The Struggle For Persia

This volume is an account of the journey the author made between Eastern Russia (via Tabriz) to Teheran at the turn of the twentieth century. This is not just a travelogue, however, but a lament for the loss of British “prestige” and power in the region to Russia.

Excerpt from The Struggle for Persia None of my predecessors (and they may be counted on the fingers) who have taken the almost impassable route between Eastern Russia (via Tabriz) to Teheran having thought fit to record their experiences, it devolves upon my unworthy self to narrate mine in this veritable "terra incognita." The interest lately awakened in England with reference to Persian affairs, together with the lamentable loss of British prestige and British influence, and the overwhelming power of Russia - as they appeared to me - must be my further excuse for bringing them to the notice of all lovers of king and country, in the earnest hope that means may be found to retrieve the paramount supremacy of England in a country where once it was without a rival. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The truths about Iran; quite different truths from versions put forward by Washington, Tehran, and the media. Iran thundered onto the world stage in 1979 with an Islamic revolution that shook the world. Today that revolution has gone astray, a popular democracy movement boldly challenges authority, and young Iranians are more interested in moving to America than in chanting "Death to America." Afshin Molavi, born in Iran and fluent in Persian, traveled widely across his homeland, exploring the legacy of the Iranian revolution and probing the soul of Iran, a land with nearly three millennia of often-glorious history. Like a master Persian carpet maker, Molavi weaves together threads of rich historical insight, political analysis, cultural observation, and the daily realities of life in the Islamic republic to produce a colorful, intricate, and mesmerizing narrative. Originally published in hardcover under the title Persian Pilgrimages, this paperback edition is revised, with a new introduction and epilogue.

Tom Holland's bestselling account of the world's very first clash of civilisations between the Persians and the Greeks in 480BC 'Magisterial... told with great authority and a novelistic colour and verve' Books of the Year, Independent 'Holland has a rare eye for detail, drama and the telling anecdote' Dominic Sandbrook, Daily Telegraph 'An unequivocal argument for the relevance of ancient history' Observer 'Holland brings this tumultuous, epoch-making period dazzlingly to life' William Napier, Independent on Sunday In the fifth century BC, a global superpower was determined to bring truth and order to what it regarded as two terrorist states. The superpower was Persia, incomparably rich in ambition, gold and men. The terrorist states were Athens and Sparta, eccentric cities in a poor and mountainous backwater: Greece. The story of how their citizens took on the most powerful man on the planet is as heart-stopping as any episode in history.

The Struggle for Asia 1828–1914 (1977) studies a classic case of rival imperialisms. British leaders tended to believe that Russian expansion threatened India; Russian leaders came to believe in a British threat to their empire. Each sought security by trying to control the policies of weaker states which lay between their imperial frontiers and on whose alignment depended the balance of power. By 1914, when both felt even more threatened by Germany than by one another, Russia seemed to have gained the upper hand in a struggle for hegemony in Asia which had been crucial for the course of world politics. This book examines the intellectual origins of the ‘Great Game’.

After the destructive decades following the fall of the Safavid Empire, the Qajar dynasty inherited a weakened state and the growing threat of European imperial powers, culminating in two wars with Russia. In this book, Maziar Behrooz provides a history of the Qajar dynasty's navigation of this difficult period, beginning with the reign of Aqa Muhammad Shah and ending with that of Fath Ali Shah. Examining the key decisions taken by Qajar, Russian, British and other actors, the book argues that a reevaluation of the early-Qajar period is required, one which acknowledges the failures of its rulers, while recognising the external constraints they were under, and their successes in reuniting a formerly fragmented state in the face of overwhelming technological, economic and military firepower.

As a nine-year-old Tehrani schoolgirl during the Iranian Revolution, Nazila Fathi watched her country change before her eyes. The revolutionaries—most of them poor, uneducated, and radicalized—seized jobs, housing, and positions of power, transforming Iranian society practically overnight. But this socioeconomic revolution had an unintended effect. As Fathi shows, the forces unleashed in 1979 inadvertently created a robust Iranian middle class, one that today hungers for more personal freedoms and a renewed relationship with the outside world. And unless an international confrontation allows Iranian leaders to justify an internal crackdown, this internal pressure for reform will soon set the country on a more stable track. In The Lonely War, Fathi describes Iran's awakening alongside her own, revealing how moderates are retaking the country—and how foreign powers can aid their progress.