Iran in World History

tanzimat
. He noticed particularly that the Sultan’s ability to push 
through administrative and military changes had been made possible 
by reducing the political power of the Ottoman clergy.
Amir Kabir sought to improve the fortunes of the Ghajar state 
by exercising greater control over expenditures and more efficient 
tax collection from the provinces. In the field of agriculture he intro-
duced cash crops such as cotton and sugarcane, and in medicine he 
launched a vaccination campaign against smallpox that saved many 
Iranian lives. He founded Iran’s first modern institution of higher 
learning, the Dar ol-fonun (Institute of Technology), which would 
later evolve into Tehran University. The newspaper he established, 
Vaghiye-ye-ettefaghiyeh
(Current Events), provided a window onto 
global affairs—at least for the small proportion of Iranians who 
could read.
Amir Kabir’s aim to re-situate Iran within a rapidly changing 
world was reflected in his foreign policy as well. He was perhaps the 
first political leader in modern history to advocate a “non-aligned” 
approach, taking a firm stand against both British and Russian colo-
nial maneuverings. At the same time, he cultivated relations with Iran’s 
religious minority communities (except the Babis, who were considered 
to be merely Shi‘ite heretics), recognizing the interest that European 
states had in their welfare. Not surprisingly given his growing power, 
British and Russian agents conspired with members of the royal family 
to have Amir Kabir removed from the scene. After just three years in 
office, he was assassinated while taking a bath in Kashan’s Fin garden 
in January 1852.

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I r a n i n Wo r l d H i s t o r y
88
Ghajar Iran was at the western edge of the buffer zone between 
the ever-expanding British and Russian empires in Asia and was con-
sidered too important for either power to allow the other to dominate. 
To the east it was a different story, with the Russians and the British 
both actively seeking to incorporate the lands of Central Asia into their 
respective empires. The Russians followed the eastward trajectory they 
had maintained since the sixteenth century, while the British attempted 
to penetrate from the opposite direction through Afghanistan.
The British military advance was thwarted on two occasions by 
the indomitable Pushtuns, a pair of disastrous adventures known as 
the First and Second Anglo-Afghan Wars which occurred in 1839–42 
and 1878–81, respectively. Concurrent with the first engagement, 
two British agents, Colonel Charles Stoddart and Captain Arthur 
Conolly, were arrested in Bukhara. They were imprisoned under mis-
erable conditions for three years before being executed as spies. As the 
Bukharan ruler, Abd us-Samad Khan, later explained to the English 
missionary Joseph Wolff, he had disliked the pride displayed by his 
English captives. The emir had reproached Conolly, saying, “You 
Englishmen come into a country in a stealthy manner, and take it.” 
To this accusation, the latter unrepentingly replied, “We do not come 
in a stealthy manner; but we went openly and in daylight to Kabul, 
and took it.”
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The Russians were more successful, seizing the Central Asian cities 
of Tashkent in 1865 and Samarkand in 1868, then forcing a severely 
truncated Emirate of Bukhara to accept the status of Russian pro-
tectorate five years later. Beginning in 1867, the Central Asian lands 
directly annexed by Russia were administrated by the Turkestan 
Governate, which included most of present-day Kazakhstan as well 
as the Samarkand and Fergana Valley regions. The Russian conquests 
opened up Central Asia to colonization by large waves of Russian set-
tlers, a process that continued into the twentieth century.
In Iran meanwhile, with Amir Kabir no longer on the scene, the 
young Naser od-din took an increasingly authoritarian approach to 
government. His attempt to recapture Herat in 1856 was halted by the 
British, forcing him to acknowledge their power in the region as well 
as the unalterable reality of the Afghan buffer state in lands that had 
historically belonged to Iran.
Naser od-din’s failed Afghan campaign was also a disturbing sign 
of the Ghajar government’s own fundamental weakness and inefficacy. 
They controlled the capital, Tehran, but for practical purposes most of 
the rest of the country was under the sway of corrupt local officials and 

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Un d e r Eu r o p e’s S h a d o w
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restive tribesmen who did whatever they liked. Often as not, what they 
liked was raiding caravans, robbing travelers, and turning cropland 
into pasture, none of which was good for the national economy. As 
one visitor said of the Bakhtiari tribal region near Shiraz: “the women 
weave carpets, bags, and saddle-cloths, tend the flocks, and prepare 
the food of the men; the latter do little but plunder, except when the 
neighboring Persian princes require their services as soldiers.”
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In the 
northeastern part of the country, Turkmen bandits frequently captured 
villagers and carted them off to Central Asia to sell as slaves. In the 
absence of government protection, many of Iran’s farmers abandoned 
agriculture and joined up with the nomads.
Apart from widespread lawlessness, Iran in the nineteenth cen-
tury suffered from several serious epidemics of plague and cholera, 
followed by a severe famine in 1871 that caused well over a million 
deaths from starvation. Virtually the only medical facilities in the 
country were clinics run by European missionaries, who founded 
a number of modern schools as well. The missionary presence pro-
vided distinct advantages for Iran’s religious minorities, who were less 
reluctant than Muslims to make use of their services.
Awakened to the dominant role now played in global affairs by the 
European powers (and perhaps wishing to escape from his responsi-
bilities at home), Naser od-din Shah made three state visits to Europe, 
in 1873, 1878, and 1889. These trips were really grand, hugely expen-
sive personal tours, which exhausted the Iranian state treasury. The 
American writer Mark Twain, reporting on the Shah’s visit to London 
for the