The historiography of nineteenth-century Iranian foreign relations has long been dominated by the geopolitical polarity of the “Great Game.” This analytical framework tends to reduce Qajar statecraft to a mere reactive mechanism, caught between British and Russian imperial ambitions. In Qajars and Catholics: Tehran, the Vatican and the Lazarist Mission in Iran, Daniel T. Potts challenges this narrow perspective. By examining the diplomatic and institutional relationships among the Qajar court, the Holy See, and the Lazarist missionaries, he recovers the agency and pragmatism of Qajar state-building.Footnote 1 Potts’s archival research decenters the traditional Anglo–Russian narrative and provides a grounded reading of how religious missions operated within the social and political realities of nineteenth-century Iran. In doing so, the book avoids the ideological reductionism and anachronistic binaries that frequently limit the study of foreign encounters during this period.
Methodologically, Potts departs from conventional narratives that treat religious missions as passive instruments of Western cultural imperialism. Instead, he demonstrates how the Vincentian (Lazarist) presence acted as a diplomatic conduit, linking French geopolitical ambitions, Vatican ecclesiastical authority, and Qajar sovereign interests. As Potts notes in his introduction, while previous scholarship has surveyed Catholic proselytization, the reality that
Catholic missionizing on the part of Parisian Lazarists became entwined with French diplomacy in the early and mid-19th century, and that this had a direct bearing on the course of Qajar diplomacy in Europe, particularly as it pertained to France, Italy and the Vatican, has not been fully appreciated (p. IX–XII).
Drawing on a wide range of neglected archival sources—including royal firmans, bilateral correspondence with the Holy See, and the mutual exchange of pontifical and state orders—the book reveals a sophisticated political pragmatism at the Qajar court. Potts corrects a longstanding historiographical oversight regarding the papacy’s status in Qajar strategic thought. He demonstrates that “the Qajar Shahs held the Popes in high esteem” as “earthly spiritual representatives of God who wielded enormous influence over hundreds of millions of followers… and, as such, were every bit as worthy of respect as any monarch, if not more so” (p. IX–XII). Ultimately, this contextual approach restores depth to Qajar statecraft, highlighting the institutional coherence that shaped their foreign relations.
Structurally, the monograph is organized into nine chronological chapters tracing the trajectory of Qajar–Catholic relations. Following an examination of early modern “Precursors” (Chapter 1) and foundational diplomatic maneuvers during “The Reign of Fath “Ali Shah” (Chapter 2), the narrative turns to “Eugène Boré and the Origins of the Lazarist Mission” (Chapter 3) and the subsequent “Anti-Lazarist Controversy” (Chapter 4). The core of the study, which maps the consolidation of these ties, spans “Naser al-Din Shah’s Early Reign, 1848–1856” (Chapter 5), “The Expansion of Persian Diplomacy in Europe” (Chapter 6), and the period “From the World Exposition of 1873 to Naser al-Din Shah’s Death” (Chapter 7). The volume ends with “The Last Shahs of the Qajar Dynasty” (Chapter 8) and a historiographical reflection, “A Catholic Qajar History” (Chapter 9). Chapters 3, 5, 6, and 7 best demonstrate Potts’s archival rigor. Drawing on a vast and diverse array of primary documents, he constructs a strictly empirical narrative. In these sections, Potts reconstructs the exact mechanisms through which bilateral diplomatic and ecclesiastical relations were forged. By extracting granular detail from previously untapped first-hand sources, he offers clear insight into the pragmatism of Qajar statecraft, successfully avoiding the anachronistic judgments common to later historiography. Furthermore, through his reliance on first-hand memoirs and primary accounts, Potts clarifies the interactions among Lazarist missionaries, local authorities, and the Qajar court. By examining the writings of Lazarists stationed in Iran, he demonstrates how the personal dispositions of various governors of Azerbaijan toward missionary activities dictated regional policy. In the process, Potts extracts indirect data regarding the social history and everyday life of Iranian Armenians. By utilizing the memoirs of Lazarist authors who interacted directly with the Armenian community—particularly in Chapters 5, 6, and 7—the book provides a valuable repository of indirect sources for researchers in this field. Additionally, Potts’s focus on the Nazar-Aqa family yields prosopographical data offering a level of granular detail that exceeds even specialized Persian historiography on Qajar notables.Footnote 2
Despite the book’s overall value, a few conceptual and philological oversights require attention. For example, in Chapter 6 (p. 212, footnote 241), Potts writes: “Raʾīs, ‘chief.’ Not to be confused with Rayas or ryots in Turkey and Persia, i.e. subjects in the sense of ‘serf/sharecropper.’” Equating these subjects with serfs represents a methodological misstep. Iran’s sociopolitical vocabulary—including context-specific terms such as ra“iyat, raʾis, khān, kadkhodā, beyg, and tushmāl—carries distinct sociological meanings that resist direct translation into European feudal categories. While this conflation echoes errors common in Soviet-era historiography, it ultimately obscures Iran’s actual social structures.Footnote 3 As Homa Katouzian argued, imposing European socioeconomic paradigms such as feudalism onto Iranian history misrepresents the country’s realities.Footnote 4 Recognizing these theoretical boundaries remains essential for scholars of Iranian social history. Methodologically, the volume exhibits a minor prosopographical imbalance. While Potts meticulously introduces non-Iranian officials, he does not extend this same biographical rigor to prominent Iranian figures, such as Mīrzā Sa“īd Khān Muʾtamin al-Mulk Anṣārī and Farrukh Khān Amīn al-Dawlah. Expanding on their backgrounds in the footnotes would have better situated these actors within the Qajar court and clarified their political maneuvers. Furthermore, the text contains a few genealogical inaccuracies regarding the Qajar princes. For instance, relying on Coste, Potts identifies Prince Mohammad Rahim Mirza as Mohammad Shah Qajar’s third brother; however, established family lineages confirm Prince Mohammad Rahim Mirza was the nineteenth son of Crown Prince Abbas Mirza.Footnote 5 A further limitation of the monograph lies in its thematic scope. While Potts effectively maps the diplomatic landscape, he pays less attention to the daily realities of the Lazarist missionaries. He tracks diplomatic developments through the writings of figures such as Cluzel, but the narrative rarely addresses the broader social implications of these encounters. This omission likely stems from a scarcity of relevant primary sources and the author’s strict adherence to diplomatic, rather than social, history. Nevertheless, even within these methodological constraints, the study could have done more to explore how macro-level policies shaped the socioeconomic life of Iran’s Catholic community—a level of thematic depth Potts successfully achieves in his opening chapter on the fate of the Sceriman (Sheriman) family.
Ultimately, Potts’s monograph moves beyond the conventional limits of diplomatic history. By centering local agency and context, his approach aligns with the methodological turns evident in works by Abbas Amanat, James L. Hevia, Selim Deringil, and C. A. Bayly.Footnote 6 Applying this framework more broadly to Qajar international relations would clarify the geopolitical and cultural dynamics of eighteenth-and nineteenth-century Iran. Grounded in historical evidence rather than anachronistic assumptions, this methodology encourages a critical reassessment of the Qajar period, offering a clearer lens through which to view Iran’s broader historical trajectory. Although Potts’s rigorous archival research significantly advances the field and provides a valuable historical narrative, his monograph should not be viewed as the final word on Qajar–Catholic relations. Instead, he establishes a strong historiographical foundation that draws attention to a complex and understudied subject. This book provides a clear framework for future scholarship. Researchers can now build on these details by examining and cross-referencing diverse primary sources in Persian, English, French, Italian, and Latin. Continued work in this area will both clarify the nuances of these bilateral ties and deepen our understanding of Qajar Iran’s diplomatic strategies and foreign policy.
