Schuster later wrote a book about his time in Iran called The Strangling of Persia, in which, despite what today reads sometimes with a rather prosy, evangelical style, he expressed his admiration for the moral courage and determination of the people he worked with in the period of the Constitutional Revolution. The book explains much about the revolution, and about Persia at the time. But it also illuminates Schuster’s attitudes about the country and the reasons he and, by extension, the United States were so highly regarded by Iranians. He wrote of the Majles that it
. . . more truly represented the best aspirations of the Persians than any other body that had ever existed in that country. It was as representative as it could be under the difficult circumstances which surround the institution of the Constitutional Government. It was loyally supported by the great mass of the Persians, and that alone was sufficient justification for its existence. The Russian and British Governments, however, were constantly instructing their Ministers at Teheran to obtain this concession or to block that one, failing utterly to recognise that the days had passed in which the affairs, lives and interests of twelve millions of people were entirely in the hands of an easily intimidated and willingly bribed despot.25
It would be incorrect to put all the blame for the outcome of the Constitutional Revolution onto the foreigners. The revolution had brought forward violence and rancor between the groups represented in the Majles, and the divisions contributed to the events of December 1911. One could speculate, not least on the basis of the use of terror by other revolutionaries in other revolutions, that if the revolution had not been cut off at that point, the violence might well have gotten a great deal worse, possibly with very damaging long-term effects. But that is to speculate too far. We do not know how it would have turned out. Revolutions may have family resemblances, but they have no timetable and no blueprint, and the Constitutional Revolution arose out of distinctive and unique political and social circumstances. There were, on the other hand, many positive elements in the situation as it was before December 1911 above all that at last, as Schuster pointed out, the country had a truly popular government, and that it was addressing as a priority the fundamental problem of the fiscal structures. Revolutionaries and people showed a strong solidarity against external meddling, a powerful enthusiasm for constitutional government, and for their elected Majles. This enthusiasm had been strong enough to overturn one coup already, and was strong enough to sustain the principles of constitutionalism later, too, notably in 1919–1920. It gives the lie to those who condescendingly suggest that Iran, or Middle Eastern countries in general, are somehow culturally unsuited to constitutional, representative, or (later) democratic government. When those forms of government were offered, Iranians grabbed them with both hands, as other peoples invariably have in other times and places.
PERSIA, OIL, BATTLESHIPS, AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR
Through this period, even before the British legation had been used for sanctuary by the protesters in 1906, new developments had been at work to reshape Britain’s attitude to Iran. Since at least the turn of the century, Britain’s traditional rivalries with France and Russia had been replaced by an awareness of the danger of the growing power and belligerence of Germany. France and Russia allied with each other (by implication, against Germany) in 1894; Britain and France allied in 1904; and Britain, France, and Russia allied all together in 1907 (the Triple Entente). Particularly sharp for Britain was the German program of naval shipbuilding over this period. Since the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, Britain had maintained an unrivaled dominance of the world’s oceans—an essential support to her world empire. But under Emperor Wilhelm II the Germans began building modern warships at a rapid rate, threatening the Royal Navy’s dominance. British shipyards began to turn out ships to match the German program. In 1906 the British launched HMS Dreadnought, which was said to have rendered all previous warships obsolete by its combination of speed and the coordinated firepower of its simplified armament. In 1912 the British navy switched from coal to oil as fuel; oil burned more efficiently and was less bulky. But whereas Britain had huge domestic reserves of coal, oil had to be sought elsewhere. Under the terms of the D’Arcy concession, large quantities of oil had been discovered—the first oil to be found in the Middle East—in 1908 near Ahwaz in Khuzestan, in southwest Iran.
Persia had for decades been of importance to Britain for the sake of the northwest frontier of India, perhaps of declining importance, especially after the Triple Entente. But now the oil reserves of Khuzestan became vital for the security of the whole British Empire. Britain’s sphere of influence according to the agreement with Russia was quickly extended westward to include the rest of the Persian Gulf coast and the oil fields. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company was formed to exploit the oil, and in 1914 the British government bought up a majority share in it.
Partly because of the oil, but also because Britain’s rivals fell away one by one over the following years, Britain gradually became the dominant external power in Iran in the decade that followed 1911. It was a period of deepening chaos, poverty, and suffering. The Russians fired on revolutionaries in several of the cities in their northern zone in the aftermath of the coup of December 1911, notably in Mashhad. There protesters took sanctuary in the shrine of the Emam Reza, only for the Russian artillery to shell the shrine itself—an act of sacrilege and humiliation that was deeply felt throughout the country. The British Embassy reported in 1914 that the central government had little influence on events outside Tehran.26 The British and the Russians exercised a degree of control in their respective zones, but their grip was far from absolute. This was shown by the success of the Jangali movement in Gilan (Jangal means forest, an allusion to the dense forests of the Caspian coast) under the charismatic leader Kuchek Khan, which continued to sustain some of the spirit of independence that had inspired the revolution.
The revolution is usually said to have ended in 1911, but this date is rather artificial. The constitution established by the revolution was not overturned, and a new Majles convened in December 1914. The spirit of the revolution and the ideals and expectations of the constitutionalists were not crushed. They resurfaced again and again in the events that followed. The revolution was a watershed in the history of Iran, as the episode in which previously more or less inchoate strands of thinking and opinion came together in concrete political form, shifted, changed, and acquired permanent significance. It also had, with the focus of popular debate in Tehran and the role of regional assemblies in sending delegates to the Majles, a centralizing and unifying effect, strengthening the nationalist sympathies of many of those delegates. The revolts in Gilan, and later Azerbaijan, had national, not separatist aims. There could be no going back to the pre-1906 state of things.
During the First World War, despite the government’s declaration that Persia was neutral, the country was divided up by the different players that maintained troops in different sectors. There were the Russians in the north, but also the Jangalis. In Tehran there were the troops controlled, at least nominally, by the government—the Cossack Brigade and the Swedish gendarmerie. Set against the Russians were the Ottomans and their allies, the Germans. The Ottomans made an incursion into the country in the west and north. For the most part none of these armed elements was strong enough to control large areas of territory or to establish overall supremacy. Most of the fighting was low in intensity and indecisive. But in the northwest the Ottomans and the Russians fought each other more aggressively, doing much damage to the villages and the local population. A revived rump of the constitutionalist movement was set up under Ottoman and German protection in Kermanshah, and for a period in 1915 prospects for this movement looked good. The Ottomans were doing well in the north, and the Germans, who were allied with the Qashqai and others in the south, also made considerable progress. The British pulled out of their consulates in Hamadan, Isfahan, Yazd, and Kerman.
But in the south the British set up a force called the South Pers
ia Rifles in the spring of 1916, primarily to protect the oil fields. They also had a close relationship with the Bakhtiari, as well as with some of the Arab tribes of Khuzestan and those of the Khamseh confederation. Despite the skillful guerrilla war masterminded by the brilliant German adventurer Wilhelm Wassmuss, who has been compared to Lawrence of Arabia, the British slowly regained the upper hand, and the situation in Iran, as in the wider war, turned against the Germans and the Ottomans. This was despite the Russians and their troops being removed from the equation after the October revolution of 1917. By the time of the armistice in November 1918, Wassmuss was captured near Isfahan, and the British were resurgent in Persia.
At the end of the war, the country was in a terrible state. There had been a severe famine in the years 1917 and 1918, partly as a result of the dislocation of trade and agricultural production caused by the war. The effect of the Russian Revolution on trade was devastating. Before 1914, sixty-five percent of foreign trade had been with Russia, but this fell to five percent by the end of the First World War. The famine was followed by a serious visitation of the global influenza epidemic in 1918–1919, and typhus killed many as well. Brigands were common. Although there were British troops in several parts of the country, many tribal groups had taken up arms, and the Jangalis were still in control of most of Gilan. Having begun as pro-constitutionalist, the Jangalis came under Russian Bolshevik influence. In the summer of 1918, with the help of some Bolsheviks, they had forced a British force under General Lionel Dunsterville to retreat from a confrontation in Gilan. By this time Dunsterville had learned rather more about the Jangalis than he had known in January 1918, before he took up his duties in Persia, when he wrote in his diary,
I get a wire to say that Enzeli, my destination on the Caspian Sea, has been seized by some horrid fellows called Jangalis (a very suggestive name) who are intensely anti-British and are in the pay of [the] Germans.27
But the political dislocation (if not the economic distress) was less grave than it might appear. The devolved rule of local tribal leaders had, after all, been pretty much the normal state of affairs under the Qajars. Some accounts of the period suggest that there was a disillusionment with constitutionalism and a yearning for strong government. But it is not fully clear that either was a general mood, nor that the two necessarily went together.28
In the aftermath of the First World War, Britain was juggling a series of complex and weighty problems over the territory of the Middle East, the resolution of which would be fateful for the future in several different contexts. The size and shape of postwar Turkey had to be resolved, as well as the nature and borders of the post-Ottoman states in Palestine, Syria, and Iraq. The British were concerned also to contain, or if possible overturn, the new communist regime in Russia. All of this came at a time of greatly reduced financial means, as a result of the crippling debt incurred during the war, and with the United States under Woodrow Wilson preaching a new philosophy of international relations—essentially a democratic principle of self-determination—that appeared to undermine the very foundation of British imperialism. Iranian nationalists welcomed Wilson’s principles, and again were encouraged to think of the United States as Iran’s great hope among the great powers. But like other Middle Eastern states, notably Egypt, representatives of the Iranian government were refused access to the peace negotiations at Versailles.
ANGLO-PERSIAN NON-AGREEMENT AND REZA KHAN
So Britain, having won the war and having achieved supremacy in Persia, was overstretched—too many calls on too scarce means, and with important distractions elsewhere. The British foreign secretary at the time, Lord Curzon, knew Persia well and had written a thoughtful, magisterial book, Persia and the Persian Question, on the basis of his travels in 1889–1890. But although that book was sympathetic to the people of Iran in many respects, Curzon seems to have overlooked some of its guiding principles, and to have failed to absorb the significance of the constitutionalist period.29 In 1919 he proposed—or, rather, he attempted to force through—an Anglo-Persian Agreement that would have reduced Persia to the status of a protectorate (parallel with the mandate arrangements being set up at the same time for Iraq and Palestine), with the military and fiscal responsibilities of government given over to the British. The agreement was rather like earlier concession agreements writ large: security guarantees, promises of infrastructure development for the Persians, and a dollop of cash (a loan of two million pounds sterling—much of which would have been absorbed by the salaries of various British officers, officials, and advisers).
The government of the young Ahmad Shah obligingly accepted the agreement (it was signed in August 1919), but when its details became known it was thoroughly unpopular, over the whole range of opinion from democrats to the ulema. Although the agreement might have yielded some benefits for the development of the country, it was further discredited by the plentiful bribes with which the British were rumored to be smoothing its passage. All sectors of opinion condemned the agreement, from socialists and nationalist former members of the Majles to leading mojtaheds blasting it by telegram from Karbala. A revolt broke out in Azerbaijan, asserting democrat constitutionalist principles and renaming the province Azadistan (“freedom land”); it was not put down until September. The shah’s government sent five leading members of the Majles into internal exile, but gradually even the government signatories of the agreement began to recognize the opprobrium heaped on it from all sides, and avoided convening a Majles to ratify it—without which it could not, under the constitution, be legally applied. The British tried to apply the provisions of the agreement willy-nilly, bringing in British officers to command army units, but succeeded only in hastening the collapse of the government and the resignation of the first minister in June 1920.30
In London, Lord Curzon still expected to be able to force through the Anglo-Persian Agreement. But local British commanders on the ground thought differently—to them and everyone else in Iran, the agreement looked like a dead duck. The British forces that had been commanded by Dunsterville—forces which had been resisted successfully by the Jangalis and their Bolshevik allies—were commanded from October 1920 by General Ironside. Both men embodied certain Edwardian virtues, and both had literary connections: Dunsterville was the model for Kipling’s Stalky, and it has been suggested that Ironside inspired John Buchan’s hero Richard Hannay.
The British troops (now based in Qazvin) were unpopular with the Persians and, after their retreat from Gilan, were somewhat discredited—a dangerous combination not calculated to overawe nationalist dislike. Ironside was an intelligent, tough, decisive career soldier and had been given the responsibility of helping reequip the Cossack Brigade, now grown to division strength, which had also recently withdrawn from the Caspian coast to a position near Qazvin. He decided almost as he took up his appointment to exceed his orders. With the reluctant agreement of the shah, he dismissed the remaining Russian officers of the Cossack corps, judging that although the Persian troops were good, sound soldiers, the Russian officers were demoralized, anti-British, and susceptible to Bolshevik infiltration. When Curzon found out, he did not approve, but by then it was too late. Ironside reassured the Persian Cossacks that he had no intention of imposing British officers on them, and Persian officers were appointed. Acting through his second-in-command, Lieutenant Colonel Smyth, Ironside then selected a former sergeant, Reza Khan, as the most effective soldier, and arranged matters so that Reza Khan became the de facto commander. Ironside was worried that, as time went on, the position of the British would deteriorate. The Bolsheviks might move on Tehran, and if that happened, the Persian Cossacks might side with them. He thought that perhaps it would be better to let the Cossacks take over while the British were still in a strong position. The British troops could then make a peaceful withdrawal. Shortly afterward, in January 1921, Ironside wrote in his diary,
Personally, I am of opinion that we ought to let these people go before I disappear. . . . In fact, a milita
ry dictatorship would solve our troubles and let us out of the country without any trouble at all.31
The whole question of Britain’s role at this point is controversial, but there is no direct evidence of a plot as such. The idea that the world of politics revolves only through the agency of plots and conspiracies is dangerously misleading. Ironside knew what he wanted—he wanted British troops out of Persia (he was personally due to leave in April, but his departure date was brought forward to February 18)—and he had a lighter touch. All he really had to do was let the Cossacks understand that the British would not intervene if they acted against their government. He felt no pressing need to consult London or the British minister in Tehran. Ironside had an eye for an able soldier; events were to show that he also had a canny political sense, and his choice of Reza Khan showed that, too. Reza Khan also proved to have a sharper political sense than expected, or than ordinary soldiers are usually credited with.
On February 16, 1921, Reza Khan marched twenty-five hundred of his Cossacks from their camp near Qazvin toward Tehran. On February 21, he was able to take them into the capital without opposition, and the shah allowed him to set up a new government headed by a nationalist journalist, Seyyed Zia Tabatabai—not to be confused with the mojtahed Seyyed Mohammad Tabatabai, who had died in 1918. Reza Khan became Sardar-e Sepah, commander of the army. A few months later Tabatabai fell from power, having alienated both the shah, by reducing the court, and Reza Khan, by proposing the appointment of British officers to the army. Reza Khan had managed in the interim to make new friends and broaden his support. Now he enhanced his position and became Minister for War.
A History of Iran Page 25