Iran and Russian Imperialism: The Ideal Anarchists, 1800–1914 by Moritz Deutschmann (review)

Studies of the comparative history of Iran in the context of world history have become a trend in recent decades. The transborder perspective on Iran's domestic developments opens new promising research venues. Moritz Deutschmann's book is a recent addition to this tendency. It presents a history of Russia's increasing presence in the Transcaucasian and Transcaspian regions of Iran throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Relying mostly on Russian sources, the author presents a balanced view of Russia's imperialism vis-àvis Qajar Iran. Primary sources from Russian and Georgian archives are supplemented by secondary literature in several languages. Based on these sources, Deutschmann masterfully presents the steady formation of Russia's imperialist expansion in Iran. Parallel to this main theme, the book tells the story of British imperialism in Iran, based on documents from the National Archives in the United Kingdom. This complex perspective allows the author to demonstrate the early twentieth-century collaboration of Russia and Britain in working to preserve the integrity of Iran under the Qajar monarchy and after the anti-Qajar revolution agreeing to split the country into their respective spheres of interests.

The history of Russian imperialism in Iran is presented as a multifaceted snapshot of interactions among various historical actors, rather than a portrait of a monolithic grand design by an imperial power. Deutschmann brings out the voices of local tribes, merchants, religious scholars, Russian and Iranian military officers and diplomats. The book presents a vivid picture of transborder social interaction in Transcaucasia. Despite the border delimitation efforts of the Iranian and Russian governments, the border remained porous in the region due to the difficult terrain and the religious and ethnocultural commonalities of the population on both sides.

Transcending the usual narrative of international relations as the interaction between two governments, Deutschmann pays much attention to large tribes populating Qajar Iran's borderlands, such as the Turkmen, Shakhsevan, and Bakhtiary. Their involvement in domestic and international politics reveals the presence of their own agendas, apart from the Iranian monarchy's plans. When it came to provincial and frontier politics, tribes did not remain passive subjects of the shah; instead they acted as reliable partners of the Qajar polity in the region. While demonstrating that Russia and Iran were not monolithic entities, the author fails to apply the same approach to the tribes on both sides of the border and show their internal heterogeneity and dynamics. Likewise, despite the well-known role of the Ottoman government in instigating intercommunal violence against non-Muslims in the Ottoman East, Deutschmann squarely puts the whole responsibility on the Kurdish tribes.

The author's multifaceted history of Russia's imperialism in Iran transcends the traditional homogenizing nation-centered narrative of international relations that equates imperialism with attempts to undermine the government of another country. Reconstructing the views of Russian officials regarding Iran's state and society, the book emphasizes the persistence of the Russian policy of maintaining Iran's integrity. Russian officials supported the Qajar monarchy for the sake of the security of Russia's southern borders and the Russian subjects in Iran, and also because they did not want to deal with multiple groups competing for the control of the government.

The book is divided into three parts based on chronology. Covering the period from the beginning of the nineteenth century until the 1870s, the first part begins with the military conflicts that had led to the treaties of Golestan (1813) and Turkmanchay (1828). These treaties, especially the latter, built the foundation of Russian-Iranian relationships. After the Russians secured their military superiority in the wars with Iran, they concentrated on establishing close diplomatic and economic contacts with the Qajar dynasty. It is during this time that Russia's Orientalist stereotypes about the Qajar nobility and society were formed – which is not to say that they were necessarily negative. Thus, the Russian orientalist scholar Konstantin Smirnov...