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Iranian trade, 1800–1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Charles Issawi
Charles Issawi*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

In the course of the 19th century Iran was drawn into the network of the international economy mainly through foreign trade. Immigration into Iran was negligible, unlike some other countries of the Middle East and North Africa and, until the very end of the period, foreign investment was very small.

This survey of foreign trade emphasizes mainly the first half of the period and attempts to answer five broad questions:

  1. (1) What was the growth in value and quantum of trade?

  2. (2) What was the composition of imports and exports?

  3. (3) With which countries did Iran trade?

  4. (4) What were the channels through which trade flowed?

  5. (5) Who carried on the trade?

I have converted all figures into pounds sterling, since the pound was both the stablest currency and the one most widely used in international trade.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 3-4: Studies on the Economic and Social History of Iran in the Nineteenth Century , Summer-Autumn 1983, pp. 229 - 241
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1983

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Footnotes

*

For further details and the text of some of the documents cited in this paper, see my Economic History of Iran, 1800-1914 (Chicago University Press, 1971).

References

Notes

1. Malcolm, John, Melville Papers (London: Royal Central Asian Society, 1930), p. 28.Google Scholar

2. Cited by A. K. S. Lambton, “Persian Trade Under the Early Qajars,” Islam and the Trade of Asia, ed. by D. S. Richards (in press).

3. Report on Trade of Persia, Public Record Office, Foreign Office, FO 78/241.

4. Blau, Otto, Commerzielle Zustände Persiens (Berlin, 1858), pp. 164–168.Google Scholar

5. Stolze, F. and Andreas, F. C., Die Handelsverhältnisse Persiens (Göttingen, 1885), p. 45.Google Scholar

6. “Report on Persia,” British Parliamentary Accounts and Papers, 1867-68, XIX.

7. Curzon, George N., Persia and the Persian Question (London, 1892), Vol. II, pp. 562–563.Google Scholar

8. “Persia,” Accounts and Papers, 1914-1916, LXXIV.

9. Imlah, Albert H., Economic Elements in the Pax Britannica (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), pp. 94–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. See Issawi, Charles, “Middle East Economic Development, 1815-1914: The General and the Specific,” in Cook, M. A. (ed.), Studies in the Economic History of the Middle East (London, 1970), pp. 401–403.Google Scholar

11. Ibid., pp. 31-36.

12. Texts in Hurewitz, J. C., Diplomacy in the Near and Middle East (Princeton, N.J., 1956), Vol. I, pp. 68–70Google Scholar, 84-86, 96-102, 123.

13. See, for example, despatch by K. E. Abbott, 30 September 1844, FO 60/117, Report on Trade of Tehran, FO 60/141 and Trade Report, F0 60/165. See also Jughrāfīya-yi Isfahān (Tehran, 1342), pp. 93–104.Google Scholar

14. See France, Affaires Etrangeres, Correspondance Commerciale, Tauris, Vol. 2, Report for 1877, 15 September 1879.

15. See Stannus to Willock, 3 June 1824, FO 60/24 and “Report by Mr. Baring on Trade and Cultivation of Opium,” Accounts and Papers, 1881, LXXIX.

16. Cited by Blau, loc. cit.

17. Entner, Marvin, Russo-Persian Commercial Relations (Gainesville, Fla., 1965)Google Scholar, passim.

18. See Muḥammad ˓Ali Jamālzādah, Ganj-i Shāygān (Berlin, 1335 A.H.), p. 11.Google Scholar

19. See Issawi, Charles, “The Tabriz-Trabzon Trade, 1830-1900,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1 (January 1970).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20. Stevens to Sheil, 26 February 1851, FO 60/166.

21. Berezin, L., Puteshestvie po severnoi Persii (Kazan, 1852), pp. 58–66.Google Scholar

22. Gödel, Rudolf, Ueber den pontischen Handelsweg (Vienna, 1849), pp. 43–51.Google Scholar

23. Bonham to Sheil, 28 June and 29 July 1844, FO 60/107, Abbott to Aberdeen, 31 March 1845, FO 60/117.

24. Bonham to Bidwell, 13 March 1841 and 28 August 1841, FO 60/82.

25. Wilhelm Litten, Persien (Berlin, 1920), pp. 108-109, 185-186.

26. For details see Issawi, Charles, ed., Economic History of the Middle East (Chicago, 1966).Google Scholar

27. League of Nations, Statistical Yearbook (Geneva, 1928)Google Scholar