“A neglected area of study.” “Woefully underdeveloped.” An “under-studied field.” “Severely limited” in terms of the subjects and themes historians have covered. Such is the state of scholarship on eighteenth-century Iran, according to a few contributors to this volume. What accounts for this situation? Part of the explanation is related to sources: for years, it was assumed that the turmoil and upheavals of Iran’s eighteenth century had either destroyed the sources needed to study the period or had resulted in few sources being produced. But another likely explanation is the effect that early European-language scholarship on the eighteenth century had in shaping the views of subsequent generations of scholars. In an influential article, Ann Lambton wrote of the “tribal resurgence and the decline of the bureaucracy in eighteenth-century” Iran. She described the era as one of “political contraction” and “economic decline,” and a period in which “[o]rderly administration ceased. Insecurity became the order of the day.” Another historian described the eighteenth century as “a horrible period in Iranian history— horrible to read about, horrible to disentangle, horrible to have tried to live in—I say tried because, at least if one was prominent, one probably stood a better chance then than in any other period of being tortured, blinded, castrated, massacred or just simply put to death.”Footnote 1 It is easy to see why scholars would be discouraged from studying the period. Although we should not dismiss the difficulties associated with studying Iran’s eighteenth century, or disregard the political, social, and economic troubles of the period, it seems fair to say that the field is overdue for new interpretations.
By bringing together in one volume many of the leading scholars of eighteenth-century history, Michael Axworthy’s Crisis, Collapse, Militarism and Civil War has made a significant contribution to the study of the period. The volume is comprised of a preface and twelve essays written by eleven scholars scattered across three continents, and grew out of a conference Axworthy organized at the University of Exeter in March 2013. The topics covered in the essays range from economic history to the history of art, from religious history to military history, and from intellectual history to diplomatic history. Although the essays in the volume have not been categorized into different sections, the logic in the structure of the book seems to have been to begin with essays addressing broad questions of periodization and historiography before moving to essays tackling more specific research questions.
One of the strengths of this book is that the contributors challenge some of the conventional wisdom regarding Iran’s eighteenth century. To give but a few examples: Gene Garthwaite asks whether the eighteenth century should be studied as a discrete unit of time, or whether it makes more sense to view the period and its developments as part of longer-term trends that began with the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century. Rudi Matthee questions the dominant modes of writing about the eighteenth century— as an account of great men, as a tribal interregnum between Safavid and Qajar rule, or in dynastic terms—before offering three alternative frameworks. Willem Floor critically assesses Ann Lambton’s concept of a “tribal resurgence” to determine whether it is at all meaningful for describing post-Safavid Iran. Axworthy himself has an essay in the volume which explores whether Nader Shah should be considered an innovative leader who initiated reforms comparable to the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century “military revolution” in Europe.
Several of the other essays shed light on particular historical questions related to the eighteenth century. Ernest Tucker discusses the letters exchanged between Ahmad Shah Dorrani and the Ottoman Sultan Musfata III in 1761, within the broader context of developments in Ottoman‒Iranian relations. Sajjad Rizvi demonstrates that the generally accepted claim that philosophy experienced a “death” after the collapse of the Safavid Empire does not stand against the evidence of the texts, networks, and patrons of numerous eighteenth-century intellectual figures. Essays by Andrew Newman and Willem Floor focus on the manuscript production of key Shiʿi texts and the economic conditions of eighteenth-century Iran, respectively. Giorgio Rota draws attention to a corpus of European-language narrative sources held in Austrian archives, further chipping away at the belief in a dearth of relevant sources concerning eighteenth-century Iranian history. Sussan Babaie discusses the architectural and artistic details in Nader Shah’s Kalat, and provides support for the arguments that the arts were not neglected during Nader’s reign, that his conquest of Delhi influenced the development of “hybridized” elements in that art and architecture, and that Nader envisioned himself as a latter-day Timur.
Nevertheless, in advancing our understanding of key aspects of Iran’s eighteenth century, the volume reminds us of how much work remains to be done. There are many topics that are either unaddressed in the book or are only briefly discussed. For instance, there is no essay on the Zand period. Nor is there any discussion of the 1780s and 1790s and the rise of the Qajar dynasty. Babaie’s essay explores the influence of Nader Shah’s Indian campaign on later imperial imagery in Iran, but there is plenty of room for studies on other aspects of connections between Iran and South Asia during the eighteenth century (there has been more scholarship on relations and connections with the Ottoman Empire and Europe, yet even here there is space for more work). In the realm of political history, we still do not have studies that move beyond the framework of dynastic history or of great men (as Matthee points out). These are but a few topics and approaches that are left unexplored; there are undoubtedly others. The point in highlighting these gaps is not to criticize this book— one volume of essays can only do so much— but rather to reinforce the claims made at the outset of this review that eighteenth-century Iranian history is an “understudied field.”
Axworthy was among a handful of scholars who, over the past couple of decades, helped rejuvenate interest in Iran’s eighteenth century. His premature passing in March 2019, shortly after the publication of this volume, dealt a blow to the field of Iranian history. Nevertheless, as he himself put it in his introduction: “History is, or should be, a dynamic and continuing activity.” One can hope that new generations of historians will heed his call, build on his legacy, and continue to expand our understanding of Iranian history in unexpected and interesting ways.
