Iran Encounters the West

Abstract

This chapter provides a brief historical background to understand how Iran was gradually weakened from being a prominent country in the beginning of the nineteenth century to a semi-colony by the beginning of the twentieth century under the domination of Great Britain and the Russian Empire. As the Europeans advanced in science and technology during the Industrial Revolution, Iranians remained uninformed of those advancements and were stuck with their traditional way of life. Consequently, Iran became dependent on Western technology and know-how and was subjected to domination by great powers. The chapter indicates how European diplomats influenced the Iranian royal court to use the Iranian territory for their imperial goals. In that era, the British and Russian empires dismembered large parts of Iranian territory and partitioned the rest to their spheres of influence. The issues covered in this chapter are the major historical events that help us understand what happened to Iran resulting in Iran’s anti-colonial resentment toward the West decades later.