For much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Iran was the scene of competition and rivalry by the dominant global powers at the time, Britain and Russia, and later the Soviet Union. Iran managed to remain nominally independent under both the Qajars and the Pahlavis, but for long periods of time that independence was hardly meaningful. Over the course of the century that this chapter covers, from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s, the country experienced prolonged periods of foreign economic domination, political subjugation, and outright military occupation. Situated in a geography of increasing strategic significance, Iran was, in fact, one of the primary areas in which the Russians and the British played out a great game of high-stakes international chess, almost always to the detriment of local peoples and leaders.