Relatively few scholarly works have appeared on Iran's “eighteenth-century interregnum”. The dynastic logic of Iranian historiography has not convincingly accounted for the period between the collapse of the Safavid dynasty (1501–1722) and the rise of the Qajars (1796–1925). The tumultuous century saw the repeated partition of Iran and the rise of new dynasties that were as numerous as they were ephemeral. The realm became an ever-shifting patchwork of rival fiefdoms until its reunification under the Qajars at the end of the century. The violent dynamism of the eighteenth century, not corresponding to any dynastic order, has long been a major lacuna in our understanding of Iranian history.

In the last few years, however, scholars have shown a burgeoning interest in this chaotic period. Peter Good's The East India Company in Persia: Trade and Cultural Exchange in the Eighteenth Century – despite the title, the work focuses on only the first half of the century – is a worthy contribution to this growing field of study. The study of the company's commercial and cultural interactions with local Iranians promises to shed light on a relatively neglected period. As a historian of eighteenth-century empires in the Islamicate world, I am particularly interested in how the work draws on Company records to shed light on the state-building activities of the conqueror Nader (r. 1736–47). He was initially a mere vassal of a Safavid claimant to the throne, but Nader eventually sidelined his overlord to establish a new militaristic state of his own, carving out a vast empire in Asia and collecting tribute from Sind to Oman. One of the book's major achievements is that it offers new insights into the Naderid state's mercantile and naval sinews and the Company's role in augmenting them.

Good also gives his readers a deep understanding of the role of the written word in regulating the Company's relationship with Iran's rulers and inhabitants. Previously, concession documents were commonly regarded as a tool for exerting European authority over Orientals. Good demonstrates, however, that at least in the case of Naderid Iran, such documents were “a double-edged sword” (p. 22). The Safavid shahs issued farmans (decrees) that granted the Company certain trading privileges. Still, these privileges were often practically contingent on the Company rendering certain naval and logistic services to the crown. Interestingly, Nader abrogated the farman (p. 101), unofficially and selectively reviving certain clauses to compel the Company to do his bidding. This signified “an almost complete shift in the dynamics of the Company's relationship with him and with their neighbours in the Gulf” (ibid). Particularly in chapter 4, Good describes how Nader sought to use the Company as a partner in his grander schemes to revive the royal monopoly on Persian silk, to establish his own powerful navy in the Gulf by purchasing warships, and to stimulate the trade of various Persian goods in the Indian Ocean.

Nader's contempt for the Company and the previous concessions granted to it was evident in his cultivation of ties with new English merchants who travelled through Muscovy (referred to, therefore, as “Russia merchants”, p. 76), stimulating competition with the Company. Such competition worked to Nader's advantage as he was a major purchaser of English broadcloth, using it to outfit his centralized and expanding army (p. 79). Despite the haughty attitude of the Iranians, they recognized that they required the Company to procure warships for a new navy as well as maritime trade and logistics. Good does an excellent job of outlining how the Company sought to adapt to the new situation and even managed to benefit from the rise of Iranian hegemony over the Gulf region. A nuanced picture emerges: the Iranians viewed the Company as providing indispensable services, even though they regarded it as an “irksome lesser ally” (p. 113), while the Company manoeuvred to manage Iranian expectations and to extract as much profit from providing the aforementioned services. Such a view complements recent scholarship on the role and significance of Europeans in the early modern world. J.C. Sharman's Empires of the Weak: The Real Story of European Expansion and the Creation of the New World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019) has convincingly shown that prior to the nineteenth century, Europeans often entered into deferential relationships with powerful Oriental land empires in exchange for limited and tenuous trade concessions. Sharman's thesis is borne out by Good's case study of the Company's presence in mid-eighteenth-century Iran.

The book also offers a fascinating account of the lives of the men who worked for the Company in Iran. Full of colourful anecdotes, the first two chapters engross the reader by exploring how Company staff conducted official and private business, exchanged gifts, banqueted, collected intelligence, conspired, married, and even sexually seduced (or were seduced by) the locals. The socio-cultural life of the Company agents and their contacts is brought to life. In the third chapter, Good expands the scholarly discussion on trade in this period beyond Persian silk. From luxury products like Shirazi wine and rosewater to commodities such as Kermani wool and Khurasani asafoetida (hing), the Company was quite successful in diversifying and growing its trade networks despite the political instability of the time.

A significant weakness of the book is its limited bibliography. Good claims that the Persian chroniclers were uninterested in the activities of the Europeans (p. 6). Having studied these chronicles, I can confirm he is largely correct. Nonetheless, some interesting details could have been mined from several Naderid-era chronicles, including the ‘Alam ara-ye Naderi by Mohammad-Kazem Marvi, a Naderid army clerk, which contains details of the naval expeditions to Oman that would have been useful to Good's analysis. Furthermore, there are numerous farmans on the provision of military supplies in the Naderid state. Given the importance of farmans and naval logistics to Good's study, he would have benefitted from seeing the Company's farman in its broader bureaucratic context. Nonetheless, Good's study constitutes a valuable contribution to Iranian and early modern global history.