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The Creation of the Food Administration in Iran

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Willem M. Floor
Willem M. Floor*
Affiliation:
World Bank in Washington, D.C.
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Extract

Agricultural production considered from an economic point of view has two important functions: first, to provide prime necessities for those inside and outside the agricultural sector, and second, to enable the financing of imports. In preindustrial countries like Qajar Iran, where more than 85 percent of the population was earning its living in the agricultural sector, the economic basis of the country was land and agriculture.

Agricultural production in Qajar Iran was characterized by a low level of technical specialization and labor division. The landlords showed no great interest in furthering agricultural production as indicated by a low level of investment in this sector, while the farmers were not encouraged by their masters to work for greater productivity.

The landlords were interested only in extracting the agricultural surplus, i.e., the agricultural production minus the consumption of the agricultural sector or, in other words, that part of the production that would end up outside the agricultural sector.

Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 3-4: Studies on the Economic and Social History of Iran in the Nineteenth Century , Summer-Autumn 1983 , pp. 199 - 227
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1983

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References

Notes

1. See Lambton, A. K. S., Landlord and Peasant in Persia (London, 1953)Google Scholar; and Issawi, Ch., The Economic History of Iran, 1800-1914 (Chicago, 1972)Google Scholar, Chap. 5.

2. Issawi, op. cit., Chap. 8.

3. Ismā˓īl Khīzī, Amīr, Qiyam-i Āzarbayjān va Sattār Khān (Tehran, 1339), p. 320Google Scholar; Polak, J. E., Das Land und Seine Bewohner (Leipzig, 1865), 2 vols., vol. 1, p. 111.Google Scholar

4. Issawi, op. cit., Chap 2; Kasravī, Aḥmad, Tārīkh-i Mashrūṭah 3 vols. (Tehran, 1319-21), Vol. 1, p. 196.Google Scholar

5. Issawi, op. cit., Chap. 5; Keddie, N., Historical Obstacles to Agrarian Change in Iran (Claremont, 1960).Google Scholar

6. Issawi, op. cit., p. 206.

7. Keddie, op. cit.; “La situation agraire en Perse a la veille de la revolution,” in Revue de Monde Musulmane (RMM), Vol. 12, 1910, pp. 616–25.Google Scholar

8. Issawi, op. cit. Chap. 5.

9. Millspaugh, A. C., Americans in Persia (New York, 1945), p. 99.Google Scholar

10. Ibid.

11. Fateh, M. K., The Economic Position of Persia (London, 1926), p. 44Google Scholar; see also ˓Abbās Mīrzā Mulkara, sharḥ-i Ḥāl, ed. ˓Abbās Iqbāl (Tehran, 1325), p. 56; Curzon, G., Persia and the Persian Question, 2 vols. (London, 1892), Vol. 1, p. 638.Google Scholar

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13. A. T. Wilson, Persia (London, 1932), p. 54. “Thanks, in part to the lack of transport facilities there is generally at least twelve months’ supply of grain for the whole country in storage at the larger centres of population, in government granaries and in the hands of merchants, and serious scarcity is not general unless two very bad years occur in succession.”

14. Bleibtreu, J., Persien, das Land der Sonne und des Lowen (Freiburg in Breisgau, 1894), p. 95Google Scholar; DCR, No. 3748 (Isfahan, 1905-06), p. 4.

15. DCR, No. 1662, p. 4; DCR, No. 1953 (Isfahan, 1895-96), p. 4.

16. See Abrahamian, E., “Oriental despotism: The Case of Qajar Iran,” in Int. J. Middle East Studies, Vol. 5 (1974), p. 13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar “It seems that state intervention in the economy was not so much a reflection of its power but of its weakness in coping with public disturbances”; see also Mīrzā ˓Alī Khān Amīn al-Dawlah, Khāṭirāt-i siyāsī, ed. Farmānfarmāyān, Ḥāfiz (Tehran, 1341), pp. 225, 26.Google Scholar

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19. DCR, No. 2260, p. 13.

20. Kosogovski, op. cit., pp. 239, 40.

21. Wills, C. J., Persia as It Is (London, 1886), pp. 37, 38.Google Scholar

22. Lambton, op. cit., p. 152.

23. Ibid.

24. FO 60/586, report by H. J. Tweedie, April 27, 1897.

25. Wilson, op. cit., p. 168; FO 60/611, letter July 31, 1899 and FO 60/613, letter July 11, 1899.

26. Ibid.

27. See note 24 and Wills, op. cit., p. 313.

28. Lambton, op. cit., p. 152.

29. Shuster, W. M., The strangling of Persia (New York, 1920), p. 171.Google Scholar

30. Issawi, op. cit., p. 338.

31. Avery, P. W. and Simmonds, J. B., “Persia on a Cross of Silver, 1880-1890,” in Middle Eastern studies, Vol. 10 (1974), pp. 259–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32. Curzon, op. cit., Vol. 2, p. 480.

33. Yate, C. E., Khurasan and Sistan (London, 1900), p. 83.Google Scholar

34. Kosogovski, op. cit., pp. 211, 12.

35. Issawi, op. cit., p. 208; DCR, No. 2260, p. 13.

36. Issawi, op. cit., Chap. 2.

37. Narāqī, Iḥsān, Tārīkh-i ijtimā˓ī-i Kāshān (Tehran, 1345), p. 264.Google Scholar

38. Kosogovski, op. cit., p. 171; ˓Abd Allāh Mustawfī, Sharḥ-i zindigānī-i Man, 3 vols. (Tehran, 1343), Vol. 2, p. 43.Google Scholar

39. Millspaugh, A. C., The American Task in Persia (New York, 1925), p. 77Google Scholar, “The huge ambar or granary with a capacity of four hundred thousand bushels”; Mīrā Muḥammad Ḥasan Khān, Ṣanī˓ al-Dawlah Ma'āir va al-Āār (Tehran, 1306)Google Scholar, Appendix, p. 27.

40. Kosogovski, op. cit, pp. 171, 72.

41. FO 60/431, letter May 3, 1880. Although the local authorities prohibited the exportation of rice and grain, different kinds of produce were daily being shipped at Bandar-i Giz, see FO 60/431, letter May 3, 1880.

42. Avery-Simmonds, op. cit., p. 279; Kasravi, op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 193.

43. DCR, No. 2260, p. 7; Kosogovski, op. cit., p. 88.

44. Ibid., p. 181.

45. Ibid., pp. 47, 48.

46. FO 60/598, letters August 15, August 29, September 12, September 19, September 20, 1898.

47. Kosogovski, op. cit., p. 240.

48. Kasravī, op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 222; Dawlatābādī, Yaḥyā, Ḥayāt-i Yaḥyā, 4 vols. (Tehran, n.d.), Vol. 2, p. 84.Google Scholar

49. Kasravī, op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 227; Mustawfī, Vol. 2, p. 353.

50. Demorgny, G., Essai sur l'Administration de la Perse (Paris, 1913), p. 96.Google Scholar

51. Kasravī, op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 320; RMM, Vol. 15, 1911, pp. 176-79; Archief Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken, Den Haag, dossier Perzie, letter July 27, 1908 (no. 17353).

52. Shuster, op. cit., p. 288.

53. Demorgny, op. cit., p. 102.

54. Mustawfī, op. cit., Vol. 2, pp. 385; on the Umanā-yi māliyah, see Lambton, op. cit., p. 240.

55. Mustawfī, op. cit., Vol. 2, p. 386.

56. Ibid. pp. 392, 93.

57. Ibid. pp. 396-401.

58. Ibid., pp. 402-408.

59. Ibid., pp. 430-32.

60. Ibid., pp. 495, 96.

61. Ibid., pp. 498-500.

62. Ibid., pp. 504-06.

63. Ibid., pp. 512-14.

64. “Yāddāshthā-yi chāp nashudah-i Sipāh-i sālār-i Tunkabūnī,” in Rāhnāmah-i Kitāb, Vol. 4, nrs. 5, 6, p. 534.Google Scholar

65. Forbes-Leith, F. A. C., Checkmate, Fighting Tradition in Central Persia (New York, 1973Google Scholar; reprint), p. 150.

66. Mustawfī, op. cit., Vol. 2, pp. 512-14.

67. Millspaugh, Task, p. 78; Millspaugh, A. C., The Financial and Economic Situation of Persia (New York, 1926), p. 25.Google Scholar It seems that in other cities similar organizations existed, such as in Khūy where in 1917 an Alimentation Commission (kūmīsīyūn-i arzāq) was founded, Āghasī, Mahdī, Tārīkh-i Khūy (Tabriz, 1350), p. 425.Google Scholar

68. Millsbaugh, Task, p. 78. Under Ria Shah this policy was continued by the idārah-i kull-i ghallah va nān founded in 1935, Yaktā'ī, Majī, Tārīkh-i darā'ī-ī Īrān (Tehran, 1340), pp. 410–14.Google Scholar