“A HIGHLY FAVOURED COUNTRY”? IRANIAN TRAVELLERS' VIEWS OF LATE HANOVERIAN BRITAIN

Abstract

For many years, Iranian views of Britain have been unfavourable. Yet, perhaps counter-intuitively, very positive impressions of Britain were formed by the first small group of Iranians to visit London, nearly two hundred years ago. They commented on everything; constitutional monarchy, politics, foreign policy, economics, society and social issues. In many cases their views of Britain contrasted with their unfavourable views of their own country, reflecting an eagerness to see Iran emulate Britain and embrace Modernisation/Westernisation. Yet their views were not uncritical and they were as accurate and as well-founded as the views of Iran put forward by British observers of Iran like Curzon.

Notes

*I would like to thank Ali Ansari, Florian Schwarz and Antony Wynn for their assistance and comments in the preparation of this paper. All views and errors remain solely those of the author.

Juan R. I. Cole, ‘Invisible Occidentalism: Eighteenth-Century Indo-Persian Constructions of the West’. Iranian Studies, Vol. 25, Issues 3–4 (1992): 4.

Denis Wright, The Persians Amongst the English. London: I. B. Tauris, 1986, pp. 44–47.

Cole, ‘Invisible Occidentalism’, p. 5.

Wright, Persians Amongst the English, p. xv.

Cole, ‘Invisible Occidentalism’, pp. 5–6; Rudolph Matthee, ‘Suspicion, Fear and Admiration: Pre-Nineteenth Century Iranian Views of the English and Russians’, in N. Keddie & R. Matthee (Eds.), Iran and the Surrounding World: Interactions in Culture and Cultural Politics. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, p. 135; Wright, Persians Amongst the English, pp. 44–46.

Wright, ibid., p. 44.

The East India Company's interests in Iran were essentially commercial and it told its agents to limit their involvement in Iranian politics as much as possible. Wright, Persians Amongst the English, p. 127.

George N. Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question, Vols 1 and 2. London: Longmans, Green, 1892, Vol. 2, pp. 614–616.

See, for example, John Malcolm, Sketches of Persia, London: John Murray, 1849, p. 208. Captain John Malcolm, subsequently Major-General, was sent to Iran as an envoy by the East India Company's Governor General in 1800 and 1802.

Cole, ‘Invisible Occidentalism’, p. 3.

Ibid., p. 5.

Malcolm, Sketches, p. 208.

Matthee, ‘Suspicion’, p. 139. Iranian sources of the time do however downplay the English presence and role in Safavid Iran. Ibid., p. 126.

Ibid, p. 124.

Cole, ‘Invisible Occidentalism’, p. 15.

Wright, Persians Amongst the English, pp. 44–45.

Ibid., pp. 56, 57.

Ibid., p. 67.

N. K. Meerza, Journal of a Residence in England and of a Journey From and to Syria By their Royal Highnesses Reeza Koole Meerza, Nejaf Koolee Meerza and Taymoor Meerza of Persia, trans. A. Kulyat. Published privately, n.d., p. 30. Also see Isfahani, quoted in D. Wright, op cit., p 47.

Wright, Persians Amongst the English, p. 80.

Meerza, Journal, p. 71.

Ibid., p. 63.

Wright, Persians Amongst the English, p. 47.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 78.

Malcolm, Sketches, p. 213.

Meerza, Journal, pp. 29, 41; Isfahani quoted in Wright, Persians Amongst the English, p. 47.

Wright, Persians Amongst the English, p. 93.

Cole, ‘Invisible Occidentalism’, p. 13.

Meerza, Journal, p. 34.

Ibid., pp. 24–25; Wright, Persians Amongst the English, p. 81.

Meerza, Journal, p. 19.

Malcolm, Sketches, p. 128.

See, for example, Meerza, Journal, p. 34.

See, for example, Malcolm, Sketches, p. 207.

The 1873 European visit was the first time that any Iranian Shah had travelled to a Christian country. His diaries were subsequently serialised in the (Persian language) Tehran Gazette as well as being translated into English. Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question, Vol. 2, p. 593.

Cole, ‘Invisible Occidentalism’, p. 14.

Malcolm, Sketches, p. 213.

See, for example, Amin-es-Sultan quoted in Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question, Vol. 1, pp. 426–427.

See, for example, Meerza, Journal, p. 24.

Ibid., p. 63.

Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question, Vol. 2, p. 492.

Ibid.

Cole, ‘Invisible Occidentalism’, p. 6.

Meerza, Journal, p. 38.

M. Tavakoli-Targhi, ‘Women of the West Imagined: Persian Occidentalism, Euro-eroticism, and Modernity’. CIRA Bulletin Vol 13, Issue 1 (1997): 19.

Wright, Persians Amongst the English, p. 50.

Ibid., p. 130.

Isfahani, quoted in ibid., p. 48.

Meerza, Journal, pp. 19–20.

Ibid., p. 19; Matthee, ‘Suspicion’, p. 135.

Curzon blames Iran's political system for the failings in the Iranian character he so frankly describes. Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question, Vol. 1, p. 462.

Isfahani, quoted in Wright, Persians Amongst the English, p. 50.

Ibid.

Cole, ‘Invisible Occidentalism’, p. 13.

Ibid., pp. 13–14.

Ibid., p. 3.

See Wright, Persians Amongst the English, p. 81; Meerza, Journal, p. 31.

Meerza, Journal, p. 31.

M. Nouraei, ‘Ordinary People and the Reception of British Culture in Iran, 1906–41’, in V. Martin (Ed.), Anglo-Iranian Relations. London: Routledge, 2005, p. 75.

Abu Taleb (Mirza Abu Taleb Khan [Tabrizi] Isfhani), C. Stewart (Trans.), Travels of Mirza Abu Taleb in Asia, Africa and Europe during the Years 1799, 1800, 1801, and 1803. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown 1814, p. 264. Quoted in Bhaskar Mukhopadhyay, ‘Writing Home, Writing Travel: The Poetics and Politics of Dwelling in Bengali Modernity’. Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 44, Issue 2 (2002): 296.

Tavakoli-Targhi, ‘Women’, pp. 19–22.

Ibid., p. 20.

Cole, ‘Invisible Occidentalism’, p. 13.

Ibid., p. 12.

Tavakolli, op cit., p. 20.

Mirza Abul Hassan Khan, A Persian at the Court of King George 1809–10: The Journal of Mirza Abul Hassan Khan, trans. and ed. M. M. Cloake. London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1988.

Meerza, Journal, p 31; Khan, A Persian at the Court of King George, p. 25.

Quoted in Wright, Persians Amongst the English, pp. 47, 49.

Ibid., p. 77.

Matthee, ‘Suspicion’, p. 136.

Meerza, Journal, pp. 63–64.

Ibid.

Rostam Hashem Asef (Rostam al-Hokama). M. Moshiri (ed.), Rostam al tavarikh, 2nd edn. Tehran: Amir Kabiri, 1973 [1352], p. 395. Quoted in Matthee, ‘Suspicion’, p. 136.

Malcolm, Sketches, p. 215.

Meerza, Journal, pp. 32–33.

Malcolm claimed that Iranian interests in study lacked wider social and economic relevance. Whilst recognising Iran's high regard for poetry, he went on to say many students in Isfahan were obsessed with study to the extent it was a “disease” and they were “unfitted for every other pursuit of life”. Malcolm, Sketches, pp. 131–132.

Ibid., pp. 64–65.

Cole, ‘Invisible Occidentalism’, p. 16.

Wright, Persians Amongst the English, p. 52.

Afshin Marashi, Redlines and Deadlines: Handbook: Politics and the Press in Iran, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/printable/iran_handbook_print.html (accessed 10 January 2009).

Nouraei, ‘Ordinary People’, p. 77.

Wright, Persians Amongst the English, p. 81.

Seyed Farid Ghasemi, Origins of Printing in Iran, Iranian Chamber Society, 2002, http://www.iranchamber.com/art/articles/origins_printing_iran.php; Marashi, Redlines and Deadlines; M. S. Noury, ‘First Iranian Newspaper’, Persian Journal, April 5, 2005 http://www.iranian.ws/cgi-bin/iran_news/exec/view.cgi/12/6256/printer.

Isfahani quoted in Wright, Persians Amongst the English, p. 48.

Ghasemi, Origins of Printing; M. S. Noury, ‘First Iranian Newspaper’.

Marashi, Redlines and Deadlines.

Wright, Persians Amongst the English, pp. 81–82.

Ibid., p. 81.

Ibid., p. 46.

Cole, ‘Invisible Occidentalism’, p. 6.

Wright, Persians Amongst the English, pp. 75–76.

Interestingly and rather adroitly, Sutherland was keen that they retained their Iranian identity, rather then be overtly anglicised and therefore less willing or able to re-integrate themselves into Iranian society. Ibid., p. 73.

Ibid., p. 66.

Firuz Kazemzadeh, ‘Denis Wright: The Persians amongst the English: Episodes in Anglo-Persian History’. The American Historical Review, Vol. 94, Issue 1 (1989): 189.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid

See E. Newby, A Book of Travellers’ Tales. London: Picador, 1985, pp. 212–234.

Cole, ‘Invisible Occidentalism’, pp. 3–16.

These are Abdul-Latif Khan, an Iranian who emigrated to Hyderabad around 1790, Mirza Abu Taleb Khan, and Aqa Ahmad Bihbahani, an Iranian cleric who emigrated to Patna.

Cole, ‘Invisible Occidentalism’, p. 6.

Ibid

Ibid.

Ibid.

Matthee, ‘Suspicion’, pp. 124, 138.

Rudolph Matthee, ‘The Persians Among the English: Episodes on Anglo-English History by Denis Wright’. Iranian Studies, Vol. 18, Issue 1 (1985): 111–113.

Ibid.

This disjuncture between British domestic and foreign policy was later highlighted, in 1946, by Khalid Maliki. Maliki, a key Iranian leftwing thinker and at the time member of the Soviet-supported Tudeh Party argued that British policy towards Iran was not in the interests of nor supported by most ordinary Britons. If British policy towards Iran was based on the British sense of democracy and decency, he argued “many of the present difficulties… [of British Iranian policy] would be resolved”. Maziar Behrooz, Rebels with a Cause: The Failure of the Left in Iran. London: I. B. Tauris, 2000, p. 31.

Hasan Javadi, ‘Book Review of M. R. Ghanoonparvar: In a Persian Mirror: Images of the West and Westerners in Iranian Fiction’. Middle East Journal, Vol. 48, Issue 4 (1994): 726.

Matthee, ‘Suspicion’, p. 136.

Ibid., p. 140.

Ibid., pp. 135–136.

Ibid., pp. 122–123.

Coles, ‘Invisible Occidentalism’, p. 16.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stuart Horsman

Stuart Horsman is a policy support officer on Central Asia at the OSCE Secretariat. Between 2000 and 2008, he was the research analyst on Central Asia and then Iran at the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He has also taught at the Department of Politics, University of Sheffield, and Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford.