Essai
Nouvelle parution
J. Takeda, Iran and a French empire of trade, 1700-1808: The other Persian letters

J. Takeda, Iran and a French empire of trade, 1700-1808: The other Persian letters

Publié le par Université de Lausanne (Source : Catherine Pugh)

Iran and a French empire of trade, 1700-1808: The other Persian letters

By Junko Thérèse Takeda

Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment 2020:12

ISBN: 9781789622256, 292 pages, £60.00

 

Iran and a French Empire of Trade examines the understudied topic of Franco-Persian relations in the long eighteenth century to highlight how rising tensions among Eurasian empires and revolutions in the Atlantic world were profoundly intertwined. Conflicts between Persia, Turkey, India and Russia, and European weapons-dealing with these empires occurred against a backdrop of climate change and food insecurities that destabilized markets. Takeda shows how the French state relied on “entrepreneurial imperialism” to extend commercial activities eastwards beyond the Mediterranean during this time, from Louis XIV’s reign to Napoleon Bonaparte’s First Empire. Organized as a collection of microhistories, her study showcases a colourful set of characters—rogue merchants from Marseille, a gambling house madam, a naturalized Greek-French drogman, and a bi-cultural Genevan-Persian consul, among others—to demonstrate how individuals on the fringes of French society spearheaded projects to foster ties between France and Persia.

Considering the Enlightenment as a product of a connected world, Takeda investigates how trans-imperial adventurers, merchants, consuls, and informants negotiated treaties, traded commodities and arms, transferred knowledge, and introduced industrial practices from Asia to Europe. And she shows the surprising ways in which Enlightenment debates about regime changes from the Safavid to Qajar dynasties and Persia’s borderland wars shaped French ideas about revolution and policies related to empire-building.

*

One of the first studies to explore early modern French relations with Persia to highlight connections between Eurasian geopolitics and Atlantic revolutions.

A colourful collection of microhistories that engages with global processes of trade, war and empire-building in the Age of Enlightenment and Revolutions.

*

Junko Takeda is Associate Professor of History at Syracuse University. Her research focuses on early modern globalization, statecraft and migration. She is the author of 'Between Crown and Commerce: Marseille and the Early Modern Mediterranean'. She is currently writing a global microhistory about Avedik, an Armenian patriarch of Constantinople imprisoned in France during the reign of Louis XIV.