Iran

Religion, Politics and Society: Collected Essays

Nikki R. Keddie

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136280412
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Histoire
• Categoría: Histoire du Moyen-Orient

First Published in 1983. This book brings together the best of Professor Keddie's articles on Iran both published and newly written and spans almost two decades. Long before the current religious-political alliance in Iran startled the world and toppled the Shah, Prof.Keddie undertook a series of studies that reveal the social, economic, doctrinal and political roots of what she was the first to call the 'Religious-Radical' alliance in Iran.

Section II

Socio-Economie Change

5

The Economic History of Iran, 1800–1914, and its Political Impact

The economic history of Iran is a subject that has barely begun to receive the attention it deserves. Articles and parts of books on particular aspects of the subject appeared as early as the nineteenth century, but it is only since World War II that there have been extensive and serious studies in English, and these are still few and far between. Prof. Lambton’s book Landlord and Peasant in Persia deserves to be singled out as a major pioneering study, and recently there has appeared Professor Charles Issawi’s edited volume, The Economic History of Iran 1800–1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971). This book brings together an outstanding collection of articles, excerpts, and sources, many of them translated from Persian, French, German, Russian, and Italian, that provide a basis for an understanding of the economic history of Iran in the nineteenth century. This essay will attempt a brief outline of the economic history of Iran from 1800 to 1914, using both Prof. Issawi’s book and other sources, and adding some conclusions about political interaction with economic developments. Although for many countries such an essay would be superfluous, the economic history of Iran is so underdeveloped a subject that no such generalizing essay or book yet exists in the English language. (Figures not footnoted below are from Issawi’s book.)

The first and perhaps most important impression that arises from an overview of the 1800–1914 period is the relative economic stagnation and very slow development of Iran in the period under discussion, particularly as contrasted with the Middle Eastern countries that border on the Mediterranean. The latter countries were in close contact with Europe by ship and were opened up rapidly to a development that benefited primarily Western European nations, but also transformed the local society. The relatively rapid growth in the cultivation of cash crops, and of means of transport to handle them, and of large landownership to exploit them were Mediterranean features only palely reflected in Iran. By 1914 Egypt had some 250,000 European residents, while Iran had only some hundreds. At the same date Iran had less than 12 miles of railroads, no modern port, a few hundred miles of roads of any description, and a foreign investment below 30 million pounds including the national debt. Economic modernization, which in Egypt and Turkey got a serious start (however lopsided in favor of Europeans and religious minorities) in the nineteenth century, in Iran awaited the advent of Reza Shah in the 1920s.

Several reasons may be cited for this relative stagnation. Among those noted by Issawi are Iran’s distance from Western Europe – over 11,000 miles until the Suez Canal was opened, and still great after that event; the lesser authority of the government than in Turkey and Egypt, especially over nomadic tribes; the weakness of the military, the archaic administrative and fiscal systems; the stultifying effect of the Anglo-Russian rivalry, with each country determined to thwart the schemes of the other; and the lack of large non-Muslim minorities with contact with Western ways. Here I will elaborate on a few factors which seem particularly crucial. One is the geography of Iran – not only its distance from Western Europe, but equally its rugged mountainous terrain and vast distances between population centers and its lack of navigable rivers except for the Karun in the South. This made Iran a less favorable territory for international trade than the countries of the Mediterranean, greatly increasing the price of transport and restricting the development of a national market. Second, there was the difficulty of setting up a strong central government of the type that encouraged economic change in Egypt and Turkey. In part this was a direct result of the geographic factors mentioned above, and in part an indirect result of these factors – the prevalence of nomadic tribes whom Issawi estimates at one-half of the total population of Iran in the early nineteenth century, removed large areas from direct government control. These tribes conducted their own economic affairs, getting whatever they lacked from nearby villages and towns, and they were politically almost independent. The shahs had a theoretical right to name their chiefs, but these were always named from the ruling tribal family. The shahs also relied on the nomadic tribes for their cavalry, and were prudent enough not to try to intefere with the internal workings of the tribes except in cases of open rebellion. Local governors were also virtually independent of the central government as long as they sent in their revenues, made the required annual presents, and did not rebel. The religious classes, or ulama, also retained considerable independence, based on their steady income from the Muslim community, their ownership of considerable land and property, their control of education and religious courts, and the respect in which they were held by the population. The Qajar dynasty, which ruled from 1796 to 1925, lacked any conspicuous centralizing ruler, and the few attempts at centralizing reforms met with opposition from the ulama and other vested interests and were generally soon abandoned or allowed to become dead letters. The old ruling classes – landlords, tribal khans, bureaucrats, and ulama – had a vested interest in keeping the central government from becoming too powerful and in maintaining the economic status quo, while the center had less foreign and internal impetus, and fewer talented individuals to push centralizing reforms than in Turkey or Egypt. Despite these unfavorable factors, there was some increase in the power of the bureaucracy and of the central government in the course of the nineteenth century, with the latter half of that century seeing fewer feudal and tribal revolts than had the first half. This increase in power was not accompanied by any real diminution in the power of the tribes or of the ulama, however, as was clearly to be shown when both groups demonstrated their strength in the course of the constitutional revolution of 1905–1911. Nor was the increase accompanied by any meaningful efforts by the center at economic development.

Issawi’s mention of Anglo-Russian rivalry should be elaborated. In several instances each country did all it could to keep the other from getting economic concessions and from exploiting those it did get. The most obvious examples of this are Russian opposition to the notorious Reuter concession of 1872 which gave Baron Julius de Reuter, a British subject, exclusive rights to exploit nearly all the economic resources of Iran. The concession was cancelled due to Russian and Iranian opposition, but the British then used Reuter’s unfulfilled claims to block Russian railway concessions. The Russian government then, having decided it did not want railways in Iran, signed a secret agreement with Iran which in effect blocked the construction of railways there for ten years, and this agreement was later renewed. Russia also helped foment Iranian mass opposition to a British tobacco concession granted in 1890.¹ In some of these instances the activities of the two powers coincided with Iranian anti-imperialism, but they also blocked some economic enterprises that could have led to a more rapid modernization of Iran, however exploitative they would probably have been. England and Russia both also often worked to block concessions by third powers. Finally, the enforced low tariffs and other privileges to foreigners combined with a social and economic system that stifled and penalized new forms of enterprise to help prevent rapid development from taking place.

Despite this relative stagnation there was, Issawi calculates, a twelvefold rise in the value of Iranian foreign trade in the period 1800–1914, an approximate doubling of Iran's population from about five million to ten million (both the trade and population rises are again much below Egypt and Turkey) and some important changes in the economic system. A study of the economic history of this period is therefore not devoid of interest both for its revelation of how one particular traditional economic system worked and how these workings were slowly changed under the Western impact.

Iran in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had reached relative heights of centralization and prosperity under the Safavid dynasty which ruled from 1501 to 1722. In this period agents from the chief Western Euopean mercantile countries opened trade relations with Iran, importing primarily silk and luxury items. The power of a central government has always been precarious in Iran, however, primarily for the geographic reasons mentioned above which encourage relative independence by tribal leaders and other local, vested interests. The Safavid central power rapidly declined in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, leaving the country easy prey to Afghan tribal invaders who devastated the capital of Isfahan in 1722. This invasion was followed by a period of struggles and civil wars, based primarily on tribal forces, which ruined the formerly flourishing economic life of the country and brought great suffering to the population. The externally glittering conquests of Nadir Shah, including his plunder of Mogul India, brought not riches but further exactions for the population, and his death left the country once more in anarchy, from which it was temporarily rescued by the short-lived but beloved Zand dynasty ruling from the southern city of Shiraz. The Zands were among the few rulers who tried to improve trade and the economic functioning of their territory. The Zands were overcome by another tribal dynasty, the Qajars, whose first ruler Agha Muhammad conquered Iran in battles between 1779 and his assassination in 1797. The Qajars were widely hated from the first and they had no ruler of outstanding ability. Nevertheless, their rescue of Iran from serious civil wars for over a century and the provision of relative internal peace and stability brought some recovery of the economy from the devastation of the eighteenth century and reduced the tribal raiding and brigandage that had added to that devastation.

The gradual change in world trade routes since the sixteenth century made Iran something of an international backwater by the eighteenth century. Nonetheless, with the Napoleonic wars Great Power interest in Iran revived quickly, and along with political interest there soon went concern with reviving trade.

Sir John Malcolm, sent by the East India Company on political missions to Iran in the early nineteenth century, has left the best account of the economic and social system of Iran in that period. Here his account of the tax system will be summarized. According to some sources Agha Muhammad Shah’s successor, Fath Ali Shah (1791–1834), doubled the land tax from 10 per cent to 20 per cent of the produce, but Malcolm states that the actual tax varied from 5 per cent to 20 per cent depending on the water supply. He says that crown lands were rented by the peasantry for roughly half their produce. He notes a great increase in crown lands due both to the confiscation of vaqfs (inalienable religious lands) by Nadir Shah and to the disappearance of landowners in the civil wars preceding the rise of the Qajars. Malcolm states that the fixed revenues, mentioned above, were fair and moderate, but that people were continually exposed to irregular and oppressive taxes. Among these were usual and extraordinary presents which all high officials were forced to make on the Persian new year. In addition a present was always made on appointment to office, so that the office might be said to be bought. Most oppressive of all was the public requisition:

If an addition is made to the army; if the king desires to construct an aqueduct, or build a palace; if troops are marching through the country, and require to be furnished with provisions; if a foreign mission arrives in Persia; if one of the royal family is married; or, in short, on any occurrence not ordinary, an impost is laid, sometimes upon the whole kingdom, and at other only on particular provinces.²

Malcolm estimated that the ordinary and extraordinary revenues amounted to about £3 million each, and that the extraordinary revenue in particular fell oppressively on the population. He noted that it was the custom to pay the principal officials, the royal household, and religious and other pensioners by assignments on the public revenue. He states that due to the public requisition peasants often had to sell their crops at a very low price while they were still in the ground. The shah hoarded a considerable portion of the national revenue.

The picture presented by Malcolm is supplemented by later sources, but it is striking how little conditions of taxation changed in the course of the nineteenth century. All sources agree that nearly all taxation fell directly or ultimately on the peasantry, with a smaller amount paid by the tribes and by the town artisans. Bureaucrats, landlords, the upper ulama, and merchants were largely exempt. The land tax was estimated by Curzon to amount to about 25 per cent of the produce on an average near the end of the century, a significant rise since Malcolm's time.³ Villages, tribes, and city guilds were assessed as units, and it was the business of their officials to subdivide the assessment. In villages taxes, and especially the extraordinary taxes, often had to be collected by force, but they could almost never be avoided. Internal and foreign customs duties were further sources of revenues, and these were farmed out. The Treaty of Turkomanchai which ended a war with Russia in 1828 limited tariffs on Russian goods to 5 per cent ad valorem, and the same tariff was extended to other countries in later trade treaties. Foreigners were also exempted from the internal customs that Iranian merchants continued to have to pay. The government did not receive the full 5 per cent, as they farmed out the customs, and customs farmers often vied with one another to lower customs in their area even below this level so as to attract more trade to their own ports. Toward the late nineteenth century it was estimated that the government received no more than 2–3 per cent.⁴

Not only were irregular taxes standard and inequitably divided by officials, but even the regular revenue was based largely on increasingly obsolete assessments, so that it hit some districts much harder than others. There was no scientific reorganization of the revenue during the period under discussion, despite some abortive efforts by the reforming crown prince Abbas Mirza in Azerbaijan early in the century; by the equally reforming prime minister Amir Kabir in the mid-nineteenth century; and by Nasir al-Din Shah (1848–1896) later in the century.

As the century went on there appears to have been some change from the rather fixed presents from government officials noted by Malcolm to a situation which was almost an annual auction of office. The effect on the local peasant population can be imagined, as office was sought almost exclusively for the revenue it brought, and with the uncertain duration of office it was an almost universal practice to extort as much as possible as quickly as possible. Landlords often subfarmed their own lands – i.e., paid a fixed sum for taxes rather than subject their lands to the exactions of government agents. One source estimates that tax collectors took about three times as much as ultimately reached the government.⁵

As the shahs’ and courtiers’ tastes for foreign trips and luxuries increased in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries so did exactions on the peasants. Although Issawi believes it impossible to judge whether peasant conditions deteriorated in the course of the nineteenth century, travellers’ and observers’ reports suggest that they did – both Malcolm and James Fraser state that the peasants were rarely severely impoverished, whereas late nineteenth and early twentieth century reports often speak of them as such. This was partly due to landlord exactions, which increased with the rise of cash crops and of investment in land, but it was also due to extortionate taxes.

Despite the oppressiveness of the taxation system, the revenues that actually reached the central government were not large. Nasir al-Din Shah at first appointed a reforming prime minister, Amir Kabir, who tried to eliminate the prevalent corruption and excesses in tax collection and introduce a regular system, which would have both benefited the peasantry and increased the revenues of the central government. This and other reform measures so antagonized the vested interests of the ruling classes at cou...