No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Divine Spark: The Prelude to the Tobacco Régie of 1890
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2022
Abstract
This article looks at the negotiations leading up to the Persian Tobacco Régie of 1890 as well as a previous failed Tobacco Régie in 1886. There exist only a few allusions to these two phases of the tobacco concession in the existing literature. Due to the newly uncovered diaries of the main commercial intermediary in these negotiations, the present article will be able to retrace, with precision, the events leading up to this economic concession of historical significance.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The International Society for Iranian Studies 2014
Footnotes
General Antoine Kitabgi Khan's diaries are receiving scholarly attention for the first time in the present article. Special thanks are due to the Kitabgi family for giving access to their family papers. This article is dedicated to Leonardo Davoudi's family.
References
1 Browne, Edward Granville, The Persian Revolution 1905–1909 (Mage, 2006), 31Google Scholar.
2 Katouzian, Homa, “The Revolution for Law: A Chronographic Analysis of the Constitutional Revolution of Iran,” Middle Eastern Studies 47, no. 5 (2011): 759CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Keddie, Nikki, Religion and Rebellion in Iran, The Tobacco Protest of 1891–1892 (London, 1966), 7Google Scholar.
4 Ibid.
5 Browne, The Persian Revolution, 33.
6 Keddie, Religion and Rebellion in Iran, 35–6.
7 Walcher, Heidi A., In the Shadow of the King: Zill Al-Sultan and Isfahan under the Qajars (I.B. Tauris, 2008), 144Google Scholar.
8 Platt, D.C.M., Finance, Trade and Politics in British Foreign Policy 1815–1914 (Clarendon Press, 1968), 227Google Scholar.
9 Matthee, Rudolph P., The Pursuit of Pleasure: Drugs and Stimulants in Iranian History, 1500–1900 (Princeton, NJ, 2005), 232Google Scholar.
10 PRO, FO/60/480, enclosure in Nicholson, Tehran to London, October 23, 1886, fols. 199–202, as cited in Matthee, The Pursuit of Pleasure, 232.
11 For example in Ferrier, R.W., The History of the British Petroleum Company (Cambridge, 1982)Google Scholar.
12 Unpublished diaries of General Antoine Kitabgi Khan, entry on October 3, 1879.
13 Ibid., October 25, 1887 (translated from the French).
14 Ibid., Resumed accounts.
15 Ibid., April 25, 1890 (translated from the French).
16 Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, Rambling Recollections (London, 1908), 329.
17 Browne, The Persian Revolution, 34, 405.
18 Curzon, Lord George N., Persia and the Persian Question (Longmans, 1892), 2: 498Google Scholar.
19 Unpublished diaries of General Antoine Kitabgi Khan, entry on April 30, 1886.
20 Ibid., July 18, 1887.
21 Ibid., October 20, 1886.
22 Ibid., January 25, 1887.
23 Ibid., November 12, 1886 (translated from the French).
24 Ibid., December 9, 1886.
25 Ibid., January 25, 1887.
26 Ibid., April 9, 1889.
27 Ibid., April 12, 1889.
28 Ibid., June 30, 1889.
29 Ibid., August 23, 1889.
30 Ibid., February 24, 1890.
31 Ibid., October 27, 1888.
32 Ibid., November 3, 1889 (translated from French).
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid., November 16, 1889.
35 Ibid., November 18, 1889.
36 Ibid., November 21, 1889.
37 Ibid., November 30, 1889.
38 Ibid., December 28, 1889.
39 Ibid., January 6, 1890.
40 Ibid., January 14, 1890.
41 FO 60:553 Wolff to Salisbury, Teheran, April 3, 1890 as cited in A.K.S. Lambton, “The Tobacco Regie: Prelude to Revolution I,” Studia Islamica, no. 22 (1965): 119–57.
42 Unpublished diaries of General Antoine Kitabgi Khan, entry of January 18, 1890.
43 Ibid., February 4, 1890.
44 Ibid., February 7, 1890.
45 Lambton, “The Tobacco Regie: Prelude to Revolution I,” 122.
46 Unpublished diaries of General Antoine Kitabgi Khan, entry of February 12, 1890.
47 Ibid., February 15, 1890.
48 Ibid., February 20, 1890.
49 Ibid.
50 Ibid., February 24, 1890.
51 Ibid., March 14, 1890 (translates to “the Shah hesitates”).
52 Ibid., March 18, 1890.
53 Estekhare is an Islamic form of seeking divine counsel through prayer when in doubt as to what course of action to follow.
54 Unpublished diaries of General Antoine Kitabgi Khan, entry of March 19, 1890.
55 Heidi Walcher mentions £25,000 being paid out to the shah and £15,000 to Amin al Sultan amongst others in Walcher, In the Shadow of the King, n. 12, 413–14.
56 Unpublished diaries of General Antoine Kitabgi Khan, entry of May 2, 1890.
57 Ibid., March 19, 1890.
58 Katouzian, Homa, State and Society in Iran: The Eclipse of the Qajars and the Emergence of the Pahlavis (I.B. Tauris, 2006), 33Google Scholar.
59 Unpublished diaries of General Antoine Kitabgi Khan, entry of November 14, 1891.
60 Ibid., October 11, 1891.
61 Ibid., February 20, 1892.
62 Keddie, Religion and Rebellion in Iran, 125–6.
63 Ibid., 36.
64 Ibid.