History
Mehdi Mirkiaee
Abstract
Water issue" has been one of the main issues of Iranian human life throughout history, and the research about it can shed light on various aspects of the political, economic and social life of Iranians. Artificial irrigation has long been one of the necessities of people's lives in this semi-arid climate. ...
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Water issue" has been one of the main issues of Iranian human life throughout history, and the research about it can shed light on various aspects of the political, economic and social life of Iranians. Artificial irrigation has long been one of the necessities of people's lives in this semi-arid climate. The dispersion of water resources, which was subject to dispersion of the population, required the country to have an innumerable number of dams, aqueducts, reservoirs, wells and streams. Building a dam to store water and control floods and building aqueducts, which sometimes reached tens of kilometers in length, required spending a lot of money and a lot of labor. At first glance, the government was expected to be responsible for the creation and repair of water facilities as institution that has the most resources of the country. The question is, considering that pre-modern governments played a minimal role in solving people's problems and providing their necessities of life, to what extent did the Qajar government accept responsibility for the creation and repair of these facilities in the territory of Iran? What evidence confirms the minimal involvement of Qajar government in the water issue? What were the reasons for the non-interference of the government in water supply and how could the people be responsible for solving this problem? Our assumption is that the Qajar government did not consider itself obligated to provide water to villages, farms and even cities with minimal interference in civil affairs, and the countless number of dilapidated dams and aqueducts is a sign that the government has a duty in this field for He did not imagine and only in a few cases where he was sure that the profit would quickly reach the treasury, he accepted a small investment. In the meantime, the further some areas were from the center, the less government intervention in their irrigation systems. Also, the Qajar government looked at the water issue as an opportunity for earning money by selling running water and collecting taxes from other water sources. Governors of the provinces were also interested in creating irrigation system for their fields only if they were the owners of land in that province. In the meantime, the main burden of creating and maintaining water facilities was the responsibility of the people, who mainly provided the expenses to the landlords and the labor to the subjects. The tradition of endowment was another factor that weakened the role of the government in this field. People's participation in the construction and repair of dams, aqueducts, reservoirs and streams, as well as group oppressions and settlements, as well as collective conflicts, along with the management of water distribution and the selection of Mirabs, led to the emergence of self-organized groups and circles and their greater cohesion in society. Previously, the views of people like Karl Marx and Karl August Wittfogel about the active involvement of Asian governments in solving the water problem in semi-arid climates had gained supporters. Marx believed that in these areas, governments took control of limited water resources and established water supply security, and by managing water resources, they made the producers highly dependent on themselves, and made the government subjects critical. Influenced by him, Wittfogel also realized the need of these communities for huge water supply facilities that only the government could cover. He knew the first and fundamental factor of the formation of the absolute power of the government in these regions. In our research, we have tried to show by relying on a lot of data from the history of Qajar era Iran that not only the government was not involved in many waters supply matters, but also the realities and limitations of the pre-modern world, the Qajar government in planning to intervene in the water issue, especially in remote areas. From the center, he was disabled. This research was done with descriptive-explanatory method and using the documents, especially the petitions of the Majlese Tahqiqe Mazalem. The theoretical framework of the research is derived from Patricia Crone's point of view about the minimal government in the pre-modern world. Previously, no independent research has been conducted on the minimal role of the Qajar government in the water issue.
Mahdi Abbasi Shahkooh
Abstract
This article, using the method of historical sociology and the sociology of knowledge, attempts to address the power relations between society and government in Iran before the emergence of the Pahlavi state. Powerful social masters such as the royal family and their relatives, clergies, landowners, ...
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This article, using the method of historical sociology and the sociology of knowledge, attempts to address the power relations between society and government in Iran before the emergence of the Pahlavi state. Powerful social masters such as the royal family and their relatives, clergies, landowners, merchants and marketers, and ultimately local rulers and head of tribes who had a high degree of control and regulation in society, made the Iranian society to be web like. The power of the leaders of the society prevented the government from fulfilling its reformative demands and policies. The constant struggle between the state and society led to ways of achieving "compromise" by the state. "Encouraging strife" in networked society has been another way for the government to overcome this inability. This paper analyzes the structure of Iranian society and the power of the pre-modern state from the Safavid era to the beginning of the Constitutional era based on Migdal's theoretical model and seeks to answer the question: “What pattern of power relations between the state and society in pre-modern Iran did it follow?” The purpose of this study is to examine the sociological power relations of the governments with social forces from a historical perspective in order to understand the reason for the problem of the weakness of the political power of the modern state in Iran. In this article, the results suggest a kind of confrontation and contrast between governments and social forces in which government is disintegrated and the network community struggles to survive the government and social rivals.
Shayan Karami
Abstract
This paper intends to analyze the consequences of the distribution of natural resources (land and water) in the political and social structure, to present rent management theory as an alternative approach to explaining some of the historical events and the political and social issues of Iran. The main ...
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This paper intends to analyze the consequences of the distribution of natural resources (land and water) in the political and social structure, to present rent management theory as an alternative approach to explaining some of the historical events and the political and social issues of Iran. The main issue of the paper is the explanation of the consequences of the distribution of the natural resources in Iran during the Qajar period. The data was collected from the National Documents Archives and other library resources, and by historical method, the rent analysis was analyzed. The findings show that, in Iran's economic history, the government is placed as the largest distributor of natural resources (land and water) on the supply side, and society (capital and labor) is placed as the largest consumer, on the demand side. The structure of political and social institutions, based on the model of the implementation of social justice, in the distribution of natural resources, monolithically consolidates. This pattern has been one of the main factors behind the creation of rents and the establishment of rents management institution in the government. During the Qajar period, Thiol, conversion, the difference in prices and the salaries and wages of the princes, have been the most important channels for the distribution of rents, split from the rent government agency. These canals were blocked after the Constitutional Revolution, with the decisive action of the first parliament. The state rent agency was one of the main factors in the ineffectiveness of the tax system, the continued decline in government revenue, and the prevalence of bribes and corruption. The ultimate goal of distributing rents has been the exemption from tax payments. Other important consequences of rents include the transfer of major economic privileges and the occurrence of a constitutional revolution.
