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6 - A Wandering Monarch

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 December 2019

Hamid Dabashi
Affiliation:
Columbia University, New York
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Summary

In Chapter 6, “A Wandering Monarch,” I look closely at Naser al-Din Shah’s Safar-Nameh/Travelogue (1873). This travelogue by a sitting Qajar monarch represents the widely popular significance of travel narratives in the nineteenth century, in which the royal pen now indulges. The genre was so successful that the ruling monarch wishes to be part of it. Traveling was integral to this arguably most significant Qajar monarch. He traveled widely throughout Iran and abroad and kept diligent records of his travels. His three journeys to Europe (in 1873, 1878, 1889, successively) are integral to this peripatetic monarch. What is particular to these travels, the first of which I will discuss in detail in this chapter, is the fact that the reigning king had effectively moved the political center of gravity of his realm away from his capital of Tehran and presided over a mobile court. It is, again, important to remember that Naser al-Din Shah traveled as much in his own realm and then around the Arab and Muslim world in the Ottoman Empire as he did to Europe. He financed these trips mostly by selling off major concessions to European colonial interests. Because of the structural link between these colonial concessions and Naser al-Din Shah’s extravagant trips abroad, his widely published travelogues were paradoxically the source of much anger and frustration during the preparatory stages of the Constitutional Revolution of 1906–1911. The famous Tobacco Revolt of 1890–1891 was in rebellious reaction to a lucrative tobacco concession the Qajar monarch had granted Major G. F. Talbot, a British colonial merchant, during one of his European trips – for a full monopoly over the production, sale, and export of tobacco for fifty years. The Tobacco Revolt was a dress rehearsal for the Constitutional Revolution of 1906–1911.

Type
Chapter
Information
Reversing the Colonial Gaze
Persian Travelers Abroad
, pp. 154 - 184
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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  • A Wandering Monarch
  • Hamid Dabashi, Columbia University, New York
  • Book: Reversing the Colonial Gaze
  • Online publication: 19 December 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108768986.008
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  • A Wandering Monarch
  • Hamid Dabashi, Columbia University, New York
  • Book: Reversing the Colonial Gaze
  • Online publication: 19 December 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108768986.008
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • A Wandering Monarch
  • Hamid Dabashi, Columbia University, New York
  • Book: Reversing the Colonial Gaze
  • Online publication: 19 December 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108768986.008
Available formats
×