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

1 Between Scylla and CharybdisPolicy-making under conditions ofconstraint in early Qajar PersiaManoutchehr M. Eskandari-QajarIt is hard to imagine a more appropriate metaphor for the dilemma of theearly Qajars in their struggle with Russia and England, than the story ofOdysseus’ encounter with the twin monsters Scylla and Charybdis. 1 Russiaand England were both preying on Persia for their own ends: Russia to expandher empire south to complete her “manifest destiny;” England to defend hersagainst advances by others toward India. To be sure, Persia was not a helplessvictim in this struggle, and, much like Odysseus, its rulers used a varietyof means at their disposal to play one side against the other in the hopes ofachieving their own ends. In doing so, however, Persia, like Odysseus, wasnot free to act as she pleased: her resources were limited, her options few,and there were many pressures on her, from without and within. In the end,for the Qajars, as for Odysseus, the result was survival, but at a cost.In dealing with the early Qajars and their rivals, writers have generallyapplied a double standard, ascribing to the actions of Russia and Great Britaina larger impersonal logic of power (called variously “Great Power rivalry,”“power politics,” and later “the Great Game”), but to the actions of theQajars only a narrow outlook and a flawed calculus of self-interest. 2 Thisdifference in ability and disposition, it is often held, assured victory fortheir antagonists and humiliation and defeat for the Qajars. In other words,and to use the language of politics and economics here, there is a commonassumption that the international players in this rivalry were “rationalutility-maximizers,” but that their Qajar counterparts were bereft of suchcapacities and acted only on instinct, without rhyme or reason, and on verynarrowly defined short-term personal interest. As a result, they failed in theirencounters with their antagonists, Russia and England, and in the processfailed to safeguard the interests of Persia. 3 There is also the further assumptionthat policy options were plentiful and that negative outcomes for thePersian side were the result of wrong choices and narrow vision rather thanlack of alternatives. 4 Of course, the situation is not helped by the fact thatwhen considering the actions of the early Qajars in their encounters with theirforeign rivals, the weight of historical facts, such as their ultimate defeatsin the two encounters with the Russians in 1813 and 1828, the ostensiblyinconclusive outcomes of the two Herat campaigns of 1838 and 1856, and