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IRAN
AND THE WORLD IN THE SAFAVID AGE
Abstracts
Herzig, Dr. Edmund
, Manchester University, Department of Middle Eastern Studies,
Manchester, Safavid Foreign Trade Policy? The Evidence from
Persian Sources
That “most
Persian-language sources yield virtually no data on trade,
indigenous and international alike” (R. Matthee, The Politics of
Trade in Safavid Iran [Cambridge: CUP, 1999; p. 6]) is a familiar
and well-founded complaint of students of Safavid economic
history. This paper sets out to examine the sparse information
about foreign trade that can be found in Persian histories and
diplomatic documents of the sixteenth and early seventeenth
century, and use it to reflect on Safavid foreign trade policy.
The paucity of
information and interpretation in such sources has obliged
historians seeking to explain the motives and dynamics of Safavid
foreign trade policy to rely heavily on European sources, on
analogy with contemporary European or later Iranian states, and on
inference — from developments in the political and military
spheres, or from the material evidence of the political elite’s
interest in trade (caravanserais, bazaars, roads and bridges, for
example). This is most evident in discussions of the innovations
of Shah ‘Abbas I, which have been interpreted as manifestations
of a statist, monopolist, bullionist or mercantilist policy.
These concepts, however,
find no direct echo in Persian sources, where the idea of a
conscious or deliberate foreign trade policy scarcely resonates at
all. References to the Safavid political elite’s interaction
with the commercial world usually occur in a restricted range of
contexts, relating either to discussion of the shahs’ concern
for justice, security and the well-being of their subjects, or to
diplomatic relations and the exchange of gifts between sovereigns.
The promotion of trade is presented not as a distinct area of
policy, but as part and parcel of the administrative function of
the king. Direct involvement in the exchange of commodities is
appropriate to royalty only when it is carried out between equals
and involves rare and precious goods. Other interventions in the
market may be justified to achieve some higher purpose, such as
securing provisions for the army. The Persian sources do
distinguish the innovations of Shah ‘Abbas I in relation to the
silk trade from the more or less conventional references to trade
in the reigns of his predecessors, indicating some recognition of
a significant change, but even here they offer little support for
interpretations that posit strategic policy-making on the part of
the Shah or his advisors.
Court
histories and diplomatic documents cannot, of course, be taken at
face value. Their authors do not seem to have considered trade to
be a topic worthy of detailed attention, and they never suggest
that their royal patrons might be moved by such base motives as
simple greed; in these respects the sources written by European
merchants and travellers are less inhibited and often more
revealing. But the Persian-language sources do tell us a good deal
about the nature and limits of the Safavid conception of
‘foreign trade policy’ and, therefore, about the
parameters of the political elite’s commercial interventions and
attempts to manage international trade.
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