I

The similarities between Curzon and Browne are obvious. Born three years apart, Curzon in 1859 and Browne in 1862, they died within months of one another, in March 1925 and January 1926 respectively. Both were sons of large families, Curzon the eldest of eleven and Browne of nine. Both descended from families based far from England's south-eastern metropolitan core – the Curzons from the east midlands and the Brownes from the north-east. Despite possessing very different social pedigrees, Curzon coming from one of England's oldest aristocratic families and Browne from a moneyed middle-class home of Britain's industrial revolution, both were educated at Berkshire preparatory schools before proceeding to Eton.Footnote ² Yet, although both attended England's foremost public school in its Victorian ‘heyday’ – their tenures overlapping in 1877 – their experiences contrasted sharply. While Curzon embraced the school's ethos and was distinguished for his scholarship, Browne felt marginalized and miserable.Footnote ³

Other influences, however, connected the aristocratic and the bourgeois student. At Eton, both were introduced to the Orient, to become in time utterly captivated.Footnote ⁴ A chance guest lecture at Eton in 1877 by the jurist and imperialist writer James Fitzjames Stephen (1829–94) sparked Curzon's lifelong fascination. Having recently returned from the Indian subcontinent, Stephen enthralled his audience with tales of Britain's Asian empire, an entity he described as ‘more populous, more amazing, and more beneficent than that of Rome’.Footnote ⁵ Curzon thereafter became a strong proponent of Stephen's ‘high-minded, visionary form of colonial domination’.Footnote ⁶ While it is unknown whether Browne attended this speech, a much larger event drew his mind's eye to Asia. As he explained, ‘the Turkish war with Russia in 1877–8 … first attracted my attention to the East, about which, till that time, I had known and cared nothing’.Footnote ⁷ For the future professor, Turkey's efforts to defend itself against the Russian leviathan exerted a powerful claim on his sympathy. ‘Ere the close of the war,’ he asserted, ‘I would have died to save Turkey, and I mourned the fall of Plevna as though it had been a disaster inflicted on my own country.’ The sixteen-year-old Browne's compassion ran so deep that he aspired to enter the British army, obtain the rank of captain, and only then resign his commission to join the ranks of the Ottoman forces.Footnote ⁸ While the close of the Russo-Turkish War in 1878 put paid to Browne's immediate military ambitions, his enthralment with the Orient – more specifically Turkey's neighbour, Persia – only continued to grow.

From Eton, the two young men eventually followed the well-worn path of Britain's privileged few to Oxbridge. Nevertheless, while Curzon and Browne both gained places in Britain's ancient universities, their choice of degrees was much coloured by their class. Curzon, like so many other young ambitious aristocrats of his day, opted to pursue classics at Balliol College, Oxford, then very much a ‘school for statesmen’ under the forceful mastership of Benjamin Jowett (1817–93).Footnote ⁹ Born and raised at Kedleston Hall, with its neoclassical statuary and abundant evocations of Rome, Curzon was confident that the best education for his class was grounded in the works of thinkers like Cicero and Tacitus, not least because of the plentiful opportunities to compare the Pax Romana and the British imperium.Footnote ¹⁰ Browne's more modest station compelled him, at least initially, to pursue a more pragmatic course. After rejecting his father's path as an engineer, he opted for medicine, gaining entry to the natural sciences tripos at Pembroke College, Cambridge, in 1879, the year after Curzon went up to Oxford. Nevertheless, while Browne felt compelled to pursue formal training for a profession, he refused to sacrifice what had become his most ardent passion, the study of oriental languages. During his first degree, he added both Arabic and Persian to his already strong grasp of Turkish. Curzon made other choices. Intent on ‘laying the foundations and preparing for the superstructure of his career’, he served as both president of the Union and secretary of the Canning Club, becoming widely regarded as Oxford's most promising young tory.Footnote ¹¹

Although both men completed their degrees in 1882, neither was ready to leave university life. Curzon was determined to prove himself to Oxford's classics dons whom he believed had robbed him of a first in greats which was to have complemented the one he had achieved in moderations in 1880. He was successful: between 1882 and 1884 he won two highly sought-after essay prizes in addition to a prestigious fellowship to All Souls College, Oxford. Browne possessed more modest goals. After obtaining his bachelor of medicine and spending the summer of 1882 in Constantinople (a reward from his father for completing his first degree), he decided to postpone further medical training in favour of staying on at Pembroke in order to try for the Indian languages tripos in 1884.Footnote ¹² During these two subsequent years Browne enhanced his knowledge of West Asia – becoming particularly fascinated by classical Persian poetry and Sufism – and made regular forays to London to meet with Iranian expatriates.

In 1884, the two men's lives began to diverge significantly. Curzon was increasingly devoted to his nascent political career and the country-house social commitments of the ‘Souls’ and the ‘Crabbet Club’.Footnote ¹³ Although he undertook short personal trips around the Mediterranean, a pivotal event was his election as a member of parliament for Southport in 1886. Browne's days and nights during the same years were more onerous and considerably more circumscribed. After leaving Pembroke, he spent long hours at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London. During his three-year training, he was rarely able to steal away to discuss Sufi poets with his Persian friends or peruse the oriental manuscripts of the British Museum.Footnote ¹⁴ Although he found a certain fulfilment, Browne longed for a career which would allow him to utilize his language skills. He was much disappointed when hopes for employment with the consular service was summarily dismissed with the response that diplomats in West Asia needed German, Spanish, Italian, and Greek more than Persian, Turkish, or Arabic.Footnote ¹⁵

In 1887, the lives of the two Oxbridge graduates once more, however, began to converge. Just after he qualified to practise medicine, Browne heard that he had been elected a fellow of Pembroke College. While others might have been forced to decline a relatively poorly remunerated academic post in favour of more gainful medical employment, Browne was heir to his father's sizeable shipping fortune.Footnote ¹⁶ He took up the fellowship, discovered encouragement to perfect his knowledge of Persian, and soon prepared to visit Iran. At much the same time, Curzon departed on his first round-the-world journey. It was during the course of this trip that the new MP developed the firm conviction that Asia represented the foremost battleground of the future for both armies and diplomatists. Upon his return to London in 1888, he drew up a ‘scheme of Asiatic travel’ to those countries where ‘the future of the British Empire would be decided’.Footnote ¹⁷ Acquiring expert local knowledge of Asia's various geopolitical ‘questions’, Curzon believed, would offer the surest means of establishing himself as the supreme authority in parliament on the most pressing matters of imperial foreign policy.

II

Although the Persia of the 1880s was considerably reduced from that of a century earlier, having been dispossessed by Russia of vast territories in the Caucasus and Central Asia, it remained a large country. Its 628,000 square miles were greater than Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland combined. It was not its territorial extent, however, but its geopolitical situation – placed as it was between the expansionist Russian empire and an increasingly defensive British Raj – which made it critical. Lord Salisbury succinctly articulated the British position with his observation that, ‘Were it not for our possession of India, we should trouble ourselves but little over Persia.’Footnote ¹⁸ If Iran's population, estimated at between ten and twelve million at the turn of the century, was relatively small this can largely be attributed to the fact that much of the country lacked sufficient rainfall for permanent agriculture. Most Persians resided in small villages, urban dwellers representing fewer than 15 per cent of inhabitants. More than 25 per cent lived as nomads, belonging to one of the more than dozen major tribal entities.Footnote ¹⁹ Tribal leaders often possessed considerable authority, mainly owing to their command of some of the country's best-trained troops at a time when the Qajar state lacked an effective army. While the chiefs of large tribal confederacies like the Bakhtiari or Qashqai occasionally played significant national roles, three groups – the landed aristocracy, the ulama (clerical class), and the bazaaris (merchant class) – were far more influential. These notables comprised the ‘governing elite of Iran’ and possessed ‘profound roots in society, and with each other, in kinship associations as well as commercial and social relations’.Footnote ²⁰ At the apex of the Qajar state was the shah, a member of the Turkic dynasty which had ruled Persia since the close of the eighteenth century. While his powers were in theory absolute, in practice they were considerably circumscribed. Lacking both a standing army and a centralized state bureaucracy, his authority beyond Tehran was highly dependent upon regional notables. That the Qajar dynasty survived as long as it did is testament to successive shahs' abilities systematically to manipulate social divisions so as to bolster their own declining power.Footnote ²¹ Many Persian monarchs and their courtiers adopted a similar approach to foreign policy. Playing the interests of one imperial titan off against the other, they aimed to exploit the Anglo-Russian rivalry to ensure at least the continued existence of the dynasty, if not the country's sovereignty. Even when successful, however, such policies amounted to little more than delay tactics and they diverted crucial state energy and resources away from overdue reforms. As the nineteenth century drew to a close, Britain's repeated efforts to transform Persia into an effective bulwark to Russian expansion had yielded few results and the country's future as an independent nation seemed doubtful. Unable to assuage the geopolitical pressure brought to bear along Persia's northern frontier, British policymakers finally hoped to rehabilitate the kingdom of the shah by means of sterling diplomacy. Despite their enthusiastic support for a variety of commercial and financial ventures, such as the establishment of the Imperial Bank of Persia, Westminster's patriotic appeals to invest in Persia, for the most part, fell upon deaf ears. Ultimately, the City deemed Iran a country of high risks and low returns and showed great reluctance to invest in it without formal guarantees.Footnote ²² Increasingly bankrupt due to diminished tax revenues and rampant inflation, the Qajars resorted to selling off their patrimony to concessionaires and, ultimately, to securing onerous foreign loans.Footnote ²³

It was this enfeebled Persian kingdom into which Browne entered, for the first and only time, in October 1887. During the next twelve months he visited various Persian cities and towns, most prominently, Tabriz, Tehran, Esfahan, Shiraz, Yazd, and Kerman. Unlike so many previous and subsequent Western travellers, Browne avoided other Europeans, conversing with a diverse array of the country's inhabitants. Journeying for the most part by caravan and spending nights with ordinary Iranians, he met ‘every grade of Persian society’.Footnote ²⁴ Unencumbered by an interpreter, Browne enthusiastically engaged in lengthy tête-à-têtes with, inter alia, Zoroastrian merchants, Qajar aristocrats, opium-addled dervishes, and Babi heretics.Footnote ²⁵ The newly-appointed Pembroke don enhanced his Persian and gained unparalleled insights into the life, politics, and culture of late nineteenth-century Iran. The journey proved a formative moment. According to A. J. Arberry, ‘In Persia Browne realized himself fully for the first time; the year of seeing and talking lasted him throughout all the remaining years of his life; the fire which Persia kindled in his heart would prove inextinguishable.’Footnote ²⁶ In effect then, as C. A. Bayly observed, ‘Iran represented an exotic, living Eastern Greece and Browne quickly identified himself as its Byron.’Footnote ²⁷ Over the years, this perspective grew more sophisticated, as Browne became more knowledgeable about the geopolitical importance of the region for British policymakers, but ultimately it retained its essential empathy and regard for the Persian people. They were never merely the pawns of imperial power struggles as seen so often by Curzon.Footnote ²⁸

While Curzon's first voyage in his scheme of Asiatic travel did not bring him to Iran, the country nonetheless caught his attention in the autumn of 1888 during the course of a trip to Russian Central Asia. The main purpose of Curzon's journey to the tsar's newly conquered territories was to view the freshly completed Transcaspian railway and assess the threat it posed to British India. The line, which stretched some 900 miles from the Caspian all the way to Samarkand, vastly improved Russia's strategic position. Curzon believed the railroad both threatened India and represented ‘a sword of Damocles perpetually suspended above [the shah of Persia's] head’. Recognition of Persia's vulnerability prompted a visit in 1889–90.Footnote ²⁹

Curzon journeyed more than three months and 2,000 miles through Persia by horseback, visiting prominent cities, inter alia, Mashhad, Tehran, Esfahan, Shiraz, Bushehr, and Mohammareh (present-day Khorramshahr). He travelled largely by ‘riding chapar’, or by government post horse. Although considerably faster than Browne's choice of a caravan, this method of transport, which carried the lone traveller like ‘a piece of animate baggage’ from one post-house or chapar-khaneh to another, isolated Curzon from local people and cultures.Footnote ³⁰ His status as a ‘man apart’ was reinforced by his ignorance of Persian. Beyond haggling with stall owners in the bazaars and social niceties with officials, he depended on interpreters and attendants. In a revealing exchange in 1893, the future viceroy explained how he gauged popular sentiment in Eastern countries.

Although his investigations appear rather elementary – as well as illustrate precisely the mindset rightly condemned by Edward Said – Curzon nonetheless managed to gather an extraordinary amount of information. Much of his success can be attributed to his status as an MP and personal friend of the prime minister, Lord Salisbury. Indeed, his political office and privileged social position gave him substantial currency with knowledgeable ‘men on the spot’, most prominently members of Her Majesty's diplomatic and consular services.Footnote ³²

Curzon's trip produced articles for The Times and one magisterial study, Persia and the Persian question (1892). While he would publish other monographs, this volume, in conjunction with the earlier Russia in Central Asia and the Anglo-Russian question (1889), firmly established his credentials with policymakers and the press. While the geopolitical arguments dealing with the Anglo-Russian rivalry in Persia and the Persian question clearly extended those found in Russia in Central Asia, the former possessed far loftier, indeed, scholarly aspirations. Much of the impetus for Persia in fact stemmed from Curzon's concern about the limited sources on that nation.Footnote ³³ Thus, the publication was intended both to secure him expert status within the foreign policy establishment and to provide an enduring intellectual legacy.Footnote ³⁴

Even today the study represents no small achievement.Footnote ³⁵ Curzon read virtually every work published on Persia in a European language.Footnote ³⁶ He also engaged in a vast correspondence with Persian specialists.Footnote ³⁷ Despite the author's desire to rectify the ‘inadequate … existing sources of knowledge about Persia’, the primary objective remained staunchly political.Footnote ³⁸ He was particularly concerned to demonstrate to English readers ‘their stake in that country … and why it is so impossible to treat either the ruler or his people with polite indifference’.Footnote ³⁹ Nevertheless, while Curzon's interest in the land of Iran was intrinsically linked to high strategy, this should not be exaggerated. Much more held his interest. As Harold Nicolson (1886–1968), Curzon's later Foreign Office assistant, remembered, his superior remained ‘for ever haunted by those plains of amber, those peaks of amethyst, the dignity of that crumbled magnificence, that silence of two thousand years’.Footnote ⁴⁰ Indeed, one of the great themes of Curzon's work was the decline and decay of Iranian civil society, an argument popular with authors writing on Persia since the publication of Sir John Malcolm's influential History in 1815.Footnote ⁴¹

With Persia and the Persian question's publication in 1892, Curzon was hailed as one of Britain's leading Persian experts as well as one of the foremost strategic analysts of the Anglo-Russian rivalry. While accolades from prominent newspapers and specialist journals pleased him, he cherished approval from acknowledged experts like E. G. Browne. The latter wrote to Curzon in June 1892. After identifying himself as a former classmate at Eton, Browne asserted that Persia would ‘long remain one of the chief books of reference to which anyone desiring a knowledge of Persia will turn for information’. Informing Curzon that he had read it with care, detecting only ‘2 or 3 trifling misprints’, the Pembroke fellow added,

This glowing appraisal was not entirely unself-interested. While Browne may have respected the industry and breadth of the work, he also had cause to sing its praises. In addition to offering congratulations, the main purpose of his first letter requested support for a recent Pembroke graduate. This man, a candidate for the Indian Civil Service, wished to travel to Persia to improve his knowledge of its language and people. The second Browne letter suggests that Curzon did indeed attempt to offer assistance. Thus, from its very outset, the relationship between the two men drew on both the scholar's clear effort to connect with a rising star in the foreign policy establishment and the aristocrat's desire for academic validation. Although the dynamic would evolve somewhat in subsequent years, at root it remained substantially instrumental.

While reading Curzon, Browne was also in the midst of beginning to transform the journals he had penned during his 1887 trip into publishable form. In 1893, he published his major contribution to late Victorian travel literature, A year amongst the Persians. A unique travelogue providing a wealth of insights into late nineteenth-century Iran, its 650 pages were strikingly different in both content and style from Curzon's offering. Most prominently, Browne eschewed a ‘systematic treatise’ on Persia, opting instead for a narrative on the ‘observations, impressions, and experiences’ reached over twelve months. The Cambridge academic explained that ‘the recent publication of the Hon. G. N. Curzon's encyclopaedic work on Persia will for some time to come prevent any similar attempt on the part of anyone else who is not either remarkably rash or exceedingly well-informed’.Footnote ⁴³

Browne's volume focused primarily on the domestic lives of Iranians. Having met Persians of varying walks of life, he offered much more than a mere account of journeys through historic cities. He opened a window on day-to-day existence and even attempted to illuminate popular thought. Thus, in addition to recounting, for instance, the significance of wine-drinking to the Zoroastrians of Yazd, he strove to highlight what he deemed the ‘most striking feature of the Persians as a nation … their passion for metaphysical speculation’.Footnote ⁴⁴ Indeed, Browne devoted an entire chapter to ‘Mysticism, metaphysic, and magic’. As John Gurney observed, the Pembroke don's mind was most drawn to ‘the exploration of religious and philosophical speculation and experience, especially the mystic, the unusual, the unorthodox’.Footnote ⁴⁵

Nevertheless, A year amongst the Persians was much more than the chronicle of one man's journey to Iran and his various observations on the internal lives of its inhabitants. Browne, who was from the mid-1900s to the First World War one of his nation's foremost foreign policy dissenters, also addressed domestic politics and the Anglo-Russian rivalry.Footnote ⁴⁶ Significant passages were dedicated to such topics as the flaws of the country's Qajar shahs. Asserting that ‘people who reason about them in Europe too often suppose that the interests of the shah and of his subjects are identical, when they are in fact generally diametrically opposed’, Browne seized opportunities for harsh criticism of Persia's reigning dynasty.Footnote ⁴⁷ Arguably the most prominent theme, however, was his deep-seated faith in the inherent vitality and genius of the Persian people.Footnote ⁴⁸ In stark contrast to Curzon's depiction in Persia and the Persian question, which sometimes reads like an elegy for the demise of a once proud but now effete race, Browne emphasized that, at the grassroots level at least, the Persian nation was not only vital but capable of renewal.

While this major difference of opinion as to the fitness of the Iranian people would continue to divide the two former Etonians in subsequent years, it should be emphasized that their contrasting appraisals were both a product of the same sociobiological thinking common in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The application of evolutionary theories to international relations during this era was perhaps best articulated by the Victorian prime minister and mentor to Curzon, Lord Salisbury, in a famous 1898 speech in which he divided countries into living and dying nations, asserting that the decline and fall of the latter was the direct result of their own moral corruption.Footnote ⁴⁹ But, while imperialists like Curzon employed such reasoning to predict the eventual extinction of races like the Persians, radicals like Browne countered that some non-Western nations, most prominently the Aryan peoples of Iran, possessed inherent racial energies which would serve as the instrument of their revival. Thus, as C. A. Bayly trenchantly remarked, ‘the discourse of race could be as subversive as it was supportive of the imperial order’.Footnote ⁵⁰

Although A year amongst the Persians garnered little immediate general interest, it received reviews.Footnote ⁵¹ The most notable appeared by Curzon in the Pall Mall Gazette in February 1894.Footnote ⁵² Opening with the statement that ‘Mr. Browne's book on Persia is quite unlike any other that has been written’, he was highly positive. Asserting that ‘as a guide to the mysteries of the native character … [Browne's] book sheds a more penetrating light upon the Persian people than any that has appeared since [the oriental novel] “Hajji Baba”’, Curzon pronounced the monograph ‘one of the best books on Persia in the English language’. Arguably the most striking observation, however, was that ‘in his enthusiasm for his subject, while never losing his critical balance, [Browne] becomes almost a Persian himself’. Such a pronouncement reveals as much about the aristocrat as it does about his subject. Indeed, a similar statement could never have been applied to the author of Persia and the Persian question. Curzon thus appreciated his contemporary's special talent for empathetic description.

Curzon's sole criticisms – other than length, the same criticism levelled at his own Persian study – identified ‘trivial errors’. He pointed to Browne's mis-attribution of figures in a bas-relief (thus confirming his own superior knowledge) and use of inconsistent spellings for Persian words. Only the latter criticism drew a response from Browne. Making a point of thanking Curzon for his ‘most kindly and sympathetic spirit’, Browne's reply in the Pall Mall Gazette concentrated on justifying his selected Persian spellings.Footnote ⁵³ While willing to acknowledge Curzon's command of Iranian history and archaeology, he drew the line when it came to his vastly superior knowledge of the Persian language.

Both Persia and the Persian question and A year amongst the Persians contain numerous examples of contrasting perceptions of the Persian character. A further stark illustration of this difference appears in Curzon's and Browne's respective introductions to two 1895 editions of James Morier's The adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan (1828).Footnote ⁵⁴ One of the most popular satirical novels in nineteenth-century Britain, Hajji Baba is the fictional autobiography of its eponymous narrator, a barber's son from Esfahan who, in the early 1800s, experiences extreme vicissitudes of fortune. Penned by a former British diplomat who resided for nearly six years at the court of Fath Ali Shah Qajar (1797–1834) early in the nineteenth century, Hajji Baba sketched people and events encountered by Morier. It is now widely considered an orientalist novel par excellence.

Although both Curzon and Browne acknowledged the novel as a personal favourite, they interpreted it very differently. For Curzon, ‘Hajji Baba is a Persian of the Persians, typical not merely of the life and surroundings, but of the character and instincts and manner of thought of his countrymen.’ The Southport MP, by now under-secretary of state at the Foreign Office, considered Morier's portrait not merely an exaggerated satiric caricature but as fact. In one particularly revealing passage he went so far as to declare,

A close reading of Persia and the Persian question makes abundantly clear that its elucidation of the Persian national character was lifted almost directly from the pages of Hajji Baba. Indeed, Curzon ascribed to the inhabitants of Iran precisely the traits of Morier's protagonist. In addition to being ‘consummate hypocrites, very corrupt, and lamentably deficient in stability or courage’, they possessed ‘above all no national spirit or patriotism’.Footnote ⁵⁶ Thus, Curzon felt supremely confident as to which of Lord Salisbury's categories – the living or dying nations – the Persians necessarily belonged. ‘In every manifestation of national spirit or activity’, he asserted, ‘they appear to have succumbed to a creeping paralysis which is slowly making its way upward from the extremities to the head.’Footnote ⁵⁷ According to Curzon's reading of Morier's classic novel, then, the Persians were but another doomed race whose only hope lay with their potential regeneration at the hands of a benevolent Western power.

Although Browne accepted Hajji Baba as a powerful portrait, he recognized the novel's inherent limitations. ‘Thoroughly true to nature as Hajji Baba is’, the Cambridge don observed, ‘he is but one type … of his many-sided countrymen.’Footnote ⁵⁸ While Browne appreciated Morier's deft caricatures, he pronounced them unrepresentative of the diverse people encountered in his own travels. As he warned early on in his introduction,

Unfortunately, the future viceroy never learned the lesson offered by Browne. Reliant on interpreters and convinced that only a thin stratum of elites was consequential, Curzon could do no more than celebrate Hajji Baba. This blindness prevented a more nuanced understanding of Iran and allowed Curzon to leave unexamined his conviction that East and West could never be reconciled.Footnote ⁶⁰ Browne, in contrast, was rightly sceptical of such dichotomies.Footnote ⁶¹ Preoccupied with Persia's decay and lost grandeur, Curzon viewed its inhabitants as ‘played out’ and failed to detect the early stirrings of a nascent nationalism. He thus dismissed the grassroots opposition to the Tobacco Régie concession of 1890 – which gave a British company the exclusive right to sell tobacco within Iran and a monopoly over its export – as merely the death throes of Eastern fanaticism, when in actual fact the event represented the birth of modern nationalist sentiment in Iran and the ‘precursor of the Constitutional Revolution [of 1905–9]’.Footnote ⁶²

III

In the years after their introductions to Hajji Baba, the Pembroke fellow and the up-and-coming statesman had little reason to be in touch. An examination of their correspondence suggests contact was only renewed in late 1911. While both men had risen to prominence as Persian experts, they each became wholly absorbed in their own work and neither seems to have possessed any incentive to correspond. Foremost in Curzon's mind during this period, including his 1899–1905 term as viceroy of India, was his ambition to ensure Persia's status as an effective ‘buffer state’ between the Tsarist colossus and the glacis of the Indian empire. As David Dilks has shown in Curzon in India (1969), the viceroy's overall aim was a more activist British policy toward Persia.Footnote ⁶³ His efforts ultimately bore fruit. In 1902 the British foreign secretary, Lord Lansdowne (1845–1927), explicitly warned Russia not to encroach any further on southern Persia. The following year, Lansdowne adopted Curzon's recommendation and proclaimed in no uncertain terms that Britain would resist the establishment of a foreign naval base on the Persian Gulf. Curzon's Persian policy as viceroy, however, can hardly be viewed as wholly successful. During his Persian Gulf tour in the fall of 1903, as a result of a diplomatic controversy known as the ‘Bushehr Incident’, he was prevented from setting foot for a second time on Iranian soil. Although Dilks held the Persians entirely responsible for the affair, such a conclusion fails adequately to acknowledge Curzon's role.Footnote ⁶⁴ Indeed, the viceroy's personal prejudices – notably his deep conviction as to the inherent duplicity and perfidy of the Persian people – played a not insignificant part in contributing to this rupture in Anglo-Iranian relations.Footnote ⁶⁵

In the realm of academe, Browne was busy in the same years. In 1902 he published the first of his four volume, A literary history of Persia. This lifelong project arguably represents his greatest contribution to Iranian studies. In the same year and, coincidentally, at the same age Curzon was elevated to viceroy, Browne was elected Sir Thomas Adams's professor of Arabic at Cambridge. Although his academic interests remained predominantly confined to the mystical and spiritual life of modern Iran, as Persia's fate seemed more and more to hang in the balance, he devoted increasing attention to Iranian current affairs and British foreign policy in the major newspapers and periodicals of the day.

After 1905 Curzon's and Browne's lives resumed a somewhat parallel trajectory. After his resignation as viceroy, the former took on extra-governmental commitments, such as the chancellorship of Oxford University, and spoke occasionally in the House of Lords. One of his speeches there ultimately contributed to renewing contact with Browne who, in 1907, had become firmly aligned with the radical wing of the Liberal party. The relationship very much depended on the situation on the ground in Persia. In 1906 revolution came to Tehran. Although its ‘long-term causes were rooted in the nineteenth century; its short-term ones were triggered in 1904–05 by an economic crisis brought about by government bankruptcy and spiraling inflation’.Footnote ⁶⁶ Angered as much by the soaring cost of bread as by the Qajar dynasty's profligacy and subservience to foreign powers, a diverse coalition of ulama, bazaaris, and Western-influenced intellectuals (some of whom were aristocrats) staged two large-scale protests at Qom and Tehran. The second, and more significant, centred on the British legation, where protesters availed themselves of the Persian custom of bast or sanctuary. Possessing tacit British support, the revolutionaries occupied the chancery compound until finally the ailing sovereign, Mozaffar al Din Shah Qajar (1853–1907), backed down and signed a royal proclamation acceding to the demand for a written constitution drafted by an elected Majles or parliament. The shah, however, died shortly thereafter and was succeeded by his reactionary son, Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar (1872–1924). The latter, determined to retrieve his autocratic powers from the newly-established Majles, obtained Russian support and launched a military coup in June 1908. This in turn triggered a civil war lasting until the following June when royalist forces were finally defeated and the shah was forced to abdicate in favour of his son. Ultimately, the victory of the constitutionalist party was only assured once it received the backing of the Bakhtiaris, whose 12,000 armed tribesmen constituted the largest contingent on the parliamentary side.Footnote ⁶⁷ As Iran was engulfed in revolution, however, pivotal events were taking place outside the country's borders.

On 31 August 1907, representatives of His Majesty's Government and those of the tsar signed the Anglo-Russian Convention in St Petersburg. The agreement – which contained provisions relating to Afghanistan, Tibet, and Persia – in theory guaranteed the integrity of the shah's dominions but in fact it divided Iran into Russian and British spheres of influence. Not surprisingly such a decision – by a Liberal government no less – was anathema to Browne. With high hopes for Persia's democratic nationalists, he was sickened by what he saw as the Machiavellian diplomacy pursued by Sir Edward Grey (1862–1933). And, as it happened, he found an ally in Curzon. Unlike the Cambridge professor, however, the new chancellor of Oxford had no qualms in principle – indeed, his former mentor, Lord Salisbury, had been a strong advocate of reaching a similar accord with Russia a decade earlier. What compelled Curzon to offer the convention its sharpest and most authoritative criticism, on the floor of the House of Lords in January 1908, was his assessment that the British sphere was far too small in comparison with the Russian. That the central and southern cities of Esfahan, Yazd, Shiraz, Kermanshah, Mohammareh, Ahwaz, and Bushehr fell outside the British zone, which was confined to a relatively insignificant corner of the southeast, seemed to him unthinkable.Footnote ⁶⁸

While Curzon railed against the Anglo-Russian treaty in the House of Lords, Browne stepped up efforts to garner support from the wider British public. In a series of articles in the popular press, he denounced Grey's Realpolitik policy as a betrayal of a people beginning the road to constitutional government. While the Foreign Office did its best not to dignify Browne's campaign in public – preferring to rely on the pro-government press, especially The Times, to reject the Cambridge don's pronouncements – he was nevertheless widely considered one of the country's foremost authorities on the situation ‘on the ground’ in Iran.Footnote ⁶⁹ Indeed, that he was cited as an expert opinion in the House of Commons and granted an interview with Grey represented a tacit acknowledgment on the part of the foreign policy establishment of his superior knowledge of Persian affairs.Footnote ⁷⁰

While diplomats such as Sir Arthur Nicolson (1849–1928) could deride him as a ‘fanatic’, Foreign Office staff were all too aware of his privileged access to an unrivalled supply of ‘men on the spot’.Footnote ⁷¹ Browne's extensive network of contacts in Iran, which one historian labelled ‘virtually … his own intelligence service’, was comprised not only of a variety of Persian correspondents but also numerous ex-pupils who had become members of Britain's diplomatic and consular service and further independent sources.Footnote ⁷² While many of his articles in the popular press were devoted to undermining the version of Persian affairs promulgated by the Foreign Office and its acolytes, he also remained determined to improve the general perception of the Persian character, again highlighting Hajji Baba as a caricature not an accurate portrayal. In numerous articles leading up to the publication of his monograph, The Persian revolution (1910), Browne highlighted the ‘deeper springs of self devotion, enthusiasm and courage, which from time to time break forth in deeds of almost incomparable heroism’.Footnote ⁷³ Given his alliance with Curzon in 1911, it is ironic that Browne's criticism of other Persian experts could easily have included the former viceroy. In a 1908 article, for instance, he excoriated those who had ‘seen much of the outside of Asia without having learned in the least degree to understand or sympathise with its people’.Footnote ⁷⁴

By 1911, Browne and Curzon resumed their correspondence. They discussed their November meeting at the inaugural dinner of the Persia Society at London's Savoy Hotel. An ostensibly apolitical organization established to promote sympathy between the British and Iranian people, the Persia Society had been founded the previous spring by Lord Lamington (1860–1940) in conjunction with various members of the Persia Committee. The latter organization, in effect a foreign policy pressure group consisting of both parliamentary and extra-parliamentary members, had been established by Browne and the Liberal MP, H. F. B. Lynch (1862–1913), in late 1908.Footnote ⁷⁵ The November gathering took place when the state of affairs in Persia looked grim indeed. Having been unsuccessful in attempts to reinstall the ex-shah over the summer, the Russians were greatly increasing their pressure on both the Persian Majles and its American financial adviser, William Morgan Shuster (1877–1960), who had been brought in to reform the country's flagging finances.Footnote ⁷⁶ A diverse group sympathetic to Persia, including a large number of radical and labour MPs highly critical of Grey's foreign policy, heard a series of speeches. After addresses from ‘Persia hands’, including Browne, Curzon appeared as the penultimate speaker. His speech proved memorable and moving. Beginning by conceding that his knowledge of Persia could not match that of many in the audience, he remarked,

Making frequent reference to the society's mission of fostering understanding between the British and Iranian nations, the former viceroy quite uncharacteristically remarked, ‘Sympathy means the effort and desire to understand another nation from that nation's point of view, to sympathise with its aspirations and ideals even when the horizon is most covered with clouds.’Footnote ⁷⁸

The central impulse of Curzon's speech, however, must have seemed particularly appropriate in the midst of Russian threats. Persian nationalism needed support.Footnote ⁷⁹ Given his previous pronouncements on the Iranian national character, it is difficult to believe this final statement was made in all sincerity. Indeed, various portions of the speech suggest Curzon may well have been more concerned with winning over the audience than being true to his own convictions. Ultimately, he closed his address with words that, in the minds of observers like Browne, must have echoed down subsequent years.

Whatever Curzon's true sentiments, Browne was stirred.Footnote ⁸¹ Indeed, it took little more than a day or two for the professor to request a transcript of the speech. The former viceroy replied that it had been impromptu, but that if Browne sent a typist round he would gladly dictate it from memory.Footnote ⁸² The Pembroke don appears to have done just that and then rapidly had 700 copies of the address published and distributed. Although Curzon was disappointed at the limited coverage his speech received in the national newspapers, the accounts were substantive enough to reach Iran within a fortnight.Footnote ⁸³ Writing to Browne from Tehran on 6 December 1911, Morgan Shuster, one of the professor's numerous prominent contacts in the capital, declared,

Shortly thereafter Shuster received Browne's transcript of the entire speech and dispatched a further letter to Cambridge remarking how many people in Persia viewed Curzon as one of the few men possessing sufficient influence to be able to aid the country in its time of need.Footnote ⁸⁵ Shuster's claim would seem to be corroborated by the Tehran correspondent for The Morning Post. Describing the collective mood in the capital in mid-December 1911, just after Curzon had delivered a further address on Persia in parliament and immediately prior to the successful Russian-backed coup d'état, the newspaper reporter observed,

Although Browne and Curzon exchanged several letters in the month or so following the Persia Society dinner – the Cambridge professor also sending a copy of his The Persian revolution of 1905–1909 (1910) – their correspondence gradually died away much as it had previously.Footnote ⁸⁷ Ultimately, their relationship was very much tied to the fate of Persia, and the following months and years were not kind to the country. While Curzon denounced the government's Persian policy on further occasions in the Lords, perhaps realizing Grey's intransigence on the issue, his campaign against the Anglo-Russian entente eventually became less of a priority.Footnote ⁸⁸ Moreover, despite Browne's continued efforts to keep the British public aware of Iran's plight, those controlling British foreign policy remained unmoved.Footnote ⁸⁹ Determined to maintain at all costs the delicate balance of power, Grey's response to repeated Russian interventions in the north was to reinforce the British position in the south east, greatly increasing the footprint of its consular presence as well as occupying strategic areas, at critical points, with Indian army cavalrymen. At various occasions before the outbreak of the First World War, tsarist troops occupied portions of the country within their sphere and ultimately contributed to the defeat of Persia's constitutionalist party.Footnote ⁹⁰

IV

For Browne, the outbreak of war in Europe seemed to signal the end of his days as a pundit and polemicist. Withdrawing from public view, he devoted himself primarily to treating the countless war wounded in Cambridge's hospitals.Footnote ⁹¹ Not until the late summer of 1917 did Browne's deep knowledge of Persian affairs bring him once again to the mind of British policymakers. Perhaps because they can hardly have forgotten what a thorn in their side he had represented in the run-up to the Great War, Foreign Office officials rightly recognized his potential utility in the dénouement of the conflict. Stressing the need for him to be ‘as “objective” as possible’ and ‘suppress his indignation+other emotions … [leaving] the facts to speak for themselves’, the historical section within the Foreign Office's intelligence division requested he author a confidential manual on Persia – what would be known as a ‘Peace Handbook’ – for use by British negotiators at the already anticipated post-war peace conference.Footnote ⁹² Although Browne initially seems to have possessed qualms about working for the very arm of the government responsible for the egregious convention of 1907, he ultimately took up the commission after he was reminded that the work represented ‘an opportunity of placing [his] views before the most influential authorities’.Footnote ⁹³ He eventually received official thanks for authoring the manual in the form of a personal letter from Lord Hardinge (1858–1944), a member of the British delegation at the Paris Peace Conference who, somewhat ironically, earlier in his career, had been one of the key architects of the Anglo-Russian entente. The Foreign office, however, eventually decided not to publish Browne's handbook on Persia. Ultimately, The foreign policy establishment considered even his toned-down depiction of British diplomacy in the pre-war years too controversial for official sanction.Footnote ⁹⁴

After returning to government in May 1915, Curzon often brought his Persian expertise into various foreign policy discussions. Selected by David Lloyd George (1863–1945) to join the war cabinet in late 1916, the former proconsul subsequently chaired most meetings of both the Persia Committee and the Eastern Committee.Footnote ⁹⁵ Significantly, at a meeting of the Persia Committee on 12 January 1918, Curzon related to his colleagues the contents of a letter forwarded to him by the viceroy of India, Lord Chelmsford (1868–1933). Penned by the latter's subordinate, Henry Dobbs (1871–1934), the communiqué suggested Britain abandon its present heavy-handed Persian policy and, instead, attempt to conciliate the country's increasingly vocal nationalist party. One of the most intriguing proposals contained in the letter was the recommendation that the Tehran Legation's highest-ranking posts should immediately be filled by individuals widely known for their Persian sympathies, notably E. G. Browne as oriental secretary and Lord Lamington as minister, in order to signal a more friendly approach.Footnote ⁹⁶ While Curzon viewed the suggestion as sufficiently compelling to bring to the attention of other committee members, ultimately he appears to have been unwilling to champion its proposals. After a relatively short debate, its advice was dismissed.

Within a fortnight of Curzon having contemplated the appointment of Browne in Iran, the Cambridge don published ‘Hope for Persia: the new British policy’ in the Manchester Guardian. Buoyed by Curzon's recent statement in the Lords as to the future of British policy in Iran, which he described as ‘by far the most encouraging official utterance on this subject which has been heard in this country for many a long year’, Browne was hopeful. As he observed,

After offering a synopsis of Iran's woes since the Anglo-Russian Convention, he asserted that the field was ‘clear for a new and more sympathetic British policy in Persia, a policy inspired by the sentiments so finely expressed by Lord Curzon in his speech of November 15, 1911’. Plainly hoping to influence Lloyd George's administration, Browne concluded with five policy recommendations:

In subsequent weeks, the Pembroke fellow made some effort to promote what became known as ‘Professor Browne's five points’, notably outlining them in a lecture before the British Academy.Footnote ⁹⁹ Whether disappointed by their reception or simply not up to the standard of his pre-war campaign, Browne shortly, however, departed the life of a public intellectual – this time for good – and retreated to academia.

Although no correspondence between Curzon and Browne appears to have survived for the years after 1911, the two men were in contact.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Another correspondent to Browne mentioned a now lost letter, probably in the autumn of 1918.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Evidence can also be gleaned from the events culminating in the ill-fated Anglo-Persian Agreement (1919). Although Curzon would not replace A. J. Balfour as foreign secretary until October 1919, the former proconsul was responsible for much of the day-to-day conduct of foreign policy during the months Balfour spent with Lloyd George at the Paris Peace Conference. Moreover, as far as Anglo-Persian relations were concerned, Curzon possessed free rein.Footnote ¹⁰² Such a situation, at least initially, must have filled Browne with guarded optimism.

Curzon also possessed optimism, but his derived from the extraordinarily favourable geopolitical conditions Britain confronted at the close of the Great War. The tsarist bogey having been swept away by the Russian Revolution and the Central Powers defeated, Britain's victory left it the key arbiter of the entire region. According to Harold Nicolson, Curzon's mind soared with the prospect of finally being able to fulfil his lifelong ‘Indian obsession … [by] creating a chain of vassal states stretching from the Mediterranean to the Pamirs and protecting, not the Indian frontiers merely, but our communications with our further Empire’.Footnote ¹⁰³ With just this in mind, between January and August 1919 Curzon laboured with Sir Percy Cox (1864–1937), the long-time British resident on the Persian Gulf and by this time acting minister at Tehran, and three pro-British Persian notables, Vosouq al Dowleh (1868–1951), Firouz Mirza Nosrat al Dowleh (1889–1938), and Akbar Mirza Sarem al Dowleh (c. 1885–1975), who came to be known as the ‘Triumvirate’. Dismissing further recommendations from the government of India to recognize the country's growing nationalist sentiment, Curzon provided for a treaty which ostensibly would have transformed Persia into a veiled British protectorate.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ While the agreement, like the Anglo-Russian Convention before it, offered lip-service to Iranian nationalism with a preamble guaranteeing the country's independence and integrity, its main clauses, most prominently its provision for the dispatch of numerous and exclusively British advisers to reorganize the Iranian government and military, were clearly intended to make the kingdom of the shah an appendage of the British empire in nearly all but name.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ Suffice to say, the treaty received little enthusiasm on the ground in Iran.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ After revelations that members of the Triumvirate had been awarded substantial bribes, the Persian parliament persistently refused to ratify the accord and, after languishing for more than eighteen months, it was formally abrogated in early 1921.

Although Curzon's heavy-handed Anglo-Persian Agreement contained provisions which all but made it destined for the ‘dustbin of history’, it is by no means a corollary that any such treaty concluded between Britain and Iran in the aftermath of the Great War was doomed to fail. Had Curzon chosen to heed Browne's advice, for instance, the foreign secretary could well have profited from the professor's deeper understanding of Iran and its inhabitants. Indeed, had Curzon provided for an accord which fulfilled even four of Browne's advocated five points, the Anglo-Persian treaty might potentially have escaped its eventual fate. That the former proconsul was entirely aware of the Cambridge don's proposals, but consciously chose to ignore them, can be in no doubt. Browne's Guardian article, ‘Hope for Persia: the new British policy’, appears prominently in a volume of contemporary news-cuttings which Curzon meticulously collated and annotated himself.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Erroneously convinced of his superior knowledge of all things Persian, Curzon contributed to the continued political instability in Iran which ultimately paved the way for the coup d'etat of February 1921 and the rise of Reza Khan (1878–1944) – later the shah, Reza Pahlavi. Significantly, the first official act of the government that took power in 1921 was the abrogation of Curzon's much-cherished Anglo-Persian Agreement.

V

That moment was, however, not to be glimpsed in the heady moments of late summer and early autumn 1919 when Curzon claimed finally to have answered the long-perplexing ‘Persian Question’. Despite perhaps possessing misgivings, Browne turned up, likely at Curzon's urging, to the gala dinner celebrating the announcement of the Anglo-Persian Agreement on 18 September 1919 at London's Carlton Hotel.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ As he listened to Curzon speak about the bright future of Anglo-Iranian relations, he may well have wistfully recalled the address, in similarly lavish surroundings, nearly eight years earlier. Confident at least that, though flawed, Curzon's knowledge of Persia far surpassed any of his predecessors as foreign secretary, Browne could only hope that despite its major defects the Anglo-Persian Agreement would help bring Iran its just measure of stability and prosperity. It was not to be. By the spring of the following year, his initial optimism had vanished. Writing to his friend, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, in order to decline an invitation to join a new Egyptian Committee, Browne wrote,

As this assessment has suggested, Lord Curzon and E. G. Browne shared a good deal as they emerged as British experts on Persia. Both were a product of England's great public schools and ancient universities and each proved Disraeli's maxim that the East was a career.Footnote ¹¹⁰ Had Curzon not been born into an aristocratic family tracing its descent back to one of William the Conqueror's lieutenants, he might well have become an Oxbridge don like Browne.Footnote ¹¹¹ Entirely aware of his privileged access to power, the heir to Kedleston dreamed instead of directing an empire. Though family wealth afforded Browne options far beyond most of his contemporaries, his reveries were more modest than those of his former Etonian classmate. Moreover, the social distance he must have experienced with Curzon and his ilk during schooldays and university may perhaps have helped reinforce earlier instincts that left him more sympathetic to the victims of empire.

While both men failed to break free from much of the sociobiological thinking of the age, only Browne managed to develop a nuanced understanding of Persia. Perhaps not surprisingly, while both marvelled at the remains of Persepolis, only Curzon added his initials to the site's ancient columns.Footnote ¹¹² Browne, on the other hand, inspired with a deep sense of awe and reverence for the Takht-e Jamshid, as Iranians call the Achaemenid ruins, refrained, deeming such behaviour profane.Footnote ¹¹³ Given their highly contrasting views of Persia and its people, it seems only natural that while Curzon remains reviled by many contemporary Iranians, Browne's memory still commands significant respect. Indeed, the continued existence of Edward Browne Street in downtown Tehran, through the many low points in Anglo-Iranian relations these past eight decades since his death, serves as a testament to the degree of admiration for the late professor.

What lessons can be gleaned from the lives of these two remarkable men? In an era when the ‘cult of the expert’ is even more ubiquitous, this case study might offer some instruction. First, it points to the need to scrutinize carefully regional experts contributing to foreign policy debates; real credentials are not easy to acquire. As Curzon's flawed understanding of Iran makes clear, even exhaustive research and privileged access cannot escape the limits of a world view in which the interests of one nation trump all else. Secondly, the lives and careers here suggest that regional experts could do worse than begin with sympathy for their subjects.Footnote ¹¹⁴ Though admittedly at times idealistic, Browne's compassion and empathy, his interest in the grassroots, and his willingness to learn languages, allowed him to gauge the popular Zeitgeist in a manner which eluded Curzon.