Year: 2007
Author: Elena Andreeva
Genre: History of modern times / Russian researchers of Central Asia / History of Russian-Iranian relations / History of the Qajar dynasty
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0-415-77153-6; 0-203-96220-6; 978-0-415-77153-5; 978-0-203-96220-6
English language
Format: PDF
Number of Pages: 289
This book is about Russian researchers and officials of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who came into contact with Iran, and became the figures of the so-called "Great Game" - the intense competition between England and Russia in Central Asia in the late 19th century. This term was first used openly by Rudyard Kipling in the novel Kim (1901), when the Foreign Office was influenced not only by officials, but also by semi-official and private adventurers enjoying the thrill of secret activities outside India's borders, and often embellished (or even embellished invented) their reports on Russian intentions and the loyalty of local leaders. The book shows the formation of its own form of Russian "Orientalism" - a phenomenon that the West viewed as solely its prerogative.
List of illustrations…………………………………………. ix
Preface xi
Acknowledgements……………………………………… xiii
Introduction……………………………………………… 1
1 Setting the stage…………………………………………. 13
2 Orientalism Russian style………………………………… 22
The concept of Orientalism: Western European version……………………….23
Russian national identity and Russian Orientalism……………………………… 24
3 Overview of the Russian travelogues and their authors…………………… 36
Pre-nineteenth-century Russian travelogues about Iran ……………………………37
The main features of the Russian travelogues about Iran
in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries……………………………………… 40
The authors of the travelogues………………………………………………………… 44
4 The travelers’ missions in Iran…………………………………………………….. 59
Russian military aims and activities in Iran…………………………………………. 59
Russian diplomacy in Iran……………………………………………………………… 69
Russian emigrants in Iran ……………………………………………………………..72
Russian trade in Iran………………………………………………………………….. 74
5 The travelers’ self-representation vis-а-vis the Oriental
“Other” and the British “Self”…………………………………………………….. 77
6 The “travelees” – representation of Iran
and her people by the Russian travelers………………………………………..88
“Power of the gaze”………………………………………………………………….. 89
The “travelees”: manners and morals……………………………………………….. 97
7 The “travelees” – education, culture and society……………………………. 111
The Iranian army………………………………………………………………………… 112
Lack of education …………………………………………………………………………114
Iranian medicine…………………………………………………………………………. 116
Iranian arts and architecture……………………………………………………………. 118
Iran as “a Country of Ruins”…………………………………………………………… 126
8 Islam as perceived by the Russian travelers………………………………………. 131
Mullahs, dervishes and sayyeds …………………………………………………………134
Shi”i and Sunni Muslims………………………………………………………………… 141
Iranians and “infidels”………………………………………………………………………. 142
Muslim customs and rituals …………………………………………………………….148
9 Gender and ethnicity………………………………………………………………. 156
Iranian women and prosaic harems………………………………………………….. 156
The travelers’ religious and ethnic preferences……………………………………… 172
10 Travelers and travelees: Russians through Iranian eyes as
imagined by the travelers (discourse with themselves)…………………………. 185
“Anti-Romanticism”………………………………………………………………………. 194
Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………. 199
Appendix 1 Iran before World War I ……………………………………………………202
Appendix 2 Travelogues………………………………………………………………. 203
Notes……………………………………………………………………………………. 209
Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………………247
Index ……………………………………………………………………………………….269
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