UNDERSTANDING THE MIDDLE EAST:
History, Religion, and the Clash of Cultures
400 pages
Copyright © 2007 by Beechmont Crest Publishing
First edition, 2007
0-9748330-6-1
C H A P T E R 7:
Iran: the Islamic Republic
Iran declines as Europe ascends
For centuries, Iran’s economy had depended on commerce associated with the overland trade routes. Merchant caravans had carried essential goods from throughout Asia and the Middle East to seaports along the Mediterranean.
During the eighteenth century, the caravan trade was significantly diminished by the rise of large-scale maritime commerce. In the 1700s, shipbuilding and sea trade made the Dutch city of Amsterdam the most prosperous city in the world. Other nations of Western Europe, including Great Britain, also built large fleets to support maritime commerce.
With money from the caravans drying up, Persia’s rulers were forced to make economic concessions to the European powers. In 1763 the British East India Company established a trading settlement in Bushehr, a city on the Persian Gulf. (Bushehr is now the site of one of Iran’s controversial nuclear facilities.) This settlement was built with the consent of Persian authorities. Over the next two centuries, Persia’s economic problems would require much deeper---and far more humiliating---concessions to the West.
Copyright 2005 Beechmont Crest Publishing
