with Iran’s economic history.16 Notably, his 1971 Economic History of Iran presents a collection of primary source material with commentary, which has furnished some detail for the current assessment.17 He organises contemporaneous accounts into useful sections on social structure, trade, transport, agriculture, industry, and finance. The most major references therefore forego more than three decades of serious scholarly advance in reconstructing the minutiae of Iranian nineteenth century society and politics, leaving a large gap that has not been recognised or incorporated by the economic history discipline.
And yet much nineteenth century Russo-Persian social and political history also suffers atrophy. Such works portray a simple dynamic of reductionist 'economic penetration' by Russian commercial and political interests into Iran across a century of unabated Qajar decline. They are impoverished by a lack of rigorous economic history. The Treaty of Turkmanchay, following the final Russo-Persian War of 1826-28, is the well-worn touchstone of this historical enquiry. De jure imposition of Russian extraterritoriality over Russo-Persian commercial disputes, textual stipulations of Turkmanchay’s Commercial Annex in favour of Russia, and a Most-Favoured Nation (MFN) status in tariffs and market access is posited as Persia's economic subservience and the roots of its continued nationalist anti-colonialism.18 Andreeva, an eminent authority preoccupied with the geopolitical Great Game, in the Encyclopaedia Iranica notes (in acknowledging obstacles to Russian trade) that: ‘Russo-Iranian trade started to increase after the Treaty of Torkmānčāy, which granted low tariffs and other commercial privileges to Russia…’, ‘competing with the British trade, Russians were establishing their mercantile dominance of northern and central Iran. Already by the mid-19th century, Russian exports to Iran constituted between 40 to 60 percent of all Russian goods exported to Asia.’19 This misrepresentation is in an obstinate tradition. One French-writing Iranian author in 1935, using 1890-1904 trade data,
15 Charles Issawi, An Economic History of the Middle East and North Africa, 2006 Repri (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 1982). 16 Charles Issawi, “Iranian Trade, 1800-1914,” Iranian Studies 16, no. 3 (1983): 229–41. 17 Charles Issawi, The Economic History of Iran, 1800-1914 (London: University of Chicago Press, 1971). 18 Evaleila Pesaran, Iran’s Struggle for Economic Independence: Reform and Counter-Reform in the Post- Revolutionary Era (New York: Routledge, 2011), 4, 21-38. 19 Elena Andreeva, “RUSSIA i. Russo-Iranian Relations up to the Bolshevik Revolution,” Encyclopædia Iranica, 2014. 8
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB summarised the century since Turkmanchay as Russia’s inexorable advance.20 Such transhistorical compression is a mainstay of the literature.21
Even preliminary investigation of the balance of trade (BoT) between Russia and Persia through this period indicates that Persia fared well.22 Entner’s 1965 work, a ‘trial balloon to assay potential interest...', contains the most extensive treatment of Russian data on the trade to date.23 In the 63 years since that study, described by a reviewer as ‘an initial effort’, few have referred to and none have systematically analysed this dataset. This dataset has been crucial to the methodical engagement with this paper’s research questions.24 However, Entner’s work barely addresses crucial issues like source reliability, substantial transit trade in the Caucasus, Caspian, and Central Asia, migrations of labour, and the extent of Persian trade networks and their practices that underpinned the favourable Persian ToT.25
Overall, as Dadkhah wrote in reviewing Floor's commendable 2009 contribution to depicting Qajar Persian economic life in Guilds, Merchants, and Ulama:
the study of Iran's long history is in a backward state. Indeed, much of what passes for history is a collection of pseudo-accounts concocted by political henchmen. In areas such as economic history the situation is even worse. Indeed, the economic history of Iran is unexplored territory.26 Aside from such neglect, the literature is replete with references to Persia's 'subjugation', 'penetration' or 'dependence' on foreign commerce – a reduction that characterises most of the literature without serious investigation. Egregious examples include the seminal works of Amirahmadi, Foran, and Kazemzadeh, who dismiss the entire period as one of transhistorical
20 Hossein Navai, Les Relations Économiques Irano-Russes (Paris: Domat-Montchrestien, 1935), 54. 21 Amin Banani, “Impact of the West on Iran 1921-1941: A Study in Modernization of Social Institutions” (ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1959), 13-14; Miron Rezun, The Soviet Union and Iran : Soviet Policy in Iran from the Beginnings of the Pahlavi Dynasty until the Soviet Invasion of 1941 (Alphen aan den Rijn : Genève: Alphen aan den Rijn : Sijthoff and Noordhoff International Publishers, BV , 1981), 6-8; Thomas M. Ricks, “Towards a Social and Economic History of Eighteenth-Century Iran,” Iranian Studies 6, no. 2/3 (1973): 119. 22 Entner, Russo-Persian Commercial Relations, 1828-1914. 23 Entner, Russo-Persian Commercial Relations, i-ii. 24 Walther Kirchner, “Review: Russo-Persian Commercial Relations, 1828-1914,” The Journal of Economic History 26, no. 2 (1966): 248–49. 25 Entner’s extended fictional account of obstacles facing Russian traders in Persia is enlightening, it suffers from similar limitations to Issawi’s work. 26 Dadkhah, “Book Review: Guilds, Merchants, and Ulama,” Iranian Studies 44, no. 1 (2011): 132. 9
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
Persian decline.27 Even the most accomplished economic historian of the Middle East titled the Cambridge History of Iran entry 'European Economic Penetration, 1870-1921'.28 The progress of European capital was certainly notable by the end of that period, but the ToT remained favourable to Persia through the majority of it. Even dating ‘penetration’ to the 1870s is problematic. In his doctoral dissertation Entner succumbs to similar reductions, but more precisely dates the ‘penetration’ to the 1890s.29 More astute historians and scholars have sustained an attack on this general reductionism both in reviews and increasingly substantial journal and monograph contributions.30
Two overlapping and relevant literatures have developed in the past decade. One reconstructs social, political and commercial relations in Qajar Persia. The second deals with Russo-Persian connections. To the first, the works such of Vanessa Martin, Willem Floor, Rudi Matthee, etc. have added flesh to the bones of Qajar social, political and some economic life.31 Stephanie Cronin, Elena Andreeva, Muriel Atkin, and Moritz Deutschmann in particular have contributed to understanding Russo-Persian interconnections, though with a focus on social, political and diplomatic history, a preference for state actors and bookend approach to the 1800s.32 Moritz Deutschmann in particular has provided a useful account with Ideal Anarchists, a short, but well-
27 Hooshang Amirahmadi, The Political Economy of Iran under the Qajars: Society, Politics, Economics and Foreign Relations 1796-1926 (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012); John Foran, Fragile Resistance: Social Transformation in Iran from 1500 to the Revolution (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993); John Foran, “The Concept of Dependent Development as a Key to the Political Economy of Qajar Iran (1800-1925),” Iranian Studies 22, no. 2/3 (1989): 5–56; Firuz Kazemzadeh, Russia and Britain in Persia: Imperial Ambitions in Qajar Iran (I.B. Tauris, 2013). 28 Charles Issawi, “European Economic Penetration, 1872–1921,” in The Cambridge History of Iran, ed. C Melville, G R G Hambly, and P Avery, vol. 7, The Cambridge History of Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 590–607. 29 Marvin L. Entner, “Russia and Persia, 1890-1912” (University of Minnesota, 1963), 3. 30 Rudi Matthee, “Review: The Political Economy of Iran under the Qajars: Society, Politics, Economics and Foreign Relations 1796–1926,” Middle East Journal 67, no. 2 (2013): 333–35; Rudi Matthee, “Review: Iranian-Russian Encounters: Empires and Revolutions since 1800 by Stephanie Cronin,” Middle East Journal 67, no. 4 (2013): 645– 46; Rudi Matthee and Elena Andreeva, Russians in Iran: Diplomacy and Power in the Qajar Era and Beyond (London: IB Tauris, 2018); Vanessa Martin and Morteza Nouraei, “Foreign Land Holdings in Iran 1828 to 1911,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 21, no. 2 (2011): 131–45; Vanessa Martin, Anglo-Iranian Relations since 1800 (Routledge, 2005). 31For an overview, see: Gregory Brew, “Rescuing ‘A Particularly Unattractive Lot’: Recent Historiography of Qajar Iran State and Society, Political Economy, and Revolution”; Willem Floor, Guilds, Merchants, and Ulama in Nineteenth-Century Iran (Washington, DC: Routledge, 2009); Matthee and Andreeva, Russians in Iran: Diplomacy and Power in the Qajar Era and Beyond; Moritz Deutschmann, Iran and Russian Imperialism: The Ideal Anarchists, 1800-1914 (Oxon: Routledge, 2016). 32 Stephanie Cronin, “Edward Said, Russian Orientalism and Soviet Iranology,” Iranian Studies 48, no. 5 (2015): 647–62. 10
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB sourced history of the nineteenth century with political bent.33 Matthee and Andreeva’s recent edited volume is commendable, but other than the saga of the Russian Loans and Discount Bank in Iran, revisiting a well-documented topic at the end of the century, omits economics and trade.34 And yet, none have substantively dealt with establishing trends or timeframes of commercial transition in Russo-Persian trade. This state of affairs for the crucial nineteenth century in Persian history is flanked, thankfully, by more precise and fulsome history on both sides.35
Persian historiography
Persian literature is redolent with references to the Qajar ‘Lost Century’, including the economic relations of the period under investigation.36 The imperial impositions by Britain and Russia during and after the Qajar era constitute a major current in the formation of Iranian national identity and nationalism today, often with little regard for historical-economic dynamics.37 Influential authors amplify reductionist and reified accounts in the Persian language literature as well. Persia's future Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, published his Capitulation and Iran in 1914, decrying the humiliation visited on Iran by Turkmanchay.38 In his early writings the twentieth century litterateur, Jamalzadeh, stated that 'it may be said that Iran's trade is in the hoard of Russia and England and is encircled by these two countries’, and stated 'the exported amount that goes to Russia from Iran and the imports that come from Russia to Iran are about equal although always [my emphasis] imports predominate exports by a higher amount.'39 The
33 Deutschmann, Ideal Anarchists. 34 Matthee and Andreeva, Russians in Iran: Diplomacy and Power in the Qajar Era and Beyond. 35 Rudi Matthee, Willem Floor, and Patrick Clawson, The Monetary History of Iran: From the Safavids to the Qajars (London: IB Tauris, 2013); Rudolph P. Matthee, The Politics of Trade in Safavid Iran: Silk for Silver, 1600-1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (CUP), 1999); Muriel Atkin, Russia and Iran, 1780-1828 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980); Denis V. Volkov, “Fearing the Ghosts of State Officialdom Past? Russia’s Archives as a Tool for Constructing Historical Memories of Its Persia Policy Practices,” Middle Eastern Studies 51, no. 6 (2015): 901–21. The Lost Century: Iran’s Economics and Society] قرن گم شده: اقتصاد و جامعۀ ایران در قرن نوزدهم [Ahmad Seyf] احمد سیف 36 :Nashr-e Ney], 2008 ;)Willem Floor, “Review: Qarn-e Gom Shodeh]: نشر نی in the Nineteenth Century]( Tehran Eqtesad va Jamèeh-Ye Iran Dar Qarn-e Nuzdahom,” Iranian Studies 45, no. 4 (July 1, 2012): 575–77. 37 Shiva Balaghi, “Nationalism and Cultural Production in Iran, 1848-1906” (The University of Michigan, 2008), 20- 49. Sokhan] نشر سخن :Capitulation and Iran] (Tehran] کاپیتوالسیون و ایران ,[Mohammad Mossadegh] محمد مصدق 38 Publishers], 1914). Ganj-e Shayegan: Or] گنج شایگان: یا اوضاع اقتصادی ایران ,[Jamalzadeh Seyed Mohammad Ali] سید محمد علی جمالزاده 39 The Economic Conditions of Iran]. 11
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB assumption that Russia dominated nineteenth century Persian trade continues to be asserted in both academic and popular Persian coverage for political purposes, cementing the reductionism.40
Russian historiography
Russian language coverage of the Russo-Persian connection is extensive, both primary and secondary. Elena Andreeva’s Russia and Iran in the Great Game surveys Russian travelogues on Iran, including a short overview, ‘Russian trade in Iran’.41 However, as she notes, Russian travellers covering Qajar Iran mostly prescribed ‘measures for the further development of Russian trade.’42 While Kulagina’s account of the interconnection is extensive, it focuses on the geopolitical to the exclusion of the economic – a regular preoccupation of Russian approaches.43 I have referred to a number of Russian primary sources, including limited archival sources, discussed below.44
Globalisation
Another literature prominent in recent years and vital to the assessment concerns globalisation in economic history: when it happened and how. The 2018 World Economic History Congress theme ‘Waves of Globalisation’ emphasised the importance of the local and regional in its interaction with the global. The Congress also stressed the unevenness of globalisation across locales.45 Central to the debate is that shifts in trade dynamics, quantifiable or not, heralded market integration and that the transition from early modern to contemporary modes of global trade decisively defined globalisation. De Vries characterises two schools of thought within the discipline as ‘soft’ and ‘hard’.46 Williamson, Lewis, Findlay and O’Rourke’s works forward ‘hard’
,Years Ago What Commodities Did Iran Export?],” Khabar Online 100] ایران ۱۰۰ سال پیش چه کاالهایی صادر میکرد؟“ 40 August 4, 2018; Roy Parviz Mottahedeh, “Iran’s Foreign Devils,” Foreign Policy 38 (1980): 19–34. 41 Elena Andreeva, Russia and Iran in the Great Game: Travelogues and Orientalism (Oxon: Routledge, 2007), 74- 76. 42 Andreeva, 74. 43 Л. М. [Kulagina LM] Кулагина, РОССИЯ И ИРАН (XIX - Начало XX Века) [Russia and Iran (XIX - the Beginning of the XX Century)] (Moscow: Ключ-С [Kluch-S], 2010). 44 Aleksei Nikolaevich Kuropatkin, Всеподданнейший Отчет Генерал-Лейтенанта Куропаткина о Поездке в Тегеран в 1895 Году [Vsepoddanneishii Otchet Gen.-Leit. Kuropatkina o Poezdke v Tegeran v 1895 Godu] (Moscow, 1895); Г. [G Ter-Gukasov] Тер-Гукасов, Экономические Интересы России в Персии [Politicheskie i Ekonomicheskie Interesy Rossi v Persii] (Petrograd: Типография редакции периодических изданий Министерства Финансов [Printing House, Periodicals of the Ministry of Finance], 1916). 45 Şevket Pamuk, “Waves of Globalization and the Economic Historian,” Plenary Address (Boston, MA, 2018), 6-8. 46 De Vries, “The Limits of Globalization.” 12
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB globalisation, while others (notably Flynn, Giraldez, and ‘World Systems’ theorists) posit ‘soft’ pre-modern globalisation.47 The difference is largely a matter of method and measurement.
The pre-industrial or ‘soft’ trade economy of high transaction costs, nodal trade, and high price premiums in origin versus destination markets was characterised by the predominance of non- competing, non-uniform, 'luxury' goods. This trading system was sustained despite prohibitive costs of information exchange, necessitating nodes of trade to connect distant communities. Markets of origin and destination were connected mostly indirectly and significant price premiums were common on those goods traded.48
By contrast, the early modern global economy was marked by progressive reductions in transaction costs through transport and communication infrastructure improvement and the reconfiguration of institutional and political barriers to trade. ‘Hard' interpretations of globalisation measure this by 'nothing more nor less than the intercontinental convergence of commodity and factor prices.'49 The breakthrough of ‘hard’ globalisation is signposted by price convergence, interest rates, and their speed of adjustment. Despite differences over the precise date, these ‘hard’ scholars see globalisation as beginning in earnest in Europe by 1840 even by the strictest econometric measures. This counters earlier suggestions of around 1870.50 Contemporary consensus judges it to have certainly taken hold by the second quarter of the nineteenth century in Europe.51 The impacts and timing of such transitions in the various parts of the periphery, however, remain subject to debate.52
In answering the research question, the Russo-Persian connection manifests differently from the canonical cases in political and economic dynamics, as well as periodisation. The late 1800s saw
47 D. O. Flynn and A Giraldez, “Path Dependence, Time Lags, and the Birth of Globalization: A Critique of O’Rourke and Williamson,” European Review of Economic History 8 (2004): 81–108; Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O’Rourke, “Commodity Market Integration, 1500-2000,” in Globalization in Historical Perspective, ed. Michael D. Bordo, Alan M. Taylor, and Jeffrey G. Williamson (National Bureau of Economic Research, 2001), 13–64. Janet L Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 8. 48 De Vries, “The Limits of Globalization”, 710. 49 De Vries, 714. 50 Federico and Persson, “Market Integration and Convergence in the World Wheat Market, 1800-2000”, 97-98; Kevin H O’Rourke and Jeffrey G Williamson, “When Did Globalisation Begin?,” European Review of Economic History 6, no. 1 (April 1, 2002): 23–50. 51 Karl Gunnar Persson, An Economic History of Europe: Knowledge, Institutions and Growth, 600 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 277. 52 Jeffrey G Williamson, Globalization and the Poor Periphery Before 1950, Ohlin Lect (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2006). 13
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB globalisation transition from early modern to modern in ways somewhat consistent with Williamson’s analysis of the global market ‘periphery’, including volume and ToT trends, but for ostensibly different reasons.53 Williamson’s sample of the periphery is, by his own admission, limited.54 And yet, his whole sample experienced either direct colonisation or little threat thereof – another benefit of Iran for study as an uncolonised but imperially-pressured region drawn into global market dynamics. Williamson suggests that ‘only this sample offers the data’, to which Iran would make a valuable, atypical addition.55
I treat the strict distinction between ‘soft’ (c.f. world systems etc.) and ‘hard’ globalisation (à la O’Rourke, Williamson, et. al.) of price convergence as globalisation as a false reduction.56 Each tendency provides a coherent but ultimately incomplete account of globalisation.57 Rather than reducing globalisation to two incompatible globalisations, I argue that, in historical view, these two tendencies are reconciled by adducing the gradual historical transition from pre-modern to early modern modes in contingent stages of market integration as globalisation. As such, I rely on Williamson et al.’s work on globalisation to a large extent and treat it in the way that De Vries does (i.e. expansion of trade volume, even on persistent pre-/early-modern models, and change in ToTs indicating market integration). The case of Russo-Persian market integration, malgré lui, demonstrates this as an unusual case of genuine (uncolonised but globalised) periphery.
Imperialism
In approaching this topic the historical pressures of colonialism and imperialism in the global and Russo-Persian context are omnipresent.58 These pressures distinctly impacted global and trans- regional trading dynamics. However, contradicting specific and general political history literatures, these don't account for Persia's relative commercial strength in the face of imperialism. As Entner notes, ‘in terms of the usual definition of “imperial, exploiting power” Persia must be regarded as the “economic aggressor”.’59 This study is thus framed by global
53 Williamson, 7-9, 31. 54 Certainly not including Iran, it includes colonies (e.g. Burma, Egypt, Punjab, Siam), colonised neo-European offshoots (Australia, United States, Canada, Uruguay, Argentina), and Japan, Korea: Williamson, 31. 55 Williamson, 31-2. 56 De Vries, “The Limits of Globalization”, 713-14. 57 O’Rourke and Williamson, “When Did Globalisation Begin?” 58 Jurgen Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), 392. 59 Entner, Russo-Persian Commercial Relations, 1828-1914, 7-10. 14
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB imperial dynamics as they affected markets of trade in relativising the effects of direct colonial imposition on Persian commerce, even as they don’t account for the outcomes of that trade. This overdue investigation of the commercial dynamics and ToT between Persia and Russia sheds more light on the processes of nineteenth century economic globalisation and market integration than does a simplistic reading of imperial dynamics concerning Persia's economic history during the 1800s.
2.2 Contribution
This article seeks to concretely contribute to two distinct but related research agendas.
The first constitutes an emerging inter-disciplinary approach to nineteenth century Eurasian interconnection. Within this, a small number of recent works have begun to address the gap in Russo-Persian interconnection, especially in social and political history. Other doctoral colleagues are currently working on cognate aspects of it: Kevin Gledhill on the Caspian trade to 1828 and Boris Ganichev on Russian customs regimes across Asian territories of imperial border consolidation.60 A key finding of this agenda has been that the contested realities of Russo- Persian trade exhibit 'a sheer continuity and its geography stand[s] in sharp contrast to the often turbulent political change in both countries...'.61 To this I seek to add resilient Persian commerce. That Russia achieved dominance in the Iranian market throughout the nineteenth century as a result of the Treaty of Turkmanchay’s commercial conditions is a mainstay of literature on Iran's nineteenth century history.62 This research, accompanying its social history counterparts, seeks to demonstrate that this formulation lacks historicity and thereby complicates too-common assumptions about inexorable imperial consolidation in Central Asia.
The second research agenda is an effort in the discipline of economic history itself to approach the Middle East with the rigour and breadth applied to other regions.63 In this it provides a countercase in a ‘periphery’ of the global economy, different from other attested regional cases. Kuran suggests that Middle Eastern area studies have suffered 'isolation from the analytic social
60 Kevin Gledhill, “Caspian Connections: International Trade, Local Autonomy, and Imperial Expansion in the Southern Caspian, 1732 – 1828” (New Haven, Connecticut, 2015); Boris Ganichev, “Integrating Imperial Space: The Russian Empire’s Customs System in the Post-Reform Period” (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, 2017). 61 Deutschmann, Ideal Anarchists, 40. 62 Guity Nashat, “From Bazaar to Market: Foreign Trade and Economic Development in Nineteenth Century Iran,” Iranian Studies 14, no. 1/2 (1981): 60-61. 63 Mohamed Saleh, “A ‘New’ Economic History of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region,” Economics of Transition 25, no. 2 (2017): 149–163. 15
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB sciences', precluding economic historians from asking 'a wider set of questions, collect[ing] a broader range of data, and generat[ing] richer hypotheses about the patterns of Middle Eastern history.'64 In this the current work avoids the transhistorical generalisations applied to Perso- Russian relations in the 1800s as overwhelmingly colonial, Great Game geopolitics, and escapes the analogy and extrapolation that has subsumed Iran in regional economic history studies. I approach the period in Kuran’s suggested 'dynamic' way, looking for 'intended and unintended consequences' of nineteenth century commercial and economic change between Persia and Russia.65 I take up Kuran's hypothesis that the unintended 'attentuation of incentives to innovate, invest, and accumulate' may hide in the state-centric accounts of Iran-Russian relations as it has in other Middle Eastern economic history.66 Similarly, I seek the 'favourable long-term effects' that may hide behind the commercial privileges granted by Persian elites in trade with Russia.67
2.3 Primary Sources
This article is a foray based on patchy, disparate sources and an attempt to synthesise these into a base for more source-informed historical research. For the purposes of this study, I conducted a survey of primary sources relevant to Qajar economic development in relation to commerce with the Tsarist Empire. These are variously in English, Russian, Persian, French and German languages. Some are translations from primary sources.68 Much of the primary source material consists of observations by foreign, especially Russian or British, diplomatic or commercial agents on the state of the Persian economy. Some of these accounts include economic estimates.69
Primary sources containing economic estimates provide problems beyond the subjectivity dilemma presented by first-hand historical accounts. By nature, economic estimates and representations are aggregated from available data, compounding the problem of mis-reporting and miscalculation. Where particular problems present, I note the drawbacks of the sources and data available, but proceed to use the sources in the most rigorous way possible to draw valid historical insights.
64 Timur Kuran, “Synergies between Middle Eastern Economic History and the Analytic Social Sciences,” International Journal of Middle East Studies2 44, no. 3 (12AD): 542. 65 Kuran, 544. 66 Kuran. 67 Kuran. 68 Issawi, The Economic History of Iran, 1800-1914. 69 Such as: Ernst Otto Blau, Kommerzielle Zustände Persiens (Berlin: Verlag der Königlichen Geheimen Ober- Hofbuchdrückerei, 1858). 16
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
The following sources have proved of particular value: British consular reports, drawn from the collection of the British Library in London; documents from Fond 1452 of the Central Historical Archive of Georgia (incorporating Persian tax, court, and business transaction records); documents from Fonds 11 and 15 (in Russian), including those of the 'Diplomatic Chancery of the Viceroy of the Caucasus' (1829-1869) and 'Foreign Ministry Representative for Border Relations at the Viceroy of the Caucasus' (1869-1916) (recording the Russian civil and military administration of the Caucasus and affairs with regional neighbours, including Persia).70 Of this, NK Zeidlits’ 1860 publication was instructive.71 Otto Blau’s extensive 1858 survey published gives details on prices and quantities of all Persia’s trade and is worth more notice.72
Of Persian language sources there are few contemporaneous accounts of general economic application. Of those consulted, Jamalzadeh’s 1917 Ganj-e Shaygan provides the broadest picture from a Persian perspective, but as Persian trade figures were only recorded from 1901, the author's first numerical figures begin only in the lunar Hejri year of 1319-20 (Gregorian 1902).73 The documents collected in Nateq and Adamiyat’s Unpublished Records of the Qajar Era was highly instructive on Persian commercial practices.74
70 Due to procedural change (longer registration period) access to these fonds was shorter than expected, so while I managed to access them on an archival visit, my acquaintance with the original material has served to inform the overall research herein. А.П. Берже, “Акты, Собранные Кавказской Археографической Комиссией [Acts Collected by the Caucasus Archeographic Commission]” (Тифлис [Tbilisi], 1904). 71 NK] Зейдлиц, Ст. Н. [Zeidlits, Очерк Южно-Каспийских Портов и Торговли [Ocherk Iuzhno-Kaspiiskikh Portov i Torgovli], FB O 20/28 (Тифлис [Tbilisi]: тип. Гл. упр. наместника Кавк., 1870). 72 Blau, Kommerzielle Zustände Persiens. Ganj-e Shayegan: Or The] گنج شایگان: یا اوضاع اقتصادی ایران ,[Jamalzadeh Seyed Mohammad Ali] سید محمد علی جمالزاده 73 Economic Conditions of Iran]. افکار سیاسی و اجتماعی و اقتصادی در آثار منتشر نشدۀ ,.Homa Nateq], eds] هما ناطق Fereidoun Adamiyat] and] فریدون آدمیت 74 انتشارات آگاه :Political, Social, and Economic Thought in the Unpublished Records of the Qajar Era] (Tehran] دوران قاجار [Agah Publications], 1977). 17
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
3 The Terms and Composition of Russo-Persian Trade
In this section I present several graphical representations of the Russo-Persian trade. These sketch the secular increase in trade volumes, the ToT, and changing compositions of export versus import across the examined period. They are constructed from various source data. The most comprehensive account of Russo-Persian trade consists of Russian Customs Receipts (RCR; trade returns), for trade with Persia from 1830 to 1900. The other series are from the Federico Tena World Trade Historical Database (FTWT) and RICardo Project.75 Despite data discrepancies these together give the most comprehensive picture of Russo-Persian trade yet. They confirm that Qajar Persia's trade increased as much as twelvefold in this period in real terms, less than the regionally leading economies of Egypt and the Ottoman Empire (42 and 20-fold), but also that its trade with Russia was not structurally deficient across the period.76 I critique these series’ shortfalls and their sources of derivation with reference to primary sources. The resulting analysis suggests how real historical trade may have deviated from these representations and particularly how the bias of unaccounted-for trade would reinforce Persia’s ToT.
3.1 Terms and Balance of Trade
The trade returns derived from Russian Customs Receipts (RCR) indicate the amount, in roubles (₽), exported to and imported from Persia. These customs records were kept in two categories, almost bimetallic, over the period:
1. Account roubles, consisting of assignat(ion) and silver roubles, and;
2. Gold roubles
Account and gold roubles were used concurrently to settle the BoP with Persia. Assignat roubles were phased out with financial reforms in 1839 and withdrawn from circulation in Russia by 1843.
75 Giovanni Federico and Antonio Tena Junguito, “Federico-Tena World Trade Historical Database : Persia - Iran” (e- cienciaDatos, 2018); Béatrice Dédinger and Paul Girard, “RICardo Dataset 2017.12,” 2017; Béatrice Dédinger and Paul Girard, “Exploring Trade Globalization in the Long Run: The RICardo Project,” Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History 50, no. 1 (2017): 30–48. 76 Issawi, The Economic History of Iran, 14. 18
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
These were replaced by silver in ‘account’ until 1896 (cf. Figures 1, 2) upon Russia’s conversion to the Gold Standard.77
Despite numerous grounds for mis-estimation and non-capture (e.g. unreported trade traffic and smuggling, under – and over-reporting of value, remittances, etc.) discussed below, these various figures present a consistent picture of Persia’s favourable ToT with Russia through the 1800s.
Russo-Persian Trade Volume, 1830-1900 80 5
4.5 70
4
60
3.5
50 3
40 2.5 Millions of Roubles Millions of 2
30 Millions of Pounds Streling (RICardo) StrelingPounds Millions of 1.5
20
1
10 0.5
0 0 1825 1830 1835 1840 1845 1850 1855 1860 1865 1870 1875 1880 1885 1890 1895 1900 1905 Russo-Persian Trade Volume - Russian Customs Receipts (₽) - A Federico Tena World Trade Database (₽, current) - B RICardo (₽, current) - C RICardo, pounds sterling (current) - D Figure 1: Total Russo-Persian Trade Volume, 1830-1900 Figure 1 tracks the movements of total trade volume in the datasets available, in roubles except for RICardo (Series D) on the second axis.78 Series A (RCR) depicts the Russian customs receipts for the whole period. It shows a significant drop-off in volumes from 1830 (₽38.4mn) to 1834 (₽11.7mn), a pickup to ₽19.6mn in 1838, a fall to 1840 and a relatively consistent slow increase to hit the same higher level over ₽19 million only forty years later (by 1878).79
77 H Parker Willis, “Monetary Reform in Russia,” Journal of Political Economy 5, no. 3 (1897): 277–315. Pp. 277-8, 284-6; Olga Crisp, “Russian Financial Policy and the Gold Standard at the End of the Nineteenth Century,” The Economic History Review 6, no. 2 (1953): 156. 78 The original data series are in different currencies and use their own deflators: RCR, an index of account and gold roubles; FTWT in (current) US Dollars; RICardo in (current) pounds sterling. 79 The 1834-184 fluctuation would appear to basically reflect Russian inflation volatility at the end of the assignation rouble’s circulation: it is not picked up in other currencies when deflators used. 19
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
The FTWT claims to show Persia’s total trade (Series B) but only consults English and Russian records (Persia’s major trading partners).80 Aside from broader issues of data non-capture, because FTWT data are extrapolated from 1901 to 1850, instead of using data available (or only partially), they appear to severely underestimate Persia’s total trade.81 This is evident as the Series begins in 1850 only marginally higher than the RCR and RICardo. This suggests that mid-century British trade is barely incorporated; that it deviates from Russia-only trade markedly in 1875 when Russian trade began to expand makes FTWT’s extrapolations questionable. In the mid-century it is strongly attested in primary sources that British and other European trade (e.g. textiles from Leipzig, Switzerland, Austria) predominated in the Persian market in the absence of northern Russian trade.82 This has been attributed to accessibility by sea from the Persian Gulf trade and the Trabzon-Tabriz European re-export trade, a contemporary benchmark for integration in the mid-century.83
The RICardo estimates (Series C, D) are based on English and French statistical records but concern only Russo-Persian trade.84 Starting in 1833, they contain gaps in 1850, 1863-1871, 1874- 1883, and 1889.85 Nonetheless, RICardo mirrors the volume and fluctuations of the RCR for the years it exists.
80 In roubles converted from current US dollars using FTWT historical exchange rates. Giovanni Federico and Antonio Tena Junguito, “Federico-Tena World Trade Historical Database : World Exchange Rates Series” (e- cienciaDatos, 2018); Giovanni Federico and Antonio Tena-Junguito, “World Trade, 1800-1938: A New Data-Set,” Working Papers in Economic History, 2016, 83. 81 Federico and Tena-Junguito, “World Trade, 1800-1938: A New Data-Set”, 83. 82 Тер-Гукасов, Экономические Интересы России в Персии [Politicheskie i Ekonomicheskie Interesy Rossi v Persii], 34-6. 83 Andreeva, Russia and Iran in the Great Game: Travelogues and Orientalism. P. 74; Issawi, The Economic History of Iran, 1800-1914. Pp. 71-74, 82-99; A. M. Petrov, “Foreign Trade of Russia and Britain with Asia in the Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries,” Modern Asian Studies 21, no. 4 (1987): 636-7. 84 Especially: Le Commerce Extérieur National Dans Ses Aspects Divers: Russie, 1833-1862; Annales Du Commerce Extérieur Faits Commerciaux, Série Avis Divers, Russie (Fc26); Statistical Abstract For The Principal And Other Foreign Countries, 1885-1894/95 (Vol 23); 1891-1900/01 (Vol 29). 85 Dédinger and Girard, “RICardo Dataset 2017.12.” 20
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
Russo-Persian Trade Returns, 1830-1896 Account Roubles (1830-39: assignat; 1840-1896: silver) 35
30
25
20
15 Millions of Roubles (Assignat and Silver) and (Assignat Roubles Millions of
10
5
0
1830
1831
1832
1833
1834
1835
1836
1837
1838
1839
1840
1841
1842
1843
1844
1845
1846
1847
1848
1849
1850
1851
1852
1853
1854
1855
1856
1857
1858
1859
1860
1861
1862
1863
1864
1865
1866
1867
1868
1869
1870
1871
1872
1873
1874
1875
1876
1877
1878
1879
1880
1881
1882
1883
1884
1885
1886
1887
1888
1889
1890
1891
1892
1893
1894
1895 1896 From Persia To Persia Total Figure 2: Russo-Persian Trade Returns, 1830-1896 (Account Roubles)
Figures 2 and 3 demonstrate the 1830-1896/1900 Russo-Persian trade returns from RCR. At the beginning of the period total trade in 1830 was ₽27.4mn/₽11mn (account/gold). Persia exported ₽14.1/5.6 to Russia, and Russia exported ₽13.3/5.4 to Persia. In both of these roughly seventy-year timeframes the BoT was in Persia’s favour despite the terms stipulated by Turkmanchay that in theory and by most accounts yielded Persia’s markets to Russian commerce. The pre-existing trade around 1830 and its decline may be attributable to a Turkmanchay bounce; I believe it more likely results from trade diversion from the Caucasus and Batum-Tabriz or Trabzon-Tabriz routes during and after the 1826-29 Russo-Turkish War.86 Other than 1832, 1890-1, and 1894, at no time did Russian exports to Persia exceed their imports in account roubles. Russian exports to Persia exceed their imports in gold for only one year, 1900, and even then only barely. Again, the 1834-
86 Theophilus C. Prousis, “Risky Business: Russian Trade in the Ottoman Empire in the Early Nineteenth Century,” Mediterranean Historical Review 20, no. 2 (2005): 201–26; Avni Önder Hanedar, “Effects of Wars and Boycotts on International Trade: Evidence from the Late Ottoman Empire,” The International Trade Journal 30, no. 1 (January 1, 2016): 59–79. 21
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
1840 fluctuations are visible only in account (assignat) roubles. This suggests Russian inflation, not reflected in RCR gold or RICardo’s roubles, as the provenance (Figure 4).
Russo-Persian Trade Returns, 1830-1900 Gold Roubles 45
40
35
30
25
20 Millions of Roubles (Gold) Roubles Millions of
15
10
5
0
1830
1831
1832
1833
1834
1835
1836
1837
1838
1839
1840
1841
1842
1843
1844
1845
1846
1847
1848
1849
1850
1851
1852
1853
1854
1855
1856
1857
1858
1859
1860
1861
1862
1863
1864
1865
1866
1867
1868
1869
1870
1871
1872
1873
1874
1875
1876
1877
1878
1879
1880
1881
1882
1883
1884
1885
1886
1887
1888
1889
1890
1891
1892
1893
1894
1895
1896
1897
1898
1899 1900 From Persia To Persia Total Figure 3: Russo-Persian Trade Returns, 1830-1900 (Gold Roubles)
Figure 4, below, again depicts the Russo-Persian trade volume from the RICardo Project (excluding missing years). Beginning in 1833, the original Sterling Series does not capture the early volatility of the RCR. Once converted to roubles on current exchange rates it does.87 The RICardo Series show consistently lower Russian exports to Iran than do the RCR Series, despite a slightly higher average ToT (Table 1).
87 Presumably due to the deflator’s effect, nullifying assignat rouble inflation before withdrawal from circulation. 22
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
Russian Trade Volume with Persia, 1833-1900 45
Millions 40
35
30
25
20 Millions of Roubles Millions of 15
10
5
0
Imports Exports Total
Figure 4: Russian Trade Volume with Persia, 1833-1900 (RICardo)
Figure 5 below displays the inverse Russian and Persian ToT from the RCR and RICardo series. ToT variation is particularly remarkable in certain periods. The largest variation occurred in the mid-1840s. This may be attributed to the increasing flow of British and other European goods in the re-export trade to Russia after British tariffs (1841 agreement) were equalised with those accorded Russia by Turkmanchay – importantly with lower-cost transport and communication access from the south. The second highest ToT spike (double dip) occurred in 1853-6, concurrent with the Crimean War. Later dips loosely coincided with major historical events like the 1870-72 Persian Famine (variously attributed to drought, mismanagement, hoarding and market manipulation) and the results of Witte’s Great Spurt, after which Persia’s ToT with Russia never again exceeded 300 on the index.88 These correlations warrant formal testing. The broader picture shows that Persian mercantile networks display resilience in plying their trade.
88 Shoko Okazaki, “The Great Persian Famine of 1870–71,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 49, no. 1 (1986): 183–92, https://doi.org/DOI: 10.1017/S0041977X00042609; Cormac Ó Gráda, “Famines and Markets,” Working Paper Series (Dublin, 2007), 6. 23
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
Russo-Persian Terms of Trade, 1830-1900 700
600
500
400
300 TERMS OF TRADE (/100)TRADE OF TERMS
200
100
0
1851 1852 1853 1854 1855 1856 1857 1858 1859 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890 1891 1892 1893 1830 1831 1832 1833 1834 1835 1836 1837 1838 1839 1840 1841 1842 1843 1844 1845 1846 1847 1848 1849 1850 1860 1861 1862 1863 1864 1865 1866 1867 1868 1869 1870 1871 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879 1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900
Terms of Trade - Persia - Gold Roubles Terms of Trade - Persia - Account Roubles Terms of Trade - Russia - Gold Roubles Terms of Trade - Russia - Account Roubles Russian Terms of Trade - RICardo Persian Terms of Trade - RICardo
Figure 5: Russo-Persian Terms of Trade, 1830-1900 RCR gold and RICardo almost mirror. Starting relatively even at 96 index units to Persia’s 104 in 1830 the ToT drops, not crossing into Russia’s favour again until 1890-91 (101, 100), 1894 (108), 1900 (100). In account roubles to 1896 the same inversion occurs in 1890-91, 1894, and in 1832 at 115 to Russia and 87 to Persia (again attributable to assignat inflation volatility not reflected in gold or RICardo roubles). 24
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
Across the period the average Terms of Trade are:
Table 1: Average Terms of Trade, 1833-1900
Terms of Trade in Period Russia Persia (Mean/Median)89
Account Roubles 44 / 36 293 / 284
Gold Roubles 45 / 36 288 / 280
RICardo 46 / 34 300 / 291
Unremarkably, the ToT were on average consistently and significantly in Persia’s favour. While Persian trading capacity vis-à-vis Russia eventually equalised, the ToT data does not support the view of the 1800s as a ‘lost century’ of ‘economic penetration’. Persia did depend on Russia, but not in the subjugated political-economic sense suggested by most authors.90 Russia certainly loomed large as the top export market for Persia’s produce, manufactures, and reexport. As I demonstrate below, continuations of early modern proto-industry as well as some sectoral changes in production, can be partially explained by Persian access to markets in Tsarist territories.
On trade volumes, there can be no doubt that these figures are a significant underestimation of the actual volume of trade. As Otto Blau indicates in his 1858 Persian economic survey about the extent of the Schmuggelhandel: ‘the most insightful Russian authorities in Persia itself admit that these figures inscribe barely half of the real turnover of Russo-Persian trade, and therefore, to come nearer to the truth, [one] may confidently double the result of Russian calculations.’91 Blau’s 1852-57 figures tally with the original RCR on Russo-Persian trade.92 But based on other primary
89 Mean slightly overestimates Russian and Persian ToT compared to median, the better measure given variance. 90 Foran, “The Concept of Dependent Development as a Key to the Political Economy of Qajar Iran (1800-1925).” 91 ‘Es… wird von den einsichts-vollsten russischen Autoritäten in Persian selbst zugegeben, dass diese Zahlen kaum die Hälfte des wirklichen Umsatzes im russischen-persischen Handel ausdrucken, und darf daher, um der Wahrheit nahe zu kommen, das Resultat jener russischen Berechnungen getrost doppelt genommen werden.‘ Blau, Kommerzielle Zustände Persiens, 162. 92 Blau, 164-8. 25
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB sources, Blau notes that Russian merchants he met in Tabriz and others observers reported a net flow of currency to Persia of ₽5-7mn in their records above those of customs.93
Longer historical forces including the domestic industrial modernisation of Russia, its Central Asian expansion and technological changes to transport and communications eventually reversed this net flow after the turn of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, even excluding invisible trade in the statistics available (un/der-recorded value, smuggling, remittances, etc., discussed later) the Persian dominance of the trade is undeniable. Qajar Persia may have succumbed to political intrigue in its elite politics and geopolitical machinations militarily, but Persian mercantile society held its own in interactions with its largest trading partner.
3.2 Composition of Trade
What actually made up the Russo-Persian trade in both Russia and Persia changed significantly across the period. Various scholars have provided overviews of the general composition of traded goods in Persian trade.94 Rather than reproduce this information here I instead present a summary of specific changes in the most traded categories of goods and the implications for integration between Russian and Persian markets. Overall, the practices and institutions of trade were distinctly early modern, but even before modern transport infrastructure developed in the 1880s and 1890s between Russia and Iran, traded goods were not mere luxuries and included bulky products competing on global markets.
Tables 2 and 3 present indices of the main goods traded by Persia, based on templates in Issawi and Blau, to compare with Russian trade from RCR. These provide a picture of change in the relative composition of overall trade (†) and Russo-Persian trade (*) for the middle decades of the nineteenth century by displaying approximate percentages in categories of goods traded.
93 Blau, 165. 94 Issawi, The Economic History of Iran, 1800-1914; Issawi, “Iranian Trade, 1800-1914”; Gad G. Gilbar, “The Opening of Qajar Iran: Some Economic and Social Aspects,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 49, no. 1 (1986): 76–89. 26
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
Table 2: Composition of Trade in Export Goods95
Exports 1844* 1850† 1870* 1880†
Silk and products 24 38 8 18
Cotton and woollen cloth 54 23 26 1
Cereals * 10 * 16
Fruit 6 4 24 6
Tobacco * 4 * 5
Raw cottons 3 1 21 7
Opium * * * 26
Carpets * * * 4
Peltry 3 * 4 *
Percent of Total 90 80 83 83
Table 3: Composition of Trade in Import Goods
Imports 1844* 1850† 1870* 1880†
Cotton cloth 3 43 14 48 Woollen and silk cloth 6 23 24 15 Tea * 9 0.4 2 Sugar * 2 0.7 8 Metal and metal goods 34 2 28 2 Cereals 4 * 4 * Kerosine/chandlery * * 3 1 Raw Silk 8 * 1 * Percent of Total 55 79 75 76
95 Key: * is collected from the RCR according to same categories of goods recorded by Issawi in overall composition of trade; † is reproduced from Issawi, based on Blau, and shows all Persian trade for comparison. Issawi, Economic History of Iran, 135-6; Blau, 134-5, 167-8. 27
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
With regard to Persia’s exports to Russia, cotton and woollen cloth manufactures constituted the lion’s share at 54% of 1844 exports while metal and metalware were one third of imports. ‘Silk and products’ were next largest (24%) and the remainder was split between a range of other goods, including fruit, pelts and cotton at 12%). By 1870 cotton and woollen cloth, fruit, and cotton each accounted for almost a quarter of Persian exports to Russia were, pointing to shifting patterns of trade. This occurred as the Russian textiles industries grew and required primary products. The major shift of Persian export to cash crops over the century, especially tobacco and opium, doesn’t show in Russo-Persian trade receipts.96 These commodities were largely taken by other trading partners (notably Britain to support its global opium running).97 Because Iran was a net cereal exporter it barely exported them to Russia: Russia was itself a major cereal exporter in international markets.98
As for imports, metal and metal goods were the single largest import category from Russia in both 1844 (34%) and 1870 (28%) according to the Russian records, though this significantly overstates their importance. The drop in metals and growth in textile imports from Russia is clear, but the true story lies behind this: the variety of goods imported from Russia in 1844 was much larger. In 1870 it had consolidated as trade integrated. Again, textiles tell the story of development in each economy and their integration. As 8% of Persia’s import of raw silk from Russia dropped to 1%, its export of silk and silk products also fell from 24 to 28% between 1844-70. Persia’s cloth imports from Russia increased more than fourfold in the period as Persian textile manufacturing declined, apparently displacing other European goods (e.g. from Manchester and Leipzig).99
The don of Russian economic history, Kahan, notes that the textile industry ‘was the most important’ in Russia’s industrial development, but that ‘Russian cotton mills depended almost exclusively on the import of ginned cotton or cotton yarn from abroad (largely American, some Persian, etc.) while the domestic supply from the Caucasus was insignificant.’100 Even as Russia’s exports of industrially processed textiles generally increased, Kahan notes that in this respect ‘certain advantages were derived from markets in Asia, such as Iran and China, where Russia
96 Vahid F. Nowshirvani, “The Beginnings of Commercial Agriculture in Iran,” Center Discussion Paper (New Haven, CT, 1975). 97 Ahmad Seyf, “Commericialization of Agriculture: Production and Trade of Opium in Persia, 1850–1906,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 16, no. 2 (1984): 233–50. 98 Federico and Persson, “Market Integration and Convergence in the World Wheat Market, 1800-2000”, 11. 99 Issawi, Economic History of Iran, 135-6. 100 Kahan, Russian Economic History, 14. 28
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB gained a foothold primarily through its exports of textiles.’101 Similarly, the Persian textile industry occupies pride of place in research on Iran’s longer-term economic history.102 That effort has focused on imports to elucidate ‘the battle for market domination’, sadly also utilising only British statistics and some Persian accounts.103 But through the mid-1800s, Persia’s exports of textiles dominated Russia’s: in 1840 Persia sold 19 times more processed textiles (cotton) to Russia than it bought; in 1844 the ratio became 140:1; and by 1870 it was still in Persia’s favour at 12:1.104
The importance of textiles to global reconfigurations of trade in the early modern era is well- attested in other regional linkages.105 That early modern textile trade and consumption pattern change also mattered outside Europe is a particular result of the ‘spatial turn’ and the global linkages it laid bare.106 This precise entanglement of an emerging and an established textile producing economy at the periphery of the global economy is instructive on the position of textiles in inter-Eurasian economic shifts of the nineteenth century.
But the significance of early modern trade change also lay outside the trade of goods like textiles, in the exchange of ideas and people between various geographies.107 Broader patterns of change in Persia’s economic fortunes are plain to see through the shifting trade with Russia. Even as her merchants’ commercial acumen and persistent networks balanced the trade in Persia’s favour, the composition of trade morphed to the contours of Russia and Persia’s different positions in the periphery of the global economy.
101 Kahan, 40. 102 Willem Floor, The Persian Textile Industry in Historical Perspective, 1500-1925 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999). 103 Willem Floor, Textile Imports into Qajar Iran: Russia versus Great Britain: The Battle for Market Domination (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2009), 26. Nurfadzilah Yahaya, “Review: Textile Imports into Qajar Iran: Russia versus Great Britain, The Battle for Market Domination by Willem Floor,” ed. Willem Floor, International Journal of Middle East Studies 42, no. 4 (n.d.): 701–2. 104 OVTR; Entner, Russo-Persian Commercial Relations, 10-11. 105 Beverly Lemire and Giorgio Riello, “East and West: Textiles and Fashion in Eurasia in the Early Modern Period,” Working Papers of the Global Economic History Network (GEHN) (London, 2006); Om Prakash, “Indian Textiles in the Indian Ocean Trade In the Early Modern Period,” Working Papers of the Global Economic History Network (GEHN) (London, n.d.). 106 Anne Gerritsen, “From Long-Distance Trade to the Global Lives of Things: Writing the History of Early Modern Trade and Material Culture,” Journal of Early Modern History 20, no. 6 (2016): 530-5. 107 Emily Erikson and Sampsa Samila, “Social Networks and Port Traffic in Early Modern Overseas Trade,” Social Science History 39, no. 2 (2015): 151-152. 29
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
4 Customs, Trade Networks, and Tribulations under the Global Condition
It is generally accepted that Russian merchants, in particular, faced considerable obstacles in commerce.108 The corollary that transaction costs to that trade were prohibitive is also accepted. As the Encyclopaedia Iranica puts it ‘serious impediments’ stood in front of the ‘perilous and risky enterprise’.109 Yet the relevant authors only really syllogise the reasons.110 The abilities of Persian traders and mercantile institutions, practices, and networks to surmount these obstacles are evident in Persian dominance of export, and even quasi-monopoly on the import business of Russian products, in nineteenth century trade. The reasons for this receive their most extensive treatment in Entner’s six-page fictional ‘caricature’, in which he describes Russo-Persian traders as ‘failures, fools, fly-by-nighters, gamblers or Caucasians and Persians.’111
In this section I qualitatively assess the robustness and comparative advantage of early modern mercantile institutions and practices. This approach underlines the real historical reasons for the persistence of Persian networks plying the trade.112 I emphasise the transregional operation of the ties and the agency of actors in trading networks that bound geographically distant localities, integrating markets. That transregional, transimperial, and even global actions happened on multiple scales but ‘were usually also embedded in local, national, regional or otherwise bounded contexts’ elucidates much about the Russo-Persian interconnection.113 Evolution in their economies and commercial institutions, of course, also mattered for their integration alongside commercial practice. As broader macroeconomic dynamics of change have been analysed
108 Andreeva, “RUSSIA i. Russo-Iranian Relations up to the Bolshevik Revolution”; Владимир Николаевич [Vladimir Shkunov] Шкунов, “РОССИЙСКО-ИРАНСКАЯ ТОРГОВЛЯ В 40-Е ГГ. XIX В. [Russian-Iranian Trade in the 40s of the XIX Century],” Volga Affiliate of Institute of Russian History of RAS, Samara 33 (2011): 94. 109 Andreeva, “RUSSIA i. Russo-Iranian Relations up to the Bolshevik Revolution.” 110 Aside from Deutschmann, who provides an overview of transregional connections of Persian networks through Tabriz, Astrakhan, and to Nizhny Novgorod: Deutschmann, Ideal Anarchists, 40-5. Issawi, for instance, suggests it was ‘reluctance of Russians’ ‘partly due to the hazards… partly due to the greater attraction and profitability of the rapidly expanding internal Russian market’: Issawi, Economic History of Iran, 143. 111 Entner, Russo-Persian Commercial Relations, 1-6. 112 ‘Persian’ and ‘Russian’ generally indicates subjects of either the Tsarist or Persian Empires, though these are fluid identity categories that deserve better treatment; real actors’ allegiances vacillated, not least for commercial and taxation reasons affecting the trade. For some treatment of this in later (mainly labour) migration, see: Touraj Atabaki, “Disgruntled Guests: Iranian Subalterns on the Margins of the Tsarist Empire,” Internationaal Instituut Voor Sociale Geschiedenis 48 (2003): 401–26. 113 Antje Dietze and Katja Naumann, “Revisiting Transnational Actors from a Spatial Perspective,” European Review of History: Revue Européenne d’histoire 25, no. 3–4 (July 4, 2018): 415–30. 30
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB elsewhere (even if dated), I focus on specific commercial practices and economic effects on those practices here.114 Two key dynamics lay the scene of Russo-Persian commercial connection:
A. the robustness of early modern Persian commercial practices, especially the institutions of kargozar, sarraf, dallal and tojjar
B. the underdevelopment of Russian institutions of trade finance and ineffectual (or deprioritised) state support of trade on modern (West European) models
By asserting the agency of Persian and Russian merchants in their real historical contexts we escape the regular—and regularly erroneous—conflation of Russo-Persian commerce with state actions. Examining the uneven effects of diplomatic treaties and customs arrangements on historical commerce is a better guide to market integration than the policy analysis that has preoccupied historians of Russo-Persian entanglement.115 Tsarist Russia’s demonstrable fiscal- military strength had varying effects on commerce. This included the reliance of Russian merchants on state support that was not forthcoming. Primary sources confirm that non-Russians predominated the trade, as regularly bemoaned by Russian officials.116 For instance, in his 1895 visit to Persia, Aleksei Kuropatkin was dismayed to find all traders of Russian goods he met were Persian or Caucasian.117
In reality, the Tsarist and Qajar states had little ability to control the trade, try as their agents and agencies did, or to boost it as their politics dictated. They were however, quite effective at raising revenue from customs, though half as much as they might have on the actual volume, and perhaps still less because of stiff tariff competition. While the ‘Great Game’ has been overstretched to explain the historical dynamics of Russo-Persian trade, it is relevant to historical
114 Gad G. Gilbar, “The Persian Economy in the Mid-19th Century,” Die Welt Des Islams 19, no. 1 (1979): 177–211; Gilbar, “The Opening of Qajar Iran: Some Economic and Social Aspects”; Nashat, “From Bazaar to Market: Foreign Trade and Economic Development in Nineteenth Century Iran”; MH Malek, “Capitalism in Nineteenth-Century Iran,” Middle Eastern Studies 27, no. 1 (1991): 67–78; Robert A McDaniel, “Economic Change and Economic Resiliency in 19th Century Persia,” Iranian Studies 4, no. 1 (1971): 36–49. 115 Colonial capitulations of the Ottoman Empire to Russia and Egypt to Britain provide comparative value to judge the Russian treaties' effects on trade with Persia, while steering clear of the regular analogy of Iran with the Ottoman Empire and Egypt in economic history of the Middle East. 116 Andreeva, Russia and Iran in the Great Game: Travelogues and Orientalism; Зейдлиц, Ст. Н. [Zeidlits, Очерк Южно-Каспийских Портов и Торговли [Ocherk Iuzhno-Kaspiiskikh Portov i Torgovli]. 117 Kuropatkin, Всеподданнейший Отчет Генерал-Лейтенанта Куропаткина о Поездке в Тегеран в 1895 Году [Vsepoddanneishii Otchet Gen.-Leit. Kuropatkina o Poezdke v Tegeran v 1895 Godu]. 31
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB actors’ decisionmaking (usually of state affiliation).118 Correspondence between Justin Sheil ‘at Tehran’ and Major Hennell in the Persian Gulf, decided against enforcement of contract by 'coercive measures' on delinquent Persian merchants as it 'might inconveniently be quoted as a precedent by other Foreign Powers [Russia].’119 Below I present a series of stylised facts based on primary sources and scholarly advances to characterise trading practices between Russia and Persia. This synthesis and analysis specifies why the balance of trade weighed in Persia’s favour in the nineteenth century and how their markets integrated during that time.
4.1 The Economic Conditions of Russo-Persian Trade
Russia and Persia were both peripheral economies in the nineteenth century's global economy. Each was undergoing distinct and varied sectoral processes of catching up, falling behind, or forging ahead.120 Issawi remarked that comparing the Middle East and Russia:
at the beginning of the nineteenth century would, at first sight, reveal little difference. Grain yields were somewhat lower in Russia, the products of handicrafts were inferior, urbanization was far lower, literacy little if at all higher, and transport costs distinctly higher…121 Russia and Persia’s economies were predominantly agricultural with similar serf-land tenure relations and underdeveloped transport and communication infrastructure.122 Levels of urbanisation in Iran were probably higher as were proto-industrial specialisation in handicrafts and simple manufacturing.123
Monetarily, there was regular specie shortage in parts and periods of Qajar Persia. Some internal trade was carried out as barter or barter-with-currency in an ordered system of accounting supported by ties of personal exchange and commitment to raise credit.124 Much trade occurred with minimal currency changing hands, both within Qajar territory and in exchange networks
118 “The Russians at the Gates of Herat,” Science 5, no. 117 (1885): 368–69.Anatol Lieven, “The (Not So) Great Game,” The National Interest, no. 58 (1999): 70. 119 Justin Sheil and Samuel Hennell, “Letter from Justin Sheil, British Envoy at Tehran, to Major Samuel Hennell, Political Resident in the Persian Gulf (Government of India)” (London: British Library: India Office Records and Private Papers; Qatar Digital Library, 1846). 120 Moses Abramovitz, “Catching Up, Forging Ahead, Falling Behind,” Journal of Economic History 46, no. 2 (1986): 385–406. 121 Charles Issawi, The Middle East Economy: Decline and Recovery (Princeton: Markus Wiener, 1995), 16 122 Hassan Hakimian, “ECONOMY Viii. IN THE QAJAR PERIOD,” Encyclopaedia Iranica (Encyclopaedia Iranica, 2011). Ann KS Lambton, Landlord and Peasant in Persia: A Study of Land Tenure and Land Revenue Administration (London: IB Tauris, 1991); Kahan, Russian Economic History, 5-13, 27-32. 123 Floor, Guilds, Merchants, and Ulama, 7. 124 Matthee, Floor, and Clawson, The Monetary History of Iran: From the Safavids to the Qajars, 230-232. 32
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB abroad.125 Blau mentions that Russian silver and gold specie was ubiquitous in Iran, and that its circulation stimulated Persian trade with Mesopotamia and Central Asia.126 One witness, Shavrov, recorded that in 1878—to the consternation of Russian authorities—Persian merchants spent no more than seventy-five percent of their earnings at trade fairs in Nizhny Novgorod.127 The attested flight of Russian specie to Iran due to the Russia trade deficit, a phenomenon usually associated with economic decline in the periphery, such as China, further substantiates the economic success of Persian merchants in the Russo-Persian trade.
Recurrent financial deficiencies and lack of efficacious modern financial instruments account for some Russian commercial ineffectiveness in Persian trade. As Russia industrialised on European models it was a ‘major borrower of foreign capital’ and its current account BoP was in structural deficit from trade.128 Intermittent current account surpluses were offset by interest and dividend payments on foreign debt, maintaining a gold reserve, industrial capital overheads or state budgetary obligations.129 Russian industrialisation was slow until the 1880s, largely because of the ‘scarcity of domestic capital’ and that the ‘main form of capital was land.’130 Even internal Russian trade ‘during the second half of the nineteenth century was marked by the attempts [my emphasis] on the part of merchants to obtain credit from commercial banks that [only then] started to operate in Russia…’131 The assumed superiority of European trading companies in Persia is not only troublingly Eurocentric, as Islamoglu says, but incorrect.132 The global expansion of Western European powers was vitally reinforced by access to credit through new financial instruments. Russia, however, had little recourse to these amidst its lagging financial development.133 The assumption of Russian capital access to empower their trade is simply untrue
125 This was even true of official transactions with the state, which though expressed in monetary units of account, were transacted in-kind. Matthee, Floor, and Clawson, 232. 126 Blau, Kommerzielle Zustände Persiens, 171-2. 127 Nikolai N. Shavrov, O Razvitii Nashei Torgovli s Persiei (Tbilisi: Tip. Kants. Glavnonach. grazhd. ch. na Kavkaze, 1891). 128 Kahan, Russian Economic History: The Nineteenth Century. P. 40-1. Paul R Gregory, “The Russian Balance of Payments, the Gold Standard, and Monetary Policy: A Historical Example of Foreign Capital Movements,” The Journal of Economic History 39, no. 2 (1979): 379–400. 129 Kahan, Russian Economic History: The Nineteenth Century. P. 40-1. Gregory, “The Russian Balance of Payments, the Gold Standard, and Monetary Policy: A Historical Example of Foreign Capital Movements.” 130 Kahan, Russian Economic History: The Nineteenth Century, 13, 23. 131 Kahan, 37. 132 Huri Islamoglu, “Economic History in Middle Eurasia,” in Routledge Handbook of Global Economic History, ed. Francesco Boldizzoni and Pat Hudson (Oxon: Routledge, 2016). 133 John Darwin, After Tamerlane: The Rise & Fall of Global Empires 1400-2000, 2007, 164-5. 33
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB for much of the period. With the severe constraints for merchants and factors of production (land, labour, capital) in internally-integrating markets, little was dedicated to Russia’s commerce in Persia.
While Persian mercantile society suffered a shortage of specie, it was alleviated by mechanisms of impersonal exchange typical of early modern trade like barter, and indigenous systems of contract enforcement and accounting. At the same time, the severe shortage of capital in nineteenth century Russia’s economy, as it slowly industrialised on modern models, precluded the investment in infrastructure and facility of capital necessary to right the trade deficit with Persia.
4.2 Institutional Framework of Russo-Persian trade
Nineteenth century Russo-Persian trade was conducted on a series of formal and informal institutions. Among the formal institutions, prominence must be accorded to the 1828 Commercial Annex of the Treaty of Turkmanchay which governed commerce until 1901.134 Its terms included: a flat 5% ad valorem customs rate, assurance of Russian merchant vessels’ access to Persian ports, exclusive Russian naval activity on the Caspian, the right to appoint consuls and commercial agents ‘wherever the good of commerce will demand it’, and the issuance of passports to Russian and Persian subjects to travel and trade freely between the two empires.135
Legal enforcement of contracts was also provided for in the commercial protocol. In practice this favoured Persian merchants—not least through the informal kargozar institution. The judicial system operated, as Lydon notes, ‘without faith in paper’.136 In any case any nominal Russian advantage in Persia did not last long.137 The five percent customs rate soon became standard for all foreigners trading in Persia by extension of Russia’s MFN status to British and American
134 The 1901 Customs Agreement set rates on both value and volume by categories of goods with the reformation مرتضی and[ احمدی اختیار Mehdi Ahmadi-Ekhtiyarمهدی ] :of Persian customs collection under Belgian mandate Analysis of the Iran-Russia][ دهقان نژاد, “تحلیلی بر قرارداد گمرکی ایران و روسیه در دوره قاجار Morteza Dehghan-nejad] . (.n.d) 21 تاریخ در آیینه پژوهش ”,[Customs Agreement in the Qajar Period 135 JC Hurewitz, “Treaties of Peace and Commerce (Turkmanchay): Persia and Russia,” in The Middle East and North Africa in World Politics: A Documentary Record I: European Expansion, 1535-1914, ed. JC Hurewitz, 2nd rev. e (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975). 136 Entner, Russo-Persian Commercial Relations, 1828-1914. P. 12; Ghislaine Lydon, “A Paper Economy of Faith without Faith in Paper: A Reflection on Islamic Institutional History,” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 71, no. 3 (2009): 647–59. 137 Issawi, The Economic History of Iran, 143. 34
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB traders.138 The Persian Shah’s firman, extending the five percent tariff to British goods in 1838, stated: ‘in perfect security and confidence… they shall pay to the Officers of Government, the same public dues upon their goods as are paid by the merchants of the Russian government.'139
But Russian small traders with little economy of scale or financial resources—the vast majority till the 1870s—were not advantaged by the agreement.140 High transaction costs persisted and local enforcement was uneven: both sides of the border localities competed to attract trade with lower tariffs. Valuation was often inaccurate, sometimes intentionally.141 Persian traders were the most regular beneficiaries of this uneven application. For instance, India Office Letter 187 encourages the imposition of retaliatory double duties on 'native' traders, 'to guard against the abuse of the indulgence granted to a certain class of our native allies who would otherwise have come within the same categories as the most favored [sic] European Nation... to prevent fraud... [and] to secure regularity and precision in the observance of our Regulations.'142
The Treaty of Turkmanchay’s commercial clauses were to supply an outlet market for Russian industrial products to Persia as a MFN, away from Europe-facing protectionism.143 It was 'undercover protectionism’: a way to 'maintain protection against external competitors through strategic selection of liberalization counterparts.'144 While rouble volatility rendered Russian tariffs on European imports somewhat ineffective, Persian tariffs stayed at five percent.145 Like Cobden-Chevalier's position as 'epoch making is vastly exaggerated' in Europe, so the Treaty of
The Evolution of Iran’s Customs in]تحوالت تاریخی گمرک ایران و رونق اقتصادی در دورۀ قاجاریه “ ,Habibollah Saeidinia 138 Relation to Its Economic Development in the Qajar Era],” Iran History 63, no. 5 (2010): 112. 139 Mohammad Shah Qajar, “Firman with Seal of Mohammad Shah Qajar, ‘Vol 54 Letters Inward’ [80r] (159/170); IOR/R/15/1/46” (London: British Library: India Office Records and Private Papers; Qatar Digital Library, 1838). 140 Atkin, Russia and Iran, 1780-1828, 151-152. The Evolution of Iran’s Customs in Relation to Its]تحوالت تاریخی گمرک ایران و رونق اقتصادی در دورۀ قاجاریه “ ,Saeidinia 141 Economic Development in the Qajar Era].” Pp. 113-14; H Lyman Stebbins, British Imperialism in Qajar Iran : Consuls, Agents and Influence in the Middle East (London: I.B. Tauris, 2017), 55. 142 Arnold Kemball and Arthur Malet, “Letter No.187 of 1853 from Captain Arnold Kemball, Resident in the Persian Gulf, to Arthur Malet, Chief Secretary of the Government of Bombay, British Library: India Office Records and Private Papers, IOR/R/15/1/137, Ff 30-33” (British Library: India Office Records and Private Papers; Qatar Digital Library, 1953). 143 Тер-Гукасов, Экономические Интересы России в Персии [Politicheskie i Ekonomicheskie Interesy Rossi v Persii], 33. 144 Olivier Accominotti and Marc Flandreau, “Bilateral Treaties And The Most-Favored-Nation Clause: The Myth of Trade Liberalization in the Nineteenth Century,” World Politics 60, no. 2 (2008): 147. 145 Crisp, “Russian Financial Policy and the Gold Standard at the End of the Nineteenth Century”, 156-7, 161, 166. 35
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
Turkmanchay has been for Russo-Persian trade.146 A re-export trade of European goods, even before the 1838-1856 tariff equalisations, thrived on this ‘back-door’ to Russia.147 Yet influential scholars still assert that Turkmanchay effectively opened the Persian market for Russian trade.148 Similar to views on the development of European commerce they imply ‘that trade treaties and trade growth were more or less equivalent.'149 The reality of its (non-)implementation was mitigated by many local and transregional factors, especially the informal institutions of the trade, which frustrated Russian but bolstered Persian commercial endeavours.
4.3 The Nature of Persian Mercantile Society and Networks
The institutions and practices of the Persian mercantile community created a comparative advantage for Persian trade in nineteenth century commerce with Russia. If Russian traders theoretically operated above Persian law through the Commercial Annex of Turkmanchay (as contemporary Iranians saw it), Iranian traders easily operated around it through time-tested practices and informal institutions. The internal dealings of financing and wholesale supply in Persian trade networks built on kinship, personal exchange and other informal contractual mechanisms were well adapted to the physical and human geography of their regions. They are evocative of examples in early modern and even pre-modern trade examined in economic history of other times.150 Matthee has demonstrated that traditional Persian trade networks enabled mobility between markets, diversity in products through overland trade, great flexibility in financial arrangements and durability in trade fluctuations in the Safavid period.151 These approaches carried over from Safavid to Qajar times and have also been demonstrated to be more
146 Accominotti and Flandreau, “Bilateral Treaties And The Most-Favored-Nation Clause: The Myth of Trade Liberalization in the Nineteenth Century”, 152 147 Тер-Гукасов, Экономические Интересы России в Персии [Politicheskie i Ekonomicheskie Interesy Rossi v Persii], 33-37. 148 Nikki R Keddie, Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006), 41. 149 Accominotti and Flandreau, “Bilateral Treaties And The Most-Favored-Nation Clause: The Myth of Trade Liberalization in the Nineteenth Century”, 174. 150 Jared Rubin, “Bills of Exchange, Interest Bans, and Impersonal Exchange in Islam and Christianity,” Explorations in Economic History 47, no. 2 (2010): 213–27; Lydon, “A Paper Economy of Faith without Faith in Paper: A Reflection on Islamic Institutional History”; Jessica L Goldberg, “Choosing and Enforcing Business Relationships in the Eleventh-Century Mediterranean: Reassessing the ‘Maghribī Traders,’” Past & Present 216, no. 1 (2012): 3–40. 151 Rudolph P. Matthee, The Politics of Trade in Safavid Iran: Silk for Silver, 1600-1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (CUP), 1999). 36
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB durable in non-colonised regions, such as Iran.152 By contrast, Russians tried to establish modern European trading practices in Persia, based on warehousing and written contracts of impersonal exchange. They continually encountered commitment, supply and financing problems. The typically early modern structure of Persian commerce, as compared to Russian, strongly supported the persistence of Persian trading networks.153 Here I identify and profile four key institutional groupings that contributed: the tojjar, kargozar, sarraf and dallal, and asnaf. Scholarly knowledge of these institutions has developed in social and political history, and each of them had demonstrable impacts on the local and transregional conduct of Russo-Persian trade.
The Tojjar
Tojjar were the ‘big merchants’ that operated the wholesale trade in and out of Persia. Distinct from other merchants, they worked with economies of scale on corporate and collective structures but did not form asnaf (guilds) like petty merchants and craftsmen.154 Regarding his 1867 Persian visit De Rochechouart explains how merchants and professions cross-funded, by amortisation and personal liability in shared corporate structure.155 The tojjar operated in different trades but the same occupation of wholesale. They were entrusted with significant sums (often without written proof), financed infrastructure, provided welfare, were exempt from taxation and military service, and generally avoided interaction with government authorities. They effectively only paid customs on foreign trade.156 They did not specialise in one commodity or line of business, but used their pooled and personal resources to react to market supply and demand.157
The tojjar collectively elected a first-among-equals (Malek ol-tojjar) to supervise commercial conduct, settle disputes and arbitrate in case of bankruptcy. Other tojjar were not bound by his
152 Islamoglu, “Economic History in Middle Eurasia.” p. 271; Gad G. Gilbar, “The Persian Economy in the Mid-19th Century,” Die Welt Des Islams 19, no. 1 (1979): 204-7. 153 Intermediate Indo-Persian networks and those of religious minorities in Russian territory have received more dedicated attention in English literature than those of immediate Persian. In Russian, there is more coverage, which Moritz Deutschmann has handily synthesised in a small section: Deutschmann, Ideal Anarchists, 42-45. On Indo-Persian networks: Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Indo-Persian Travels in the Age of Discoveries, 1400-1800, ed. Sanjay Subrahmanyam (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge, UK, 2007). 154 Floor, Guilds, Merchants, and Ulama, 23. 155 ‘Des Corporations’ in JM De Rochechouart, Souvenir d’un Voyage En Perse, ed. Challamel Ainé (Paris: Librairie commissionaire pour La Marine, les colonies et l’Orient, 1867), 176-185. 156 Floor, Guilds, Merchants, and Ulama, 24-7, 31. 157 Floor, 37. 37
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB decisions nor were they subordinate.158 The tojjar operated (along with sarraf and dallal) as major repositories and sources of capital amongst themselves, for all small and large traders and for government but ‘they invested the greater part of their capital in mercantile enterprises.’159 In the 1800s export houses were formed that collectivised agent and supply networks, boosting the economy-to-scale of Persian import and export. Smaller merchants operating long distance trade were concurrently agents or representatives of bigger merchants and their networks, which boosted their resources and lowered their personal transaction costs on trade.160 Most tojjar maintained branch offices in key destination markets like Novgorod, Astrakhan, Kazan, etc., linked by agent networks in key intermediary markets. By logistics and even inter-merchant financing, the extensive informal mechanisms of trade facilitation available to the Persian merchants created a strong comparative advantage.
Sarraf and Dallal System
The financing arrangements supporting Persian trade extended beyond inter-merchant loans and assistance. Floor demonstrates from numerous primary accounts that ‘private commercial credit was the life force of a brisk trade... if one knew one’s way around, or if one had the disposal of a good agent.’161 De Rochechouart surveys the complexity of the system of Persia in 1867 in a section ‘Du Crédit’, stating:
there is no country in the world where money flows with such rapidity and commercial transactions find greater ease. However, Persia does not have any of the bank or discount establishments we normally consider the most active instruments of the commercial prosperity of a country, but which cannot exist with the irregularity of oriental habits, and with the spirit of Persian institutions so unkind to creditors.162
By all accounts the Persian credit system was extensive and mostly impenetrable to unversed ‘foreign’ creditors. The professions of sarraf (bankers) and dallal (brokers), who had exclusive
158 Floor, 28-9. 159 Floor, 31-33. 160 Blau, Kommerzielle Zustände Persiens, 55. 161 Floor, Guilds, Merchants, and Ulama, 53. 162 ‘…il n'y a pas un pays au monde où l'argent circule avec une aussi grande rapidité et où les transactions commerciales trouvent une plus grande facilité. Cependant la Perse n'est dotée d'aucun de ces établissements de banque ou d'escompte que nous sommes habitués à considérer comme les instruments les plus actifs de la prospérité commerciale d'un pays, mais qui ne sauraient exister avec l'irrégularité des habitudes orientales, et avec l'esprit des institutions persanes si peu bienveillant aux créanciers.’ De Rochechouart, Souvenir d’un Voyage En Perse, 172-5. 38
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB control of major money transactions in Persia until 1888, ensured this as they specialised in financing specific commercial transactions, formed guilds and generally ‘associated themselves to get more credit.’163 Blau, for instance, noted that if ‘the buyer be not known to the broker he was obliged to find guarantees for his identity and solvency.’ 164 This was an early modern due diligence that advantaged known parties. Courier networks acting as agents for specie remittance and supply of goods (both for import and export with Russia) were also pooled, sometimes operating for as many as forty merchants.165 While the risks and costs of this were high and the travel cumbersome compared to modern Western European methods, it also indicates the scale of Persian trade that supported their trade surplus with Russia, which lacked both methods. Even as paper draft became slowly more common in the later decades of the century, the market rates including commission, remittance charge, and interest rates regularly added to over twenty percent, either equalling or exceeding transaction costs of early modern remittance.166 These commercial functions and their broader associations operated on informal exchange and reputational enforcement of commitment. Both Persian and foreign merchants relied on the credit extension in Persian markets, but this system decidedly favoured the former.167
Kargozar System
The role of the kargozar is one of the most interesting to have arisen from recent research on Qajar political history.168 Its relevance to the conduct of Russo-Persian trade is significant, although perhaps not so important as for Perso-British trade because Russian traders in Iran
163 Floor, Guilds, Merchants, and Ulama, 36-7, 56. 164 Blau, 50-3. 165 H. de Lacy O’Brien, Banking in Persia (London: John King and Company, 1873), 55; Blau, Kommerzielle Zustände Persiens, 72-3. 166 Floor, Guilds, Merchants, and Ulama, 56. 167 Floor, 53. 168 In particular Martin and Nouraei’s three-part investigation and that of Gad Gilbar: Vanessa Martin and Morteza Nouraei, “The Role of the ‘Karguzar’ in the Foreign Relations of State and Society of Iran from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to 1921. Part 1: Diplomatic Relations,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 15, no. 3 (2005): 261–77; Morteza Nouraei and Vanessa Martin, “The Role of the ‘Karguzar’ in the Foreign Relations of State and Society of Iran from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to 1921: Part II: The ‘Karguzar’ and Security, the Trade Routes of Iran and Foreign Subjects 1900-1921,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 16, no. 1 (2006): 29–41; Vanessa Martin and Morteza Nouraei, “The Role of the Karguzar in the Foreign Relations of State and Society of Iran from the Mid- Nineteenth Century to 1921 Part III: The Karguzar and Disputes over Foreign Trade,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 16, no. 2 (2006): 151–63; Gad G. Gilbar, “Resistance to Economic Penetration: The Karguzar and Foreign Firms in Qajar Iran,” International Journal of Middle East Studies2 43 (11AD): 5–23. 39
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB avoided credit and operated by hard currency or by barter.169 The kargozar institution, however, was formally constituted by the Persian Foreign Ministry to adjudicate in commercial and consular disputes between Persians and foreigners, particularly after 1828. This represents a significant difference from the imposition of mixed courts or Napoleonic code in Egypt and the Ottoman Empire – which Persia’s capitulation is supposed to resemble in economic history literature. The varying informal and formal roles of the kargozar limited the extension of foreign commercial enterprise in Persia by favouring Persian traders, especially tojjar (who sometimes concurrently held kargozar posts).170 This is demonstrated by the diversity of cases in the collection of Qajar-era documents published by Fereidoun Adamiyat and Homa Nateq.171 It was, in Gilbar’s reckoning, a major institution in Qajar Persia’s ‘resistance to economic penetration’ that gave ‘an effective advantage over foreign merchants and investors’ and ‘[f]rom a business standpoint the Iranian tojjar reaped handsome benefits.’172
4.4 Overstating State Capacity
The kargozar system illustrates how even the limited state interference that did occur in aspects of the Russo-Persian trade arbitration benefitted Persian merchants.173 While Tsarist Russia’s economy was partially European with colonial dimensions, Russia’s advancement ahead of Persia in their trade is contradicted by the ToT across the 1800s. Russia’s level of development is regularly overstated by historians simply for its imperial militarism and well-documented fiscal- military capacity. As Kahan states ‘[I] reject the myth that the Russian state successfully put the entire economy into a Procrustean bed of state controls and that things happened only because of exclusive state initiative.’174 Western European merchants in Persia were notably more successful in their trade than Russians through most of the mid-century due to their business forms, lower transaction costs in southern Persian regions and especially ‘financial power’ from capital availability at home.
169 Gilbar provides a one-page overview of the particular effects on two cases of Russo-Persian commercial dispute: Gilbar, “Resistance to Economic Penetration: The Karguzar and Foreign Firms in Qajar Iran”, 13-4. 170 Gilbar, 9. افکار سیاسی و اجتماعی و اقتصادی در آثار منتشر نشدۀ دوران قاجار ,[Homa Nateq] ناطق Fereidoun Adamiyat] and] آدمیت 171 [Political, Social, and Economic Thought in the Unpublished Records of the Qajar Era], 299-371. 172 Gilbar, “Resistance to Economic Penetration: The Karguzar and Foreign Firms in Qajar Iran”, 17-8. 173 Deutschmann, Ideal Anarchists, 42. 174 Kahan, Russian Economic History, x. 40
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
Such access to capital was not available to Russian merchants in Russia who were obliged to navigate Persian markets by Persian rules with little financing. Furthermore, official assistance to merchants was withdrawn regularly by British and Russian authorities in Persia through the 1800s, sometimes for fear of setting a precedent for the other.175 This phenomenon includes an entertaining set of cases where Persian ministers appealed to Russian and British consuls to not assist their merchants extending credit to Qajar officials. It was noted such officials 'recklessly make purchases and contract debts which neither their salaries nor their private means enable them to discharge…': further indication of the incapacity of the Persian government to even enforce conduct on their own employees vis-à-vis merchants, Persian or foreign, under Persian jurisdiction.176
Thus while Russia’s ‘penetration’ of Iran’s markets presented as state-sponsored and facilitated by Turkmanchay’s Commercial Annex, the Russian state was not forthcoming in its support till the last decades of the century. The low state capacity of the Qajar government, however, operated in favour of Persian merchants despite dynastic political and fiscal enthrallment to Russia and Britain. Persian merchants were able to more than hold their own with early modern trading networks and institutions.
175 Arnold Kemball and Arthur Malet, “Vol 184 1853/54 Commerce; Accounts and General” (London: British Library: India Office Records and Private Papers, IOR/R/15/1/137; Qatar Digital Library, 1853). 176 Justin (British Envoy at Tehran) Sheil, “Letter from Justin Sheil, British Envoy to Tehran, to Captain Arnold Kemball, Resident in the Persian Gulf [30r] (1/4); , IOR/R/15/1/134 Ff 30-31.” (London: British Library: India Office Records and Private Papers; Qatar Digital Library, 1852). 41
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
5 Findings: Integration or Capitulation to Global Markets?
In this article I show that nineteenth century Russo-Persian trade was neither a story of Persia’s economic penetration by Russia nor of capitulation to Tsarist imperialism. Using new data and revisiting earlier figures and their interpretations I show that the Russo-Persian terms of trade balanced distinctly in Persia’s favour, contrary to influential suggestions in the literature. As established in Section 3, the volume of trade increased over the course of the century even as Russia’s ToT with Persia averaged just 45 on the index. The ToT tipped in Russia’s favour only in four years of the datasets, all after 1890. I conclude that the commerce was more effectively plied by Persians than Russians.
The persistence of high transaction costs between the difficult human and physical geographies connecting Russia and Persia suited early modern Persian commercial techniques and institutions better. The short examples of the tojjar, sarraf, dallal, and kargozar exemplify how, drawn from the literature of recent scholarly advances. As Persians dominated the trade, Russian traders were handicapped by the difficulties of capital scarcity and lack of trade finance in the industrialising Russian economy. My analysis of primary sources shows that Persians exported more and, surprisingly, that Persians conducted much of the business of importing Russian goods into Persia.
Amid notable political and social ruptures occurring in both Russia and Persia in the nineteenth century, the impost of Russian commerce was negligible until almost the turn of the twentieth century. In the Russo-Persian commercial entanglement of the 1800s we can see all the hallmarks of globalisation. The trade was permanent and exchange was continuous and on a scale that brought lasting impacts to all trading parties. At the same time, the fragmenting pressures of globalisation were felt as the composition of trade changed. Even without formal testing of price convergence on the competing goods that were traded, the benchmark of rising trade volume in competing goods indicates market integration between Russia and Persia. Under the Williamson and O’Rourke definition of globalisation as ‘nothing less than the integration of markets’, Iran may be considered a late globaliser.
This paper has only begun to plumb the specific economic entanglement of Russia and Iran; and yet the implications of its contribution are varied and numerous for emerging research agendas in
42
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB economic history as well as the history and present of these two states’ and societies’. Issawi identified Russia’s relative lag behind even the Middle East at the start of the nineteenth century, he also correctly diagnosed that other economic factors at work produced a vast difference between the two regions in the next century. Scholars would do well to reassess the common contention that Russia and Iran follow exceptional political and economic development trajectories. I suggest beginning by examining the historical roots of their development trajectories globally rather than autarkically. Deglobalising reaction is as much part of nineteenth century and later globalisations. Unusual cases, such as that of Russia and Persia’s market integrations across the periphery as erstwhile empires, tell us much about the historical global condition of the nineteenth century that ‘core’ frontrunners markets may not.
Iran’s underdevelopment by the turn of the twentieth century identified by the literature may be due more to the persistent robustness of its early modern commercial institutions and pseudo- involution on pre-modern production patterns than to any subjugation of its internal market by imperial powers. While geopolitical battles retarded Persia’s adoption of Western European institutions and production, prolonging early modern commerce, this research suggests that diplomatic and colonial history should not be regarded as substitutable for the complexity of Qajar Persia’s economic and commercial history.
43
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
Bibliography
Abramovitz, Moses. “Catching Up, Forging Ahead, Falling Behind.” Journal of Economic History 46, no. 2 (1986): 385–406.
Abu-Lughod, Janet L. Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Accominotti, Olivier, and Marc Flandreau. “Bilateral Treaties And The Most-Favored-Nation Clause: The Myth of Trade Liberalization in the Nineteenth Century.” World Politics 60, no. 2 (2008): 147–88.
Alam, Muzaffar, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam. Indo-Persian Travels in the Age of Discoveries, 1400- 1800. Edited by Sanjay Subrahmanyam. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge, UK, 2007.
Amirahmadi, Hooshang. The Political Economy of Iran under the Qajars: Society, Politics, Economics and Foreign Relations 1796-1926. London: I.B. Tauris, 2012.
Andreeva, Elena. Russia and Iran in the Great Game: Travelogues and Orientalism. Oxon: Routledge, 2007.
———. “RUSSIA i. Russo-Iranian Relations up to the Bolshevik Revolution.” Encyclopædia Iranica, 2014.
Atabaki, Touraj. “Disgruntled Guests: Iranian Subalterns on the Margins of the Tsarist Empire.” Internationaal Instituut Voor Sociale Geschiedenis 48 (2003): 401–26.
Atkin, Muriel. Russia and Iran, 1780-1828. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980.
Balaghi, Shiva. “Nationalism and Cultural Production in Iran, 1848-1906.” The University of Michigan, 2008.
Banani, Amin. “Impact of the West on Iran 1921-1941: A Study in Modernization of Social Institutions.” ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1959.
Bolt, Jutta, Robert Inklaar, Herman de Jong, and Jan Luiten van Zanden. “Rebasing ‘Maddison’: New Income Comparisons and the Shape of Long-Run Economic Development.” Maddison Project Working Papers. Groningen, 2018.
Brew, Gregory. “Rescuing ‘A Particularly Unattractive Lot’: Recent Historiography of Qajar Iran
44
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
State and Society, Political Economy, and Revolution,” n.d.
Crisp, Olga. “Russian Financial Policy and the Gold Standard at the End of the Nineteenth Century.” The Economic History Review 6, no. 2 (1953): 156–72.
Cronin, Stephanie. “Edward Said, Russian Orientalism and Soviet Iranology.” Iranian Studies 48, no. 5 (2015): 647–62.
Dadkhah, Kamran. “Book Review: Guilds, Merchants, and Ulama in Nineteenth-Century Iran by Willem Floor.” Iranian Studies 44, no. 1 (2011): 131–34.
Darwin, John. After Tamerlane: The Rise & Fall of Global Empires 1400-2000, 2007.
Dédinger, Béatrice, and Paul Girard. “Exploring Trade Globalization in the Long Run: The RICardo Project.” Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History 50, no. 1 (2017): 30–48.
———. “RICardo Dataset 2017.12,” 2017.
Deutschmann, Moritz. Iran and Russian Imperialism: The Ideal Anarchists, 1800-1914. Oxon: Routledge, 2016.
Dietze, Antje, and Katja Naumann. “Revisiting Transnational Actors from a Spatial Perspective.” European Review of History: Revue Européenne d’histoire 25, no. 3–4 (July 4, 2018): 415–30.
Entner, Marvin L. “Russia and Persia, 1890-1912.” University of Minnesota, 1963.
———. Russo-Persian Commercial Relations, 1828-1914. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1965.
Erikson, Emily, and Sampsa Samila. “Social Networks and Port Traffic in Early Modern Overseas Trade.” Social Science History 39, no. 2 (2015): 151–73. https://doi.org/DOI: 10.1017/ssh.2015.49.
Federico, Giovanni, and Karl Gunnar Persson. “Market Integration and Convergence in the World Wheat Market, 1800-2000.” In The New Comparative Economic History: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey G. Williamson, edited by Tim Atton, Kevin O’Rourke, and Alan M. Taylor, 87–114. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2007.
Federico, Giovanni, and Antonio Tena-Junguito. “World Trade, 1800-1938: A New Data-Set.”
45
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
Working Papers in Economic History, 2016.
Federico, Giovanni, and Antonio Tena Junguito. “Federico-Tena World Trade Historical Database : List of Trading Polities (World Countries).” e-cienciaDatos, 2018. https://doi.org/doi/10.21950/WNX68S.
———. “Federico-Tena World Trade Historical Database : Persia - Iran.” e-cienciaDatos, 2018. https://doi.org/doi/10.21950/P8PKSW.
———. “Federico-Tena World Trade Historical Database : World Exchange Rates Series.” e- cienciaDatos, 2018. https://doi.org/doi/10.21950/ECBVO0.
Findlay, Ronald, and Kevin H. O’Rourke. “Commodity Market Integration, 1500-2000.” In Globalization in Historical Perspective, edited by Michael D. Bordo, Alan M. Taylor, and Jeffrey G. Williamson, 13–64. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2001.
Floor, Willem. Guilds, Merchants, and Ulama in Nineteenth-Century Iran. Washington, DC: Routledge, 2009.
———. “Review: Qarn-e Gom Shodeh: Eqtesad va Jamèeh-Ye Iran Dar Qarn-e Nuzdahom.” Iranian Studies 45, no. 4 (July 1, 2012): 575–77.
———. Textile Imports into Qajar Iran: Russia versus Great Britain: The Battle for Market Domination. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2009.
———. The Persian Textile Industry in Historical Perspective, 1500-1925. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999.
Flynn, D. O., and A Giraldez. “Path Dependence, Time Lags, and the Birth of Globalization: A Critique of O’Rourke and Williamson.” European Review of Economic History 8 (2004): 81– 108.
Foran, John. Fragile Resistance: Social Transformation in Iran from 1500 to the Revolution. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993.
———. “The Concept of Dependent Development as a Key to the Political Economy of Qajar Iran (1800-1925).” Iranian Studies 22, no. 2/3 (1989): 5–56.
Ganichev, Boris. “Integrating Imperial Space: The Russian Empire’s Customs System in the Post- Reform Period.” Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, 2017.
46
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
Gerritsen, Anne. “From Long-Distance Trade to the Global Lives of Things: Writing the History of Early Modern Trade and Material Culture.” Journal of Early Modern History 20, no. 6 (2016): 526–44.
Gilbar, Gad G. “Resistance to Economic Penetration: The Karguzar and Foreign Firms in Qajar Iran.” International Journal of Middle East Studies2 43 (11AD): 5–23.
———. “The Opening of Qajar Iran: Some Economic and Social Aspects.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 49, no. 1 (1986): 76–89.
———. “The Persian Economy in the Mid-19th Century.” Die Welt Des Islams 19, no. 1 (1979): 177– 211.
Gledhill, Kevin. “Caspian Connections: International Trade, Local Autonomy, and Imperial Expansion in the Southern Caspian, 1732 – 1828.” New Haven, Connecticut, 2015.
Goldberg, Jessica L. “Choosing and Enforcing Business Relationships in the Eleventh-Century Mediterranean: Reassessing the ‘Maghribī Traders.’” Past & Present 216, no. 1 (2012): 3–40.
Gregory, Paul R. “The Russian Balance of Payments, the Gold Standard, and Monetary Policy: A Historical Example of Foreign Capital Movements.” The Journal of Economic History 39, no. 2 (1979): 379–400.
Hakimian, Hassan. “ECONOMY Viii. IN THE QAJAR PERIOD.” Encyclopaedia Iranica. Encyclopaedia Iranica, 2011.
Hanedar, Avni Önder. “Effects of Wars and Boycotts on International Trade: Evidence from the Late Ottoman Empire.” The International Trade Journal 30, no. 1 (January 1, 2016): 59–79.
Hurewitz, JC. “Treaties of Peace and Commerce (Turkmanchay): Persia and Russia.” In The Middle East and North Africa in World Politics: A Documentary Record I: European Expansion, 1535- 1914, edited by JC Hurewitz, 2nd rev. e. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975.
Islamoglu, Huri. “Economic History in Middle Eurasia.” In Routledge Handbook of Global Economic History, edited by Francesco Boldizzoni and Pat Hudson. Oxon: Routledge, 2016.
Issawi, Charles. An Economic History of the Middle East and North Africa. 2006 Repri. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 1982.
———. “European Economic Penetration, 1872–1921.” In The Cambridge History of Iran, edited by 47
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
C Melville, G R G Hambly, and P Avery, 7:590–607. The Cambridge History of Iran. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
———. “Iranian Trade, 1800-1914.” Iranian Studies 16, no. 3 (1983): 229–41.
———. The Economic History of Iran, 1800-1914. London: University of Chicago Press, 1971.
———. The Middle East Economy: Decline and Recovery. Princeton: Markus Wiener, 1995.
Kahan, Arcadius. Russian Economic History: The Nineteenth Century. Edited by Roger Weiss. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
Kazemzadeh, Firuz. Russia and Britain in Persia: Imperial Ambitions in Qajar Iran. I.B. Tauris, 2013.
Keddie, Nikki R. Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006.
Kirchner, Walther. “Review: Russo-Persian Commercial Relations, 1828-1914.” The Journal of Economic History 26, no. 2 (1966): 248–49.
Kuran, Timur. “Synergies between Middle Eastern Economic History and the Analytic Social Sciences.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 44, no. 3 (12AD): 542–45.
———. The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011.
Lambton, Ann KS. Landlord and Peasant in Persia: A Study of Land Tenure and Land Revenue Administration. London: IB Tauris, 1991.
Lemire, Beverly, and Giorgio Riello. “East and West: Textiles and Fashion in Eurasia in the Early Modern Period.” Working Papers of the Global Economic History Network (GEHN). London, 2006.
Lieven, Anatol. “The (Not So) Great Game.” The National Interest, no. 58 (1999): 69–80.
Lydon, Ghislaine. “A Paper Economy of Faith without Faith in Paper: A Reflection on Islamic Institutional History.” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 71, no. 3 (2009): 647– 59.
Malek, MH. “Capitalism in Nineteenth-Century Iran.” Middle Eastern Studies 27, no. 1 (1991): 67–
48
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
78.
Martin, Vanessa. Anglo-Iranian Relations since 1800. Routledge, 2005.
Martin, Vanessa, and Morteza Nouraei. “Foreign Land Holdings in Iran 1828 to 1911.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 21, no. 2 (2011): 131–45. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1356186311000010.
———. “The Role of the ‘Karguzar’ in the Foreign Relations of State and Society of Iran from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to 1921. Part 1: Diplomatic Relations.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 15, no. 3 (2005): 261–77.
———. “The Role of the Karguzar in the Foreign Relations of State and Society of Iran from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to 1921 Part III: The Karguzar and Disputes over Foreign Trade.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 16, no. 2 (2006): 151–63.
Matthee, Rudi. “Review: Iranian-Russian Encounters: Empires and Revolutions since 1800 by Stephanie Cronin.” Middle East Journal 67, no. 4 (2013): 645–46.
———. “Review: The Political Economy of Iran under the Qajars: Society, Politics, Economics and Foreign Relations 1796–1926.” Middle East Journal 67, no. 2 (2013): 333–35.
Matthee, Rudi, and Elena Andreeva. Russians in Iran: Diplomacy and Power in the Qajar Era and Beyond. London: IB Tauris, 2018.
Matthee, Rudi, Willem Floor, and Patrick Clawson. The Monetary History of Iran: From the Safavids to the Qajars. London: IB Tauris, 2013.
Matthee, Rudolph P. The Politics of Trade in Safavid Iran: Silk for Silver, 1600-1730. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (CUP), 1999.
McDaniel, Robert A. “Economic Change and Economic Resiliency in 19th Century Persia.” Iranian Studies 4, no. 1 (1971): 36–49.
Mottahedeh, Roy Parviz. “Iran’s Foreign Devils.” Foreign Policy 38 (1980): 19–34.
Nashat, Guity. “From Bazaar to Market: Foreign Trade and Economic Development in Nineteenth Century Iran.” Iranian Studies 14, no. 1/2 (1981): 53–85.
Navai, Hossein. Les Relations Économiques Irano-Russes. Paris: Domat-Montchrestien, 1935.
Nouraei, Morteza, and Vanessa Martin. “The Role of the ‘Karguzar’ in the Foreign Relations of
49
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
State and Society of Iran from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to 1921: Part II: The ‘Karguzar’ and Security, the Trade Routes of Iran and Foreign Subjects 1900-1921.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 16, no. 1 (2006): 29–41.
Nowshirvani, Vahid F. “The Beginnings of Commercial Agriculture in Iran.” Center Discussion Paper. New Haven, CT, 1975.
O’Brien, Patrick Karl. “Colonies in a Globalizing Economy: 1815-1948.” Working Papers of the Global Economic History Network (GEHN). London, 2004.
O’Rourke, Kevin H, and Jeffrey G Williamson. “When Did Globalisation Begin?” European Review of Economic History 6, no. 1 (April 1, 2002): 23–50.
Ó Gráda, Cormac. “Famines and Markets.” Working Paper Series. Dublin, 2007.
Okazaki, Shoko. “The Great Persian Famine of 1870–71.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 49, no. 1 (1986): 183–92. https://doi.org/DOI: 10.1017/S0041977X00042609.
Osterhammel, Jurgen. The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.
Pamuk, Şevket. “Estimating Economic Growth in the Middle East since 1820.” The Journal of Economic History2 66, no. 3 (2006): 809–28.
———. “Waves of Globalization and the Economic Historian.” Plenary Address. Boston, MA, 2018.
Persson, Karl Gunnar. An Economic History of Europe: Knowledge, Institutions and Growth, 600 to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Pesaran, Evaleila. Iran’s Struggle for Economic Independence: Reform and Counter-Reform in the Post-Revolutionary Era. New York: Routledge, 2011.
Petrov, A. M. “Foreign Trade of Russia and Britain with Asia in the Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries.” Modern Asian Studies 21, no. 4 (1987): 625–37.
Prakash, Om. “Indian Textiles in the Indian Ocean Trade In the Early Modern Period.” Working Papers of the Global Economic History Network (GEHN). London, n.d.
Prousis, Theophilus C. “Risky Business: Russian Trade in the Ottoman Empire in the Early Nineteenth Century.” Mediterranean Historical Review 20, no. 2 (2005): 201–26.
50
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
Rezun, Miron. The Soviet Union and Iran : Soviet Policy in Iran from the Beginnings of the Pahlavi Dynasty until the Soviet Invasion of 1941. Alphen aan den Rijn : Genève: Alphen aan den Rijn : Sijthoff and Noordhoff International Publishers, BV , 1981.
Ricks, Thomas M. “Towards a Social and Economic History of Eighteenth-Century Iran.” Iranian Studies 6, no. 2/3 (1973): 110–26.
Rubin, Jared. “Bills of Exchange, Interest Bans, and Impersonal Exchange in Islam and Christianity.” Explorations in Economic History 47, no. 2 (2010): 213–27.
———. Rulers, Religion, & Riches: Why the West Got Rich and the Middle East Did Not. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Saleh, Mohamed. “A ‘New’ Economic History of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region.” Economics of Transition 25, no. 2 (2017): 149–163.
Scott, James. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. London: Yale University Press, 1998.
Seyf, Ahmad. “Commericialization of Agriculture: Production and Trade of Opium in Persia, 1850– 1906.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 16, no. 2 (1984): 233–50.
Stebbins, H Lyman. British Imperialism in Qajar Iran: Consuls, Agents and Influence in the Middle East. London: I.B. Tauris, 2017.
Volkov, Denis V. “Fearing the Ghosts of State Officialdom Past? Russia’s Archives as a Tool for Constructing Historical Memories of Its Persia Policy Practices.” Middle Eastern Studies 51, no. 6 (2015): 901–21.
Vries, Jan De. “The Limits of Globalization in the Early Modern World.” The Economic History Review 63, no. 3 (2010): 710–33.
Williamson, Jeffrey G. Globalization and the Poor Periphery Before 1950. Ohlin Lect. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2006.
Willis, H Parker. “Monetary Reform in Russia.” Journal of Political Economy 5, no. 3 (1897): 277– 315.
Yahaya, Nurfadzilah. “Review: Textile Imports into Qajar Iran: Russia versus Great Britain, The Battle for Market Domination by Willem Floor.” Edited by Willem Floor. International 51
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
Journal of Middle East Studies 42, no. 4 (n.d.): 701–2.
Кулагина, Л. М. [Kulagina LM]. РОССИЯ И ИРАН (XIX - Начало XX Века) [Russia and Iran (XIX - the Beginning of the XX Century)]. Moscow: Ключ-С [Kluch-S], 2010.
Шкунов, Владимир Николаевич [Vladimir Shkunov]. “РОССИЙСКО-ИРАНСКАЯ ТОРГОВЛЯ В 40-Е ГГ. XIX В. [Russian-Iranian Trade in the 40s of the XIX Century].” Volga Affiliate of Institute of Russian History of RAS, Samara 33 (2011): 94.
دهقان نژاد. [Morteza Dehghan-nejad] مرتضی Mehdi Ahmadi-Ekhtiyar], and] مهدی، احمدی اختیار Analysis of the Iran-Russia Customs] “تحلیلی بر قرارداد گمرکی ایران و روسیه در دوره قاجار .(.n.d) تاریخ در آیینه پژوهش Agreement in the Qajar Period].” 21
”.[?Years Ago What Commodities Did Iran Export 100] ایران ۱۰۰ سال پیش چه کاالهایی صادر میکرد؟“ Khabar Online. August 4, 2018.
The] تحوالت تاریخی گمرک ایران و رونق اقتصادی در دورۀ قاجاریه“ .[Saeidinia, Habibollah] حبیب هللا، سعیدینیا Evolution of Iran’s Customs in Relation to Its Economic Development in the Qajar Era].” Iran History 63, no. 5 (2010): 103–27.
The Lost Century: Iran’s] قرن گم شده: اقتصاد و جامعۀ ایران در قرن نوزدهم .[Ahmad Seyf] احمد، سیف .Nashr-e Ney], 2008] نشر نی :Economics and Society in the Nineteenth Century]. Tehran
Primary Sources
Blau, Ernst Otto. Kommerzielle Zustände Persiens. Berlin: Verlag der Königlichen Geheimen Ober- Hofbuchdrückerei, 1858.
De Rochechouart, JM. Souvenir d’un Voyage En Perse. Edited by Challamel Ainé. Paris: Librairie commissionaire pour La Marine, les colonies et l’Orient, 1867.
Russian Customs Returns, in Marvin L. Entner’s Russo-Persian Commercial Relations, 1828-1914. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1965.
Kemball, Arnold, and Arthur Malet. “Letter No.187 of 1853 from Captain Arnold Kemball, Resident in the Persian Gulf, to Arthur Malet, Chief Secretary of the Government of Bombay, British Library: India Office Records and Private Papers, IOR/R/15/1/137, Ff 30-33.” British Library: India Office Records and Private Papers; Qatar Digital Library, 1953.
52
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
———. “Vol 184 1853/54 Commerce; Accounts and General.” London: British Library: India Office Records and Private Papers, IOR/R/15/1/137; Qatar Digital Library, n.d.
Kuropatkin, Aleksei Nikolaevich. Всеподданнейший Отчет Генерал-Лейтенанта Куропаткина о Поездке в Тегеран в 1895 Году [Vsepoddanneishii Otchet Gen.-Leit. Kuropatkina o Poezdke v Tegeran v 1895 Godu]. Moscow, 1895.
O’Brien, H. de Lacy. Banking in Persia. London: John King and Company, 1873.
Qajar, Mohammad Shah. “Firman with Seal of Mohammad Shah Qajar, ‘Vol 54 Letters Inward’ [80r] (159/170); IOR/R/15/1/46.” London: British Library: India Office Records and Private Papers; Qatar Digital Library, 1838.
“Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv (RGIA) [Russian State Historical Archive].” St Petersburg: Federal’noe arkhivnoe agentstvo Rossii (Rosarkhiv) [Federal Archival Agency of Russia].
Shavrov, Nikolai N. O Razvitii Nashei Torgovli s Persiei. Tbilisi: Tip. Kants. Glavnonach. grazhd. ch. na Kavkaze, 1891.
Sheil, Justin (British Envoy at Tehran). “Letter from Justin Sheil, British Envoy to Tehran, to Captain Arnold Kemball, Resident in the Persian Gulf [30r] (1/4); , IOR/R/15/1/134 Ff 30-31.” London: British Library: India Office Records and Private Papers; Qatar Digital Library, 1852.
Sheil, Justin, and Samuel Hennell. “Letter from Justin Sheil, British Envoy at Tehran, to Major Samuel Hennell, Political Resident in the Persian Gulf (Government of India).” London: British Library: India Office Records and Private Papers; Qatar Digital Library, 1846.
“The Russians at the Gates of Herat.” Science 5, no. 117 (1885): 368–69.
Берже, А.П. “Акты, Собранные Кавказской Археографической Комиссией [Acts Collected by the Caucasus Archeographic Commission].” Тифлис [Tbilisi], 1904.
Зейдлиц, Ст. Н. [Zeidlits, NK]. Очерк Южно-Каспийских Портов и Торговли [Ocherk Iuzhno- Kaspiiskikh Portov i Torgovli]. FB O 20/28. Тифлис [Tbilisi]: тип. Гл. упр. наместника Кавк., 1870.
Тер-Гукасов, Г. [G Ter-Gukasov]. Экономические Интересы России в Персии [Politicheskie i Ekonomicheskie Interesy Rossi v Persii]. Petrograd: Типография редакции периодических 53
Tariffs, Treaties, Trade Jenkins, WB
изданий Министерства Финансов [Printing House, Periodicals of the Ministry of Finance], 1916.
Ganj-e] گنج شایگان: یا اوضاع اقتصادی ایران .[Jamalzadeh Seyed Mohammad Ali] سید محمد علی، جمالزاده .Kaviani], 1917] کاویانی :Shayegan: Or The Economic Conditions of Iran]. Berlin
افکار سیاسی و اجتماعی و اقتصادی .Homa Nateq], eds] هما، ناطق Fereidoun Adamiyat], and] فریدون، آدمیت Political, Social, and Economic Thought in the Unpublished] در آثار منتشر نشدۀ دوران قاجار .Agah Publications], 1977] انتشارات آگاه :Records of the Qajar Era]. Tehran
نشر سخن :Capitulation and Iran]. Tehran] کاپیتوالسیون و ایران .[Mohammad Mossadegh] محمد، مصدق [Sokhan Publishers], 1917.
54