War and Peace in Qajar Persia: Implications Past and ... - Oguzlar.az

9 The politics of concessionReassessing the interlinkage ofPersia’s finances, Britishintrigue and Qajar negotiationRoxane FarmanfarmaianIt is the purpose of this chapter to retheorize the position of the Qajar monarchyand more generally, the Persian government, during the latter part ofthe reign of Nasser-edin Shah and those of his successors Mozzafar-edin Shah,Mohammad-Ali Shah and Ahmed Shah, as Persian officials negotiated theconcessions the country awarded to foreign nationals for the purpose of exploitingthe nation’s natural resources and developing services such as bankingand telegraphs. First, I address the economic and financial structure of thestate system administered by the Qajar Shahs to illustrate the practical constraints,particularly as relating to British dominance of the Gulf andBushehr through the East India Company, the silver linkage of the kran andthe impact of the Great Game on trade. Second, I briefly discuss the developingculture of concessionary awards as a solution to the increasingly direfinancial position Persia faced. The main focus of this chapter is on the oilconcession awarded to William Knox D’Arcy in 1903, but soon taken overby the British government. I argue that the award and subsequent negotiationswere not, as often pictured, a case of a backward nation grappling withthe standard machinery of Western sophisticated big business. Instead, I showit to have been a uniquely politicized situation with experienced actors on bothsides. On the one hand was the Persian government, already skilled at theart of concessionary wrangling, and on the other, a company–governmentpartnership designed to protect the security of the Indian – and largerBritish – Empire and fully aware that oil and its worldwide distribution wasthe crux of that security. The players on the British side, two of whom I focuson particularly – Sir Percy Cox and Sir John Cadman – moved seamlesslybetween Whitehall and the East India Company and between Whitehall andthe Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC), while working closely with theAdmiralty to turn the oil company into a purely British domain and instrument.Their remit was not just in southern Persia but the whole region, includingnorthern Persia and Mesopotamia. The chapter concludes with ananalysis of Persia’s aptitude in constructing the Sinclair concession in 1921based on the lessons it had learned from the bruising experience with