The Persian Struggle

Irish Review (Dublin)

The Persian StruggleAuthor(s): Frederick RyanSource: The Irish Review (Dublin), Vol. 1, No. 6 (Aug., 1911), pp. 281-286Published by: Irish Review (Dublin)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30062727 .

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The Persian Struggle ITy FREDERICK RrAN

FOR political interest, nay for political romance, there is nothing in the twentieth century to compare with the amazing transformation which is going on in the East. To touch

but the fringe of that story is to have a sense of what one imagines must have been the magic of the days of Mirabeau and Danton and Carnot, and the armies of French marching to the conquest of a new world. Japan, in a comparatively few years, has entered the councils of the Western nations as an equal. Turkey, for long regarded as in the last stage of decay, has wakened to reveal a new and vigorous life, and has established a Parliament. In China the National Assembly meets in October to consider the Constitution. Egypt is pulsating with political life. India is, at once, the riddle and the retribution of the bureaucrats who would keep her in political chains.

Amongst these Oriental peoples and their struggles the Persians

present an exceptionally interesting story, and it has been told in this volume * with great detail and extraordinary sympathy by Prof. E. G. Browne, the most loyal and the most unselfish European friend the Persians possess. In this book he has traced the progress of their recent Revolution, not merely through its outward phases, but back to its moral and intellectual beginnings twenty years ago.

The origin of the demand for constitutional rule in the East is the

perception of the way in which despotism is sapping the economic and

political foundations of these states. It is, indeed, worth the while of those pessimists who doubt the worth of democracy, even such diluted

democracy as prevails in Europe, to examine the effects of its opposite in those countries which have not achieved it. The futility of the ideals of " benevolent despotism " and " paternal government" are there

exposed by the only effective means of testing political theories--actual experience. The hostility of European financiers and bureaucrats to the development of Oriental states along democratic lines simply

'*The Persian Revolution of I9o5-i9o9. By Edward G. Browne, M.A., M.B., F.B.A. (Cambridge University Press.)

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arises from the fact that it is very much easier to corrupt a monarch than a whole assembly of representatives and ministers. Concessions can be procured from the cupidity of autocrats which the public spirit of even the most venal parliament would never dream of granting. It is definitely by way of reaction against European exploitation that the Persian movement began.

During the summer of I899 the then Shah of Persia, Nasiru'd Din, made a journey to Europe. To obtain the necessary funds for this

costly and somewhat babaric tour the Shah granted various concessions and monopolies. In April, for instance, Baron Julius de Reuter obtained a concession for a State Bank, with exclusive rights of issuing bank notes and exploiting the mineral resources of the country. Next, Prince

Dolgorouky obtained, on behalf of Russia, the refusal of any railway concession that might be granted during the next five years. Then a lottery concession was granted to a Persian subject, and immediately bought by a British Syndicate for f40,ooo. De concession en concession, wrote a French physician at the Shah's court, la Perse sera bient't tout entiere entre les mains des dtrangers. The exploiters were in clover. The Imperial Bank of Persia, established by British Royal Charter, philanthropically undertook to construct a road from Ahwaz to Teheran, and parted with its mining rights to a subsidiary company called the Persian Bank Mining Corporation. " Benevolent despotism " was

behaving extremely kindly-to the foreign capitalists. One such kindness, however, was to bring unforeseen and crucial results in its train. On March 8, I890, the Shah granted a Tobacco concession to an English company. "The concessionaire, Mr. G. F. Talbot," writes Prof. Browne, "was thereby granted full control over the pro- duction, sale, and export of all tobacco in Persia for a period of fifty years, in return for which monopoly he undertook to pay to the Shah or the Persian Government an annual rent of k'5,000, in addition to one quarter of the annual profits, after the payment of all working expenses, and a five per cent. dividend on the capital." What this concession was thought to be worth may be judged from the prospectus of the Imperial Tobacco Corporation of Persia, which was formed to

exploit it. On a capital of 650,00ooo the concessionaires estimated they would make a net annual profit for the Corporation of g371,875. A trifle of 50 per cent. or so per annum on the total capital !

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This prospectus was dated Nov. 3, 189o. "In the Spring of I891," writes Dr. Feuvrier, the French doctor before quoted, " a perfect swarm of English subjects and employes, gathered from all parts, Levantines and others, settled down on Persia. It was too good a windfall to lose any time about seizing it." Meanwhile the people were growing exasperated. " The Persians, "remarks Dr. Feuvrier, " could not, without resistance, submit to being obliged to buy from the English the tobacco which they themselves grow and gather in." Now, at this time there was living at Constantinople a very remarkable man who may roughly be compared to some of the philosophes of the pre-Revolutionary epoch in France. The Sayid Jamalu'd Din had had a strange, wandering, adventurous career in Persia, in India, in Egypt. He had accompanied Dost Mohammed Khan in his campaign against Herat, he had been the adviser of the Shah, and then had been expelled from Persia; he had formed a school of disciples in Cairo and been

expelled from Egypt, and he had edited an Arabic newspaper from an attic in Paris. By 1891 he had acquired an immense intellectual influence in the Islamic world, so that Sultans and Shahs were somewhat afraid of him. Half out of fear Abdul Hamid protected him. But when the news of this Persian Tobacco Concession reached him he could not restrain himself. He addressed a long and burning epistle to the Chief

Mujtahid, Mirza Hasan-I-Shirazi, on the Shah's iniquities in general, and the iniquity of the Tobacco Concession in particular, and calling on the Mujtahid to act. The latter did act with decisive and even historic results. " At the beginning of December, I89r," says Prof. Browne, " a letter arrived from the mujtahid of Samarra, Hajji Mirza Hasan of Shiraz, enjoining on the people the complete abandonment of tobacco until the Concession should be repealed. One cannot

sufficiently admire either the wisdom of this master-stroke which without

any act of rebellion, rendered worthless the monopoly of an article, now declared unlawful, or the loyalty and self-abnegation with which the people followed the lead of their spiritual guide." " Suddenly with perfect accord," says Dr. Feuvrier, " all the tobacco merchants have closed their shops, all the qalyans (water-pipes) have been put aside, and no one smokes any longer, either in the city or in the Shah's

entourage, or even in the women's apartments." The Shah's government struck out wildly; there were riots in

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Tabriz, Ispahan and elsewhere. The chief of the tobacco merchants was exiled to Kazvin. But it was all to no purpose. You may give foreigners a lucrative tobacco monopoly but you cannot make people smoke. " None the less," wrote one observer, " is the Tobacco Con- cession sadly compromised, to such a degree that its natural defenders [i.e., the British Legation] seem anxious to abandon it to its fate. I have heard the director himself speak of it in terms of despair, while the British Minister [Sir Frank Lascelles] is reported to have said that, in face of this new attitude of the Persians, of this resistance of which he had not judged them capable, he considered that it was no longer possible to continue the work of his predecessor." Ultimately the situation became impossible. The Tobacco Concession had to be cancelled, and the swarm of Levantine locusts were obliged to depart.

It is proper to dwell on this Tobacco Concession and its defeat at the hands of the people, because to it Prof. Browne attributes the moral origin of the revolution fifteen years later. In Persia, as in France in the eighteenth century, we perceive a fact that is occasionally lost sight of-viz., that revolutions are never merely the product of the moment when they occur, generally their intellectual and moral causes lie a long way in the past. In Persia, for twenty years at least, the active and patriotic section of the people, including many of the higher " clergy," were watching with anger the fashion in which the Shah's despotism was ruining the nation. A secret press was circulating ideas and information, and an underground political life developed which in many respects reminds us of the contemporary case in Russia. Then came the assassination of Nasiru'd Din Shah on May I, I896, by a disciple of Jamalu'd Din. The next ten years recorded no improvement on the part of the Court, whilst the popular discontent was growing. Nasiru'd Din had been succeeded by Muzaffaru'd Din, an amiable but weak monarch, incapable of averting the impending ruin.

Ultimately, as the result of the closing of the bazars and the phenomenon of thousands of people taking bast, or sanctuary, in the British Legation, the Shah was obliged to grant a Constitution, and summon a Mejlis or National Assembly. This occurred in August, 90o6. The Mejlis met on October 7, i9o6. It is curious to note the remarkable points of resemblance between the French and the Persian Revolutions. Thus

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Teheran dominated the Mejlis, as Paris dominated the Constituent

Assembly and the Convention, whilst the immense development of

journalism was a phenomenon of both Revolutions. By the early spring of 1907 there were ninety newspapers being published in Persia, whilst Teheran had quite a number of dailies.

Muzaffaru'd Din, who had granted the Constitution, died on

January 8, 1907, and was succeeded by Mohammed Ali. This monarch

immediately set himself to destroy the Constitution, and, with the help of Russian soldiers, to terrorise the liberal and patriotic forces in the nation. He bombarded the Mejlis building on June 23, 1908, thus precipitating the civil war which ended in his own deposition a year later, when the Nationalist forces had entered Teheran. In Persia, as in France a hundred and twenty years ago, it was the despot and his friends who provoked the bloodshed, though this, of course, will not

prevent sentimentalists and reactionaries continuing to the end of the chapter to impute the guilt of it to the "violence" of the

people. It is no part of my purpose in this brief survey to sketch the varying

phases of the civil strife which went on in Persia for twelve months, the most notable incident being the siege of Tabriz, in which at least one Irishman played a brave part. In July, 1909, the popular forces entered the capital, deposed the Shah, set up his young son on the throne, and re-established the Mejlis.

There have been few books in recent times more sympathetic towards Eastern peoples and more sincere than this of Prof. Browne. If it has a fault it is that of too careful and abundant detail; in some chapters the author rather provides the material for a history than a history itself. Could anything, however, be more interesting to Irish readers than a passage like this :-

"Most of those who watched the Persian constitutional struggle were struck by the rare phenomenon of a popular movement in which the clergy played so prominent a part, since this movement, if successful, could hardly fail to deprive them of a large part at least of their influence and power. It must be remembered, however, that, like the Irish priests, the Persian mullas are an elsentially national class, sprung from the people, and if suspicious of administrative innovations, yet more suspicious of foreign interference."

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And again we read:- " Without the support of the clergy the people could neither have broken

down the Tobacco Monopoly nor have extorted from the Shah a Constitution. On the other hand, the clergy certainly did not approve of all the democratic ideas of the Popular Party, and many conflicts took place between these two factions. Thus the democrats desired to make all Persian subjects equal in the eyes of the Law, but the clericals strongly opposed any surrender of the privileges at present enjoyed by Muslims over the adherents of other religions, and demanded that no law agreed upon by the Assembly should become valid until it had been ratified by a clerical committee as being in conformity with the Shar, or Ecclesiastical Law of Islam."

How entirely intelligible, one had almost written, how Irish, it all is. Between the issues raised in the controversy over the " Ne Temere " decree and these domestic questions in Persia what a little way, after all, separates us ! The secular and democratic forces standing for the equal rights of all Persians, irrespective of religion, the high clerical party clinging to special privileges for Muslims, and yet amongst the

clergy, again, those whose love of national independence, or perhaps more correctly, hatred of what in Ireland is often called " infidel foreign influences," made them valuable champions of the popular cause.

There are many lessons of worth to be drawn from this story of Persia's heroic effort at self-regeneration. With nations as with individuals, reform cometh from within. And though external conditions may favour or thwart and external example stimulate it, yet not by external authority can it ever be compelled. In the case of Persia, also, we learn the essential unity of the human problem under all its different phases and the futility of the philosophy of Western despots who, anxious to dominate and exploit the East, set up the pleasant doctrine that the peoples of the East love despotism, and thus fundamentally differ from the peoples of the West. The laws of human nature are not suspended east of Suez, and there is not a single political struggle in the East to-day that has not its counterpart either in the recent history or the contemporary convulsions of the West. It is in this realisation of human kinship, this shattering of the pride of race and the pride of power and the pride of religion, as well as in the wealth of social experience which now opens before humanity that there lies the greatest hope of moral advance, alike for the Eastern and the Western world.

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The Persian Struggle