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

Building a new army 81officers in command of the army. In this new climate, the Iranian politicalclass lost its appetite for foreign military missions, which were now clearlyunderstood to be a harbinger of more general political tutelage. But by now,Britain and Russia were as determined to impose their officers on Iran asIranian nationalists were to refuse them.In the nineteenth century the Qajar shahs and their ministers had beenfree to invite foreign officers as they wished. However, in addition to the unacknowledgedcontradiction between the motives of Iran and the agenda ofthe foreign missions, there was another conflict at the heart of the reformingproject. The Iranian state was never an abstraction, but an embodimentof particular social forces. Military modernization was couched in terms ofimproving the state’s ability to defend the country against foreign aggressionbut an equally important objective of army reform was to strengthenthe monarchy in order to enable it to impose its will on other social groupswithin the country which were, either actually or potentially, contending forpower. Until the late nineteenth century, the state was in practice identifiedwith the shah and the dynasty and the foreign missions were in Iran in theservice of the shah, a position highlighted by their role in safeguarding thedynasty by enforcing acceptance of the succession of Mohammad Shah in1834 and Mozzafar-edin Shah in 1896. But support for the shah inevitablyinvolved suppressing his enemies. In the nineteenth century this might mean,for example, action against rebel princes who disputed the succession. Theforeign officers, further, inevitably became entangled in domestic power strugglestaking place between factions at court, each faction possessing its ownposition to defend, its own orientation towards one or other imperial power,and with a pro- or anti-reform inclination. In the twentieth century, foreignmilitary missions became drawn into a new and much wider battle betweenthe monarchy and Iranian nationalism. By the constitutional period, theshah had come to be held responsible not for the strengthening of the statebut rather with its weakening, and identified with the loss of sovereignty andthe spread of foreign influence, a phenomenon perfectly illustrated by hisreliance on the Cossack Brigade. State-building opinion now defined progressin terms of limiting royal despotism and, accordingly, resented foreignattempts, through military missions as well as in other ways, to shore up theshah’s power and frustrate their own ambitions.The reaction against the Qajar experience with foreign military missionsled to a resolute refusal by the soldier Reza Khan to countenance such experiments.It was, ironically, only after the removal of the missions that Iranwas able to succeed in building a modern army. For the 20 years between1921 and 1941 no foreign military missions came to Iran. In fact, of all therulers of Iran since the early nineteenth century down to the Islamic revolution,Reza Shah was unique in resisting the temptation to allow foreignerscontrol of the army.After Reza Shah’s abdication in 1941 the struggle between the monarchy,buttressed by foreign military missions, and the nationalist opposition,