1. Browne, Edward Granville, A Year Amongst the Persians, 3rd ed. (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1950), 8Google Scholar. Most other accounts of this period of Browne's life rely on this book and repeat Browne's own explanation of his original interest in the region. For example, see Sir Ross's, Denison “Edward Granville Browne: A Memoir,” in the 1950 edition of A Year Amongst the Persians; Arberry, A. J. A., Oriental Essays: Portraits of Seven Scholars (New York: MacMillan, 1960), 161–2Google Scholar; Taqizadah, Sayyid Hasan, Maqālāt-i Taqīzādah, vol. II, ed. I. Afshar (Tehran: Offset, 1971), 42Google Scholar.

2. Browne, Year Amongst Persians, 12Google Scholar.

3. Manchester Guardian, 16 January 1912, 7, c. g. Also see Taqizadah, Maqādlāt 11:50. In a 1911 public letter addressed to Ayatollah Khurasani in Najaf, Ottoman Iraq, Browne considered himself “spiritually” akin to Iranians. See Irān-i naw, 19 January 1911, no. 72, 1.

4. “It appears that many issues of [the dissident paper] Qānūn [published by Malkum Khan] reached Mirza Aqa Khan [a leading Iranian dissident in Istanbul] by means of the Cambridge Orientalist, Browne, E. G.” (Algar, H., Mirza Malkum Khan: A Study in the History of Iranian Modernism [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973], 218Google Scholar). See also Browne, The Persian Revolution of 1905–1909 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910), 11Google Scholar. The reason behind Browne's association with these Iranian dissidents was, at this time, strongly related to his concern with the plight of the non-Muslim groups in Iran, whose conditions he hoped would be ameliorated through introduction of reforms propagated by Malkum Khan and Sayyid Jamal al-Din (in spite of the latter's advocacy of Pan-Islam). In April 1889, following his visit to Iran, Browne called at the Foreign Office to voice concern about the treatment of Zoroastrians in that country (see P.R.O., F.O. 60/499, no. 69). Similarly, in a letter to the Pall Mall Gazette on 26 November 1891, while stating that the “Kajar yoke presses on the necks” of the entire Iranian population, he went on to concentrate on accounts of the persecution of adherents of the “Babi religion, a faith far purer than the corrupt Muhammadanism of these unjust rulers and fanatical priests” (p. 3, c. b.).

5. There would be a line of continuity between the campaign led by these British foreign policy dissenters against the Iranian policy of the Conservative administration of Lord Salisbury, and what I have termed the post-1906 “Left opposition” to the handling of the Iranian question by the Liberal Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey. Not only was this the first true instance when the British critics of their government's handling of Iranian policy spoke of the violation of the rights and welfare of the “Persian people,” but some of these critics were to also participate at various times in the attacks launched against Sir Edward Grey's Iranian policy between 1906 and 1912, in which Browne would play a leading role. These individuals included Cunninghame Graham and Alpheus C. Morton. It should be pointed out, however, that some limited contact did occur between the Iranian dissidents in London and some of Salisbury's critics. For example, see the report of the address given by Sayyid Jamal al-Din at the National Liberal Club on December 18, 1891, in Manchester Guardian, 19 December 1891, 8, c. c.

6. See also Bonakdarian, M., “The Left Opposition to Sir Edward Grey's Iranian Policy, 1906–1912” (Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 1991Google Scholar).

7. Echoing the nineteenth-century campaign of Italian national unification, Browne in 1910 refers to the constitutional movement as the “Persian ‘Risorgimento'” (Persian Revolution, 2).

8. See Bonakdarian, M., “Persia Committee and the Constitutional Revolution in Iran,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 18, no. 2 (1992): 186–207CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9. Professor John Gurney, at the University of Oxford, is currently preparing a biography of Browne. Thanks are due to Professors Michael Beard and Abbas Amanat, as well as other colleagues, for bringing Professor Gurney's project to my attention. Hassan Javadi's introduction to H. Javadi, ed., Nāmahā'ī az Tabrīz (Letters from Tabriz, compiled by Browne) is a good summary of Browne's endorsement of the Iranian revolution. Mention should also be made of the following two books on Browne, which deal primarily with his interest in the Babi and Baha'i faiths: Balyuzi, H. M., Edward Granville Browne and the Baha'i Faith (1970)Google Scholar; and Momen, M., ed., Selections from the Writings of E. G. Browne on the Babi and Baha'i Religions (1987)Google Scholar.

10. For a discussion of the contemporary Iranian characterizations of the movement, see Lambton, A. K. S., “The Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1905–6,” in Vatikiotis, P. J., ed., Revolutions in the Middle East and Other Case Studies (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1972), 175Google Scholar.

11. Naturally this study of Browne, just as any other claim to historical construction, also falls under the heading of “historical imagination.” For a broader theoretical formulation of this concept see White, H., Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973Google Scholar). White contends: “I will consider the historical work as what it most manifestly is—that is to say, a verbal structure in the form of a narrative prose discourse that purports to be a model, or icon, of past structures and processes in the interest of explaining what they were by representing them” (p. 2, emphasis added).

12. Between 1908 and 1912, Browne published his Persian Revolution (1910) and upwards of six shorter publications; and had at the very least five articles, as well as 29 individual and 7 co-authored “letters to the editor” printed in the British press that dealt specifically with the Iranian situation.

13. In Orientalism Said mentions Browne only once. Referring to Orientalists, such as Burton, who volunteered their services to the British Empire, he remarks: “Their scholarly frame of reference, such as it was, was fashioned by people like William Muir, Anthony Bevan … E. G. Browne … ” (p. 224). This uncommitted reference to Browne, who in many ways contrasts sharply with the model of Orientalists directly or indirectly in the service of imperialism, reflects Said's own selective mode of historical reconstruction. By denying Browne and others like him their dissenting voices, it tends to historically sterilize Orientalist contributions to the anti-imperialist campaigns early in the century. This is not to deny Said's invaluable contribution to the historiography of imperialism and debates on the nature of the Foucauldian paradigm of power/knowledge in general, but rather to underline what he himself acknowledges in passing remarks as the non-holistic nature of his treatment of Orientalism—a point often overlooked by some of his readers. In his recent Culture and Imperialism, Said is precariously dismissive of individuals such as the British conservative Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, who undertook an incessant campaign of condemning the 1882 British occupation of Egypt and constructed a history of Egyptian nationalist resistance to British imperialism in The Secret History of the British Occupation of Egypt (1907)Google Scholar. Said acknowledges that condemnations of European imperialism “had of course been made before [post-1945 struggles for national liberation], even by such intrepid Europeans as Samuel Johnson and W. S. Blunt” (p. 195), but nonetheless he maintains later: “Certainly there were late-nineteenth-century intellectuals (Wilfrid Scawen Blunt and William Morris) who were totally opposed to imperialism, but they were far from influential. … In other words, there was no overall condemnation of imperialism until—and this is my point—after native uprisings were too far gone to be ignored or defeated” (p. 241). One may object to such a conclusion on two fronts. For one, it regards the contribution of individuals such as Browne and Blunt to the fostering of a climate of public opinion in imperialist countries as negligible in the future development of large-scale oppositions to the imperial policies of the state, thereby suggesting a sharp break in the historical process rather than a sense of continuity. It is also questionable whether a crowd of reportedly 6,000 who attended the 1912 meeting of the Committee for condemning the Iranian policy of the British government (see The Times, 16 January 1912, 7, c. c) indicates that “they were far from influential,” keeping in mind that the Persia Committee could count on no more than very small audiences at its initial gatherings in 1908. Secondly, this conclusion tends to also trivialize the gradual erosion of imperial domination due to early acts of native resistance, simply because these were often “defeated” (though certainly not “ignored“). To use James C. Scott's argument in his Weapons of the Weak (dealing with peasant acts of resistance in contemporary Malaysia), Said tends to emphasize the more recent successful and large-scale nationalist revolutionary outbursts at the expense of earlier “everyday forms of resistance,” to the point of almost completely ignoring them. But it was these forms of resistance that prepared the ground for future large-scale revolutions and increasingly attracted attention in the imperialist countries to the infractions of the rights of the native populations in subjugated regions.

14. “The Orientalist was an expert, like Renan or Lane, whose job in society was to interpret the Orient for his compatriots. The relation between Orientalists and Orient was essentially hermeneutical: standing before a distant, barely intelligible civilization or cultural movement, the Orientalist scholar reduced the obscurity by translating, sympathetically portraying, inwardly grasping the hard-to-reach object” (Said, Orientalism, 222).

15. One of Browne's contemporary British chroniclers of Iranian events, who was to participate directly in the Iranian civil war between the constitutionalist and royalist camps, was Arthur Moore. As a special correspondent of the Persia Committee reporting for some of the liberal British press in 1909, Moore was to participate in the nationalist defense of the city of Tabriz against the royalist forces, only to grow disenchanted with the nationalist leaders shortly thereafter. See his The Orient Express (London: Constable and Company, 1914Google Scholar).

16. Although by no means a “subaltern” approach to Iranian history, Browne's methodology was moving remarkably in the direction of what Janet Abu-Lughod refers to as a “new ‘truth’ [that] may come from a perspective that incorporates the interpretations of victims as well as victors” (Before European Hegemony: The World System, A.D. 1250–1350 [New York: Oxford University Press, 1989], viiiGoogle Scholar).

17. Persian Revolution, xxi. To check the accuracy of the material included in his book, Browne sent copies of the proofs to his sources of information. Major Stokes, one of Browne's informants at the British legation in Tehran, first urged Browne not to publish the book until the publication of David Fraser's forthcoming book on the Iranian situation, so as to have an opportunity to refute what was expected to be an unfavorable account of the constitutionalists. Shortly afterwards, however. Stokes was to hasten Browne to speed up the publication of his book, so it could “be in the hands of the public . . . and . . . MPs interested in Persia” before the resumption of Parliament on 1 November 1910, in the hope that the MPs “might find material for questioning Grey.” Stokes also warned Browne: “As many people think Taqizada a ‘violent’ ‘anarchist’ etc.—the less you mention him as the source of your information, the better.” See Stokes to Browne, 20 June 1910; 8 October 1910, Correspondence of E. G. Browne: 1. Letters from Persia, 1910–11, Add. Mss. 7604, fs. 59–62 (Cambridge University Library). After the publication of the book, Taqizadah (who does not appear to have been consulted about the proofs) complained of a number of “inaccuracies” in Browne's accounts (Taqizadah to Browne, 17 February 1912, Browne Papers, Box 9 [Cambridge University Library], in the envelope marked by H. Javadi “letters from Tabriz”). During the preparation of the book, a notice appeared in the radical Iranian paper Irān-i naw soliciting contributions of photographs for it (14 April 1910, no. 178, 3).

18. In a hyperbolic remark. Sir Thomas Barclay was to comment on Browne in 1912: “What he doesn't know about Persia isn't worth knowing” (Manchester Guardian, 16 January 1912, 7, c. g).

19. See the December 1910 issues.

20. 1 January 1908, Browne Papers, Box 12 (Letters from Persia, 1905–1909). W. A. Smart was Browne's former student who served as one of his informants in the British consular service in Iran, despite his occasional differences of opinion with his former teacher's evaluation of the Iranian situation. The Foreign Office was well aware of Browne's correspondence with Smart and, at least on one occasion, appears to have opened one of Smart's letters to Browne, which were often dispatched in the Foreign Office bag; and on 30 January 1908, Cecil Spring-Rice, who had returned to London from his post as the British representative in Iran, was to urge Browne: “Do have Smart's letters typed and send them in a private letter to [Sir Edward] Grey [British Foreign Secretary] … telling him that they seem to you to be of very great interest but that naturally they are written only as personal communication to you” (Browne Papers, Box 12 [Letters from Persia, 1905–1909]).

21. Persia and Turkey in Revolt (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1910), 41Google Scholar. Of course, Fraser does not point out that the printed official documents were often adulterated versions intended for favorable public consumption.

22. For example, the Foreign Office carried out an investigation of Browne's sources for his 1912 The Reign of Terror at Tabriz: England's Responsibility. See F.O. 371/1449, files 43700, 44810, 47373, 54882 (Public Record Office). This investigation seems to have come in the aftermath of a drawn-out exchange of allegations between the Foreign Office and Spring-Rice on the one hand, and Browne and a number of Grey's critics on the other, over Browne's quotation in Manchester Guardian (2 December 1911, 9, cc. c-d) of an “unofficial” statement made by Spring- Rice at a private meeting with Browne regarding the 1907 Anglo-Russian Agreement. See F.O. 800/241, 320–8; Colonel Beddoes to Browne (6 December 1911), Philip Morrell to Browne (5 February 1912), Spring-Rice to Browne (16 March 1912), in Browne Papers, Box 9.

23. For example, see Manchester Guardian, 30 October 1911, 4, c. g.

24. See his condemnation of “Haydar Khan” in Manchester Guardian, 3 May 1911, 7, c. f.

25. Persian Revolution, 441–2. Also see Smart's letter containing the information on Sattar Khan, 18 June 1910 in Correspondence of E. G. Browne: 1. Letters from Persia, 1910–11, Add. Mss. 7604, fs. 102–5 (Cambridge University Library). Even though in general Smart had a very low opinion of the population of Tabriz (“I cannot say I like the Azerbaijanli. Perhaps not speaking his barbarous dialect accounts for my antipathy. He is a sad dog” [Smart to Browne, 14 January 1910, ibid., fs. 116–19]), it is possible that Browne accepted Smart's unfavorable portrayal of Sattar Khan because the previous year he had received a similar description from Moore, the journalist dispatched to Tabriz by the Persia Committee (Moore to Browne, 19 June 1909, Browne Papers, Box 9).

26. The Times, 23 January 1909, 6, c. d. In fact, the Tabriz anjuman (revolutionary assembly) to which Taqizadah belonged—he had became Browne's closest friend among the Iranian exiles and was the main target of the pro-Foreign Office press in Britain as a radical “revolutionary“—had openly called for the overthrow of the Shah shortly after the failed royalist coup attempt in late 1907. See Manchester Guardian, 16 December 1907, 7, c. d. Browne was constantly on guard against injurious portrayals of the Iranian constitutionalists in the British press. Fearing the possible repercussions of the British media coverage of executions of anti-constitutionalists in Iran after the 1909 overthrow of Muhammad ‘Ali Shah, he was to plead with Taqizadah that if it was necessary for the constitutionalists to execute their foes, they should do so by less appalling means than hanging (Browne to Taqizadah, 28 January 1910, in ‘Zaryab, A. Z. and Afshar, I., eds., Nāmahā-yi Idvārd Brawn bah Sayyid Hasan Taqīzādah [Tehran: Jibi, 1975], 26–7Google Scholar). Professor Abbas Amanat has commented appropriately that Browne's silence on the non-orthodox religious background of some of the Iranian constitutionalists (specifically the Babi orientation of a number of the leading personalities, including some members of the clergy) would also qualify as an example of his selective omission of “facts,” since he would not have wished to jeopardize support for the constitutional movement in Iran by publicizing this knowledge. What is interesting in this regard is that, although Browne's statements in reference to the Babis could well have been made with an eye to possible ramifications in Iran of any affinity between Babis and the constitutional camp, his remarks, nonetheless, portrayed the Babis as an obsolete movement of reform. At the meeting of the Central Asian Society on 11 November 1908 Browne commented: “The Babis could not be oblivious to the fact that the Nationalists had been largely supported by the priesthood, though there was a strong reactionary element in that body. This element, as the Babis foresaw, would have discounted the movement as anti-orthodox had the hated sect identified itself therewith. There was no reason to suppose that the sympathies of the Babis, though not openly manifested, were directed otherwise than towards the party which stood for religious freedom [i.e, constitutionalists].” He went on to add: “The main interest of the Babis was to secure the spread of their religion, and as it was a reforming, Puritan faith, he (Professor Browne) at one time felt that the regeneration of Persia was in their hands. But his sympathy was now transferred to the Constitutionalists, for he felt that their programme was more practical than that of the Babis” (Browne, , “The Persian Constitutionalists,” Proceedings of the Central Asian Society [London: Central Asian Society, 1909], 12–13Google Scholar). It should be mentioned that, unlike his strong sympathy for the Babis, Browne's estimation of the Baha'is underwent some degree of depreciation during this period. In a letter to Taqizadah, Browne wrote on 8 May 1911: “Even if the Baha'is did not support the deposed Shah [Muhammad ‘Ali], they would not have suffered themselves for the constitution” (Zaryab and Afshar, Nāmahā, 35).

27. Many Iranian constitutionalists considered themselves “millīyūn (nationalists)” (Lambton, “Persian Constitutional Revolution,” 175). In fact, in 1910 Browne argued that since “Throughout the struggle the Persians have consciously been fighting for their very existence as a Nation … in this sense the popular or constitutional party may very properly be termed ‘Nationalists.'” Having thus defined the Iranian constitutionalists, Browne tried to dissociate Iranian nationalism from other nationalist currents which may have alarmed his British readers. “Yet having regard to prejudice existing in England, especially at the present time, the term is not altogether a happy one, and has undoubtedly done much to prejudice a considerable section of English opinion against those to whom it is applied. Most men are ruled by names rather than ideas, and I have no doubt that many a staunch Unionist and many an Anglo-Indian or Anglo-Egyptian official has transferred to the so-called ‘Nationalists’ of Persia all the prejudices with which this term is associated in his mind. The main point, however, on which I wish to insist is that in Persia the party which is variously termed ‘Nationalist,’ ‘Constitutionalist’ and ‘Popular’ is essentially the patriotic party, which stands for progress, freedom, tolerance, and above all national independence.” He then went on to label the Iranian Constitutionalist movement as “Persia for the Persians,” in the manner of W. S. Blunt's description of the Egyptian nationalist movement as “Egypt for Egyptians” (Browne, Persian Revolution, xix–xxGoogle Scholar). It should be pointed out that, in the case of Ireland, Browne supported Irish Home Rule and was therefore opposed to “staunch Unionise[s]”; and Irish Nationalist MPs played an active role in promoting the cause of Iranian constitutionalists.

28. Persian Revolution, xxi.

29. Browne, “Persian Constitutionalists,” 2–3. He would reiterate this view in the opening of his 1910 book: “The Persian ‘Risorgimento’ . . . really dates back, so far as its outward manifestations are concerned, to the successful agitation against the Tobacco Monopoly in 1891, while the ideas which gave rise to that unexpected outburst of popular discontent began to be promulgated in Persia at least five or six years earlier [by Sayyid Jamal al-Din Asadabadi]” (Persian Revolution, 2). Browne's appraisal of the Tobacco rebellion as an indication of the existence of Iranian “public opinion,” was the very exact theme which Sir Frank Lascelles, the British representative to Iran from 1891 to 1894, had pondered in 1892 in his letter to the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Salisbury: ”. . . whether the [Iranian] abstention from smoking [in objection to Talbot's 1890 tobacco concession] may not be considered as an expression of public opinion such as has hitherto been unknown in Persia” (Third Marquess of Salisbury Papers, F.O. [Private Correspondence], vol. 71, Persia II, 1890–92, f. 170) (Hatfield House). Incidentally, at the time, The Times also voiced surprise at the opposition displayed towards the tobacco concession by the Iranian public, which it regarded as “the most apathetic of the Oriental races” (10 November 1892, 3, c. e). In a 1908 gathering at Cambridge, where Taqizadah also made a speech, Browne reportedly dated the origins of the Iranian Constitutional movement “as far back as 1850, when Prince Malkom Khan, the Persian Minister in London, wrote in favor of a Constitution; whilst Sayyid Jamal-ed-din also preached and propagated the movement” (The Times, 30 November 1908, 8, c. e). The date mentioned in the report of Browne's address (i.e., 1850) is most likely either a misprint or an error on Browne's part, since Malkum Khan was not appointed Iranian representative to London until 1873 and his first treatise on reform, Kitābchah-yi ghaybī, was not completed before 1858.

30. “Without the support of the Clergy the people could neither have broken down the Tobacco Monopoly [1890–91] nor have extorted from the Sháh a Constitution [in 1906]. On the other hand the Clergy certainly did not approve of all the democratic ideas of the Popular Party. … The democrats cannot afford to dispense with the influence of the Clergy, and are careful on all occasions to emphasize the fact that true Islám is democratic, and that their aims are inspired and comfortable with the Muhammadan religion. The clericals, on the other hand, know that, great as their influence is, they can only keep it by moving with the people, and that opposition to the popular feeling would seriously damage or even utterly destroy their power” (Persian Revolution, 147). While it is true that many of the Iranian “democrats” and radical constitutionalists were insistent on the proximity of their views and “true Islam,” if for no other reason than tactical concerns, Browne's depiction of the “democrats” as the “Popular Party” or the representatives of “the popular feeling” is questionable. Although the “Popular Party” can be read as “anti-autocratic,” the warning to the clergy not to risk alienating “the popular feeling” behind the “democrats” tends to suggest a greater hold over the populace by the secular elements in the struggle against the Shah than by the clergy; which reflects Browne's invention of an Iranian political atmosphere that could yield greater appeal to his British readers. On the exigency of the clergy's support for the “popular” movement, also see Browne, “Persia and the Shah: National Struggle Against Tyranny,” Manchester Guardian, 18 January 1909, 6, cc. f–g. On three varying interpretations of clerical support for the constitutional movement in Iran, which maintain that: 1) the leading pro-constitutional clergy in Ottoman Najaf did not fully comprehend “constitutionalism”; 2) that the clerics who were supportive of the constitutional struggle were the “modernized” elements of the clergy; and 3) that many of the clergy who echoed the constitutionalist demands were generally the lower-ranking and/or non-orthodox members, see, respectively, ‘Hairi, A., Shi'ism and Constitutionalism in Iran (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1977Google Scholar), Martin, V., Islam and Modernism: The Iranian Revolution of 1906 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1989Google Scholar), and Bayat, M., Iran's First Revolution: Shi'ism and the Constitutional Revolution of 1905–1909 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991Google Scholar).

31. The complete sentence, which also reveals Browne's attitude towards socialism, in spite of his cooperation with socialists on the Iranian question, reads as follows: “As Socialism is bad because it destroys individual idiosyncracies, so Imperialism is bad because it destroys national idiosyncracies.” See Browne's undated eight-page essay on Islam and the East, possibly written some time around late 1907 (since he refers to an article in Sūr-i Isrāfīl of 30 May 1907 and mentions in passing “the Persian Constitutional Movement of the last two years” [Browne Papers, Box 8]). Though I am unaware if this essay was ever published or presented at a public lecture, Browne's concern with “national idiosyncracies” is a rampant theme in many of his writings. For example, see the following footnote for his condemnation of the “Turkifying” policy of the Young Turks, or his remarks on “Persian identity” in the remainder of this paper.

32. “That the ‘Young Turks’ have been guilty not only of errors but of crimes is admitted not only by their friends but by many of themselves; but their worst faults, their Jingoism, and their attempts to ‘Turkify’ the Arab, Albanian, and other non- Turkish elements of the Empire, were inspired, as I believe, not by Islam, to which many of them profess a very loose attachment, but by the French ideas which have played too preponderant a part in their education. It is often forgotten that irreligion is by no means always or even generally conducive to tolerance, and that free-thinking France, which expels her religious orders and forbids the use of the Breton tongue in a Breton pulpit is probably more intolerant than Catholic Spain” (Manchester Guardian, 30 October 1911, 4, c. g). This passage, in which Browne vindicates Islam and denounces the excesses of European secular liberalism, is also intriguing since Browne is, in a roundabout way, accusing the Young Turks of undertaking policies against the non-Turkish populations of the Ottoman empire which paralleled the actions of European imperialist powers.

33. For an eloquent discussion of “alterity” see Suleri, S., The Rhetoric of English India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

34. See ‘Navai, A., Dawlathā-yi Irān: az āghāz-i mashrūṭīyaț tā ūltīmātum (Tehran: Babak, 1976), 102Google Scholar. It is possible to speculate on Browne's attitude concerning the potential “spectacle” effect of Taqizadah's traditional appearance as a possible way of attracting British public attention to the Iranian exiles.

35. “Persia and the Shah: National Struggle against Tyranny,” Manchester Guardian, 18 January 1909, 6, cc. f–g. The British Orientalist, Sir Henry C. Rawlinson (1810–95), had served as British Minister in Tehran from 1859–60. Of course, one possible reading of Rawlinson's remark, which would no doubt have been contrary to Browne's purpose, would be that Iranians had hardly made any progress since the time of Herodotus (who incidentally, along with Rawlinson, was an “outside” observer commenting on the peculiarities of the “Persians“). It should also be mentioned that Browne would have been well aware, for example, that although Iranians had not embraced Arabic as their language, they had nevertheless borrowed heavily from Arabic vocabulary and adopted the Arabic script and Islam, implying that Iranian culture had therefore been significantly altered in different ways by each of these “great national disasters.”

36. It should be noted that in his letter to the editor in Manchester Guardian, 8 January 1912, on “British Policy in Persia” Wilfrid Scawen Blunt also referred to Iran's “ancient” history in his discussion of the possibility of Grey's recourse to a moral plea aimed at moderating St. Petersburg's acts of aggression in Iran: “He would be obliged to point out how wrong a thing it was for a great Christian Power to take advantage of the weakness and financial straits of an ancient but non-Christian nation” (p. 3, c. b).

37. On the role played by Browne and the British foreign policy dissenters in assisting the Iranian constitutionalist forces, see Bonakdarian, “Left Opposition” and idem, “Persia Committee.”

38. 13 April 1912, 51.

39. Browne was speaking at the “annual meeting of the British branch of the Eastern Question Association” on 2 February 1910. See The Times, 3 February 1910, 6, c. c.

40. It is interesting that years later Taqizadah would liken Browne to Lord Byron, the British Romantic poet who was killed at the battle of Missolonghi in 1824 while fighting alongside the Greek nationalist forces against the Ottomans (Maqālāt 11:55).

41. For example, see The Times, 12 November 1908, 7, c. e.

42. 6 November 1907, Spring-Rice archives (CASR 1/4, fs. 14 [Churchill College, Cambridge]). Similar sentiments were shared by W. S. Blunt, who made the following entry in his diary in 1911: “I am sick of Eastern politics and intend to do no more when this Tripoli business is over. It cannot end otherwise than in the partition of the Ottoman Empire, a little sooner or a little later. There are too many hungry wolves to be satisfied with less. And it is 30 years since I began the battle. I feel inclined to say with Pitt ‘Roll up the map of Egypt'” (W. S. Blunt Papers: General Memoirs, 1910–12, ms. 11–1975, f. 273 [Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge]). When asked by Blunt to join the new Egyptian Committee in 1920, Browne was to reply: “I [am] absolutely sick of politics and intend to devote my [time?] in the future to scholarship, which I find much more satisfying”; going on to add that if anything could compel him to again devote his time to politics, “it would be Persia rather than Egypt. One oppressed nation is about as much as any individual can take on, and the world is full of oppressed nations” (Blunt Papers, ms. 1020–1977 [Fitzwilliam Museum]).

43. Browne Papers, Box 12 (Letters from Persia 1905–1909). This suggestion actually sounds much closer to Blunt's position than Browne's more ambivalent stance on Muslim solidarity (e.g., see footnote 49 below).

44. For example see Manchester Guardian, 18 September 1908, 6, c. d; 22 July 1910, 6, c. g; 26 October 1910, 6, cc. c–d; 14 November 1911, 16, c. b; The Nation, 25 June 1910, 456, cc. 1–2; The Times, 14 December 1911, 5, c. d. Browne was not alone in his reliance on the theme of Muslim outrage throughout the empire over London's handling of Iranian affairs. In a number of articles which often misrepresented Iran as “the France of Islam” or “the intellectual capital of Islam,” and tended to assign a collective identity to Islam, the Manchester Guardian raised the threat of “difficulties” for British hegemony in other parts of the region in response to British policy towards Iran. “It puts on Persia the badge of inferiority that has driven not Persia alone wild with anger, but Islam. There were many Turks present at the meeting in Constantinople . . . which denounced England as the ‘devourer of Mussulman countries,’ and which has since sent to the Kaiser a telegram hailing him as the natural protector of Islam and inviting his intervention. A foolish action no doubt for it to take, but one that reveals the precipice at our feet. Constantinople is the political as Persia is the intellectual capital of Islam. We cannot make enemies of Persia without deeply offending Turkey . . . and to raise up fresh difficulties for our rule in Egypt, India, and Afghanistan” (Manchester Guardian, 26 October 1910, 6, cc. c–d). Also see ibid., 23 January 1909, 8, cc. b–c; 5 September 1910, 6, c. f.

45. Manchester Guardian, 30 October 1911, 4, c. g.

46. After 1910 Grey's opponents on the Left would also rely on Syed Ameer Ali, a Shi'i representative of India's Muslim community, who had been appointed to the Privy Council of the Empire. For example see The Times, 3 February 1910, 6, cc. b - c; 26 September 1912, 5, c. e; Manchester Guardian, 2 December 1911, 9, c. b. As an example of British anxiety about the Pan-Islamic movement, see the 14-page 1906 memorandum by Lord Cromer on Egyptian nationalism and Pan-Islam, in Minto Papers, ms. 12638, ff. 40–46 (National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh). Between 1883 and 1896 the Foreign Office had collected a mass of information on Sayyid Jamal al-Din Asadabadi and Pan-Islam (see F.O. 60/594 [Public Record Office, London]). Even though Valentine Chirol had attempted to repudiate world-wide Muslim sympathy for the Iranian constitutional movement by suggesting that the majority of the Muslims, who were Sunnis, would not despair over Iran's fate, which was predominantly Shi'i, the Foreign Office could not comfortably disregard the effect of the situation in Iran on Muslim opinion in India, particularly given the communications both the press and the Foreign Office received from various Muslim communities there in objection to London's Iranian policy. See F.O. 371/1422, file nos. 1366 & 1288; F.O. 371/1423; The Times, 13 January 1912, 5, c. d, and 20 January 1912, 5, c. c; Manchester Guardian, 15 January 1912, 7, c. c, and 22 January 1912, 14, c. e. Even the Conservative Lord Curzon, who had served as viceroy to India from 1899 to 1905, insisted on “the tremendous law of interaction in the Mahommedan world.” See Parliamentary Debates (Lords), 5th series, vol. X, 1911, cc. 677, 689. Also see Spring-Rice to Grey, 28 March 1907, Grey papers, F.O. 800/70, 100–101. In November 1910 J. Ramsay MacDonald (Labour) and Dr. Rutherford (Radical) had attempted to incite Indian Muslims residing in Britain in opposition to the British policy in Iran. See “The Report of Proceedings of a Representative Meeting of Mohammedan Residents in England and Other Sympathisers with Persia to Consider the Recent Developments of British Policy in Persia,” in Browne Papers, Box 8. Also see Browne, Persian Revolution, 1. In connection with raising the specter of a native backlash to British administration in India, it should also be noted that in the summer of 1911 Browne was urging the Parsi community to assist the cause of the Iranian constitutionalists, by saying that “to the Zoroastrians of India Persia should be what Palestine was to the Jews” (The Times, 28 June 1911, 7, c. b).

47. Two recent works have also referred to Browne's attitude towards “Pan-Islam” briefly in passing. In The Politics of Pan-Islam: Ideology and Organization (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 1Google Scholar (first published in 1990), J. M. Landau, looking at Browne's 1902 article on “Pan-Islamism,” maintains that he “considered it non-existent.” On the other hand, in her Iran's First Revolution, Mangol Bayat stresses the influence of the proponent of Pan-Islamic ideology, Sayyid Jamal al-Din Asadabadi, on Browne and claims that Browne “by the time he came to write The Persian Revolution of 1905–1909 … was still raising objections to the use and implication of the term, yet he had come to think that there was ‘amongst the Muslim nations a sense of brotherhood and community of interests’ and that the threat of European power had ‘awakened these states to a sense of their common dangers’” (p. 3).

48. After distinguishing Pan-Islam from “fanaticism,” Browne comments: “But without doubt recent events have done much to create amongst the Muslim nations a sense of brotherhood and community of interests. Just as the activity of Trades Unions led to the formation of Masters' Unions, so the threatened spoliation of the few remaining independent Muhammadan States (Turkey, Persia and Morocco) by European Powers, acting singly or in conjunction, has awakened these states to a sense of their common dangers, and is gradually but inevitably leading them towards a certain solidarity. In this sense we may, // we choose, speak of a Pan-Islamic movement” (Persian Revolution, 1, emphasis added). As the italicized segments of this quotation suggest, Browne was not specific as to the nature of the solidarity between Muslim nations, and would go no further than to promote this loosely defined solidarity only so far as it was a temporary “defensive” move (he actually uses the term “defensive” prior to the quoted passage). By contrasting the qualities of Pan-Islam with “Pan- Germanism” and “Pan-Slavism,” Browne again seems to be suggesting that Islam was somehow synonymous with national cultural identity. Also note Browne's analogy between “the activity of Trades Unions” and the harmful effects of imperialism as a revelation of his aversion to trade unionism.

49. Referring to a protest meeting in Constantinople in objection to the British policy towards Iran, he wrote Taqizadah on 8 May 1911: “I have no doubt that the combined Muslim protests in opposition to the British ‘Note,’ and in particular, the largely attended protest meeting in Istanbul, had a great impact on those in charge of affairs here who had never believed in this degree of unity between Muslims, and especially between the Shi'is and the Sunnis” (Zaryab and Afshar, Nāmahā, 34).

50. In Persian Revolution Browne wrote: “As regards the frontier dispute, which was going on at least as early as the beginning of 1906 and was still acute in July, 1908 [i.e., the month during which the Young Turks finally succeeded in restoring the 1876 Ottoman constitution], the Turks were clearly the aggressors, claiming and occupying points on the Persian side of the mountains between Salmás and Margawar, west of Urmiya, to which they had no shadow of right” (pp. 125–6). What is interesting about this passage is Browne's decision not to go past the convenient date of July 1908 in his account of Ottoman acts of territorial aggression against Iran, which was likely intended to avoid discrediting the Young Turks. At Blunt's instigation, in late 1908 Browne had attempted, and failed, to secure a durable and vigorous alliance between the Young Turks and the Iranian constitutionalists, even though the two groups initially provided mutual endorsement of their respective revolutions.

51. For example see his public letter to Ayatollah Khurasani which appeared in Irān-i naw, 21 January 1911, no. 73, 4, and the first part of his letter in Irān-i naw, 19 January 1911, no. 72, 2.

52. Browne had great admiration for Khurasani's contribution to the constitutional struggle and his “true patriotism.” See his letter of 8 May 1911 to Taqizadah in Zaryab and Afshar, Nāmahā, 35. Similarly, in Persian Revolution Browne remarks that Sayyid Jamal al-Din Asadabadi was considered a “great patriot” by his admirers (p. 3).

53. Irān-i naw, 19 January 1911, no. 72, 2., and 21 January 1911, no. 73, 3. Browne does not mention, and may well have been unaware of, the religiously symbolic authority of Japanese emperors, which the Japanese modernizing parliamentarians (who carried out the Meji Restoration of 1868) relied upon as a unifying force for the nation. Also see Browne, Persian Revolution, 2. Although many commentators in Iran and elsewhere shared Browne's fascination with Japan's rapid economic and military growth, such commentaries tended to remain curiously silent on the issue of Japan's own imperialist policies. Incidentally, it is possible that Browne's contribution to the relief of the widows and orphans of the Japanese soldiers and sailors killed during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5 was more than just a casual humanitarian gesture and also reflected his admiration for Japan as a powerful independent Asian country. See the letter of gratitude Browne received from the Japanese Consulate General in London on October 11, 1907, Browne Papers, Box 12, Bundle 6, f. 34.

54. Manchester Guardian, 9 January 1912, 8, c. a. Browne's use of Biblical imagery, such as the reference to “Baal” in this statement, is a relatively recurrent feature of his writings.

55. Persian Revolution, 2.

56. While there had been a number of occasions during which vociferous objections had been raised in Britain against atrocities committed by various European powers against the populations of militarily weaker regions, these were often triggered by domestic political squabbles in Britain itself. The sensationalist press of the late nineteenth century also contributed to these outcries. It is interesting that Browne does not offer examples, such as William Gladstone's condemnation of British massacres of Afghans and Zulus in 1879 (in opposition to Benjamin Disraeli's Conservative government), as a way of grounding his invented tradition in history. It should be added that, when himself prime minister, Gladstone did not hesitate to brutally occupy Egypt in 1882.

57. It needs to be stressed, in connection with the participation of non-Muslim groups in the Iranian constitutional struggle, that so far as it has been documented, at least Babis and Armenians played a very prominent role. On the participation of the Armenians, see Cosroe Chaqueri, “The Role and Impact of Armenian Intellectuals in Iranian Politics, 1905–1911,” The Armenian Review 41, no. 2 (1988): 1–51.

58. The Bishop of Hereford was one of these. See the report of the mass public meeting of the Persia Committee in Manchester Guardian, 15 January 1912, 7, c. c.

59. There are numerous references to these communications in Bonakdarian, “Left Opposition,” and idem , “Persia Committee,” 192, n. 23. There were also individuals such as Mirza Aqa Khan of Isfahan (a.k.a. Nafti), a former Majlis deputy at the time opposed to the constitutional camp, who in his letters to the British press denounced Browne's actions as meddling in Iran's internal affairs. For example, see ‘A. Navai, Dawlathā, 94.

60. Morris A. J. A., C. P. Trevelyan 1870–1958: Portrait of a Radical, 109. Bertrand Russell euphemistically described Browne's efforts in support of the Iranian constitutionalists as “disinterested” (The Policy of Entente, 1904–1914: A Reply to Professor Gilbert Murray [Manchester: National Labour Press, n.d.]).

61. For example see Ponsonby's letter to Browne in Bonakdarian, “Persia Committee,” 195.

62. Though Blunt often found Browne in a state of “despair” (for example, see Blunt, My Diaries: Part Two, 1900 to 1914 [London: Martin Seeker, 1920], 389Google Scholar), Browne does not appear to have ever abandoned hope in the final triumph of the Iranian nation, and appears to have maintained a tragi-comic assessment of Iran's fate.

63. See W. A. Smart's letter of 14 January 1910: “You wrote you also were pessimistic regarding Persia, not because of the Persian people's unworthiness, but because of Russian action in Persia. I think you are mistaken” (Correspondence of E. G. Browne: 1. Letters from Persia, 1910–11, Add. Mss. 7604 fs. 116–19. H. F. B. Lynch, the founder of the Persia Committee who had been growing further and further apart from Browne's interpretation of events, was more forthright than Smart: “You are pursuing an ideal policy as an idealist” (Lynch to Browne, 29 September 1910, Browne Papers, Box 9). Even as late as 1914 Browne was responding to the charges of the Foreign Office and The Times that he and his cohorts were “sentimentalists” (Browne, , “The Persian Oil Concession,” International Review 1, no. 11 [1914]Google Scholar). Of course, among Browne's associates in the Iranian campaign there were also the likes of the Radical V. H. Rutherford, who regarded “idealism” as a positive and necessary quality. See Rutherford's introduction to Howsin, Hilda M., The Significance of Indian Nationalism (London: A. C. Field, 1909Google Scholar).

64. By 1912 Sir Edward Grey was at least partially yielding to the mounting pressure from his opponents, as evident from his communications with Russian officials. See “Conversations between M. Sazanoff and Sir Edward Grey at Balmoral on Thursday, 24th September 1912,” Crewe Papers, C/17 (Grey, 1912) (Cambridge University Library); Grey of Fallodon, Twenty-Five Years, 1892–1916, vol. I (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1925), 164Google Scholar.