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Napoleon and Persia: Franco-Persian Relations Under the First Empire

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The Napoleonic wars were a world war, though students of the Seven Years War or other earlier conflicts might argue whether it was the first world war. Iradj Amini has written a book outlining one of the remotest and easternmost frontiers of that conflict. Amini begins his history with efforts to open relations with Persia during the ancien regime. From the beginning France's relations with Persia was filled with many strange twists and turns.

Britain signed a treaty with Persia in 1801 in which the Shah agreed to keep the French, whose Egyptian campaign was a threat to India, out of his lands, but in return Britain, on friendly relations with Russia after the assassination of Tsar Paul I, made no promises in regards to Russia's expansion in the Caucasus. When the Russians made threatening moves into Azerbaijan, the British, desirous of including Russia into a new coalition against France, refused to provide the Shah any assistance. The Persians turned to France, who had already sent envoys to the distant land. France, for her part, saw definite advantages to an Eastern diversion against both Russia and Britain and was equally eager for a rapprochement.

As Persia was distant and travel was to that land was long and difficult, Napoleon proposed sending military advisors to Persia as he was to do with the Ottomans. Napoleon described what advisors would have to offer to the Shah. "...When your subjects know how to manufacture arms, when your soldiers have been taught how to split up and reassemble in a series of rapid and well-ordered movements, when they will have learnt how to back up a vigorous attack with the fire of a moving artillery; when your frontiers are secured by numerous fortresses and the Caspian Sea has the flags of a Persian flotilla fluttering on its waves, you will have an unassailable empire and invincible subjects."

But the vissitudes of European politics were to intervene. Gardane, the French ambassdor to Persia, was in Constantinople, on his way to the Shah's capital, when he heard of the peace signed at Tilsit. His instructions now were to promote peace between Persia and Russia, and enmity to Britain. Meeting with the Shah, Gardane had to play a difficult game, placating the Persians while not disturbing the peace between France and Russia. Britain was not idle and the Tilsit treaty renewed fears of a joint French-Russian invasion of India through Persia. Now that it was the French, not the British, who were allied with Russia, some at the Persian court were more prone to listen to British proposals. Though Persia was now in the position of having two great powers fighting for its allegiance, neither France nor Britain had much concern for Persian interests. For the Shah, the thrusts and parries of European diplomacy were ultimately meaningless as long as the Russians were in Georgia.

The maneuverings of France and Britain in Persia foreshadowed the later conflict between Russia and Britain known by the Kiplingesque name of "the Great Game." Persia's greatest immediate threat was imperialist Russia encroaching into Central Asia through Georgia. The Persians therefore saw as their ally any power opposed to Russia, so that its foreign policy swung from France to Britain and back again as alliances in Europe formed and broke apart.

Iradj Amini is an Iranian-born diplomat, the last ambassador of the Shah to France, who is now a French citizen. He has degrees from U.S., Iranian and British universities and has previously written a history of the Koh-i-Noor diamond. Amini has made use of archives in both France and Britain, making use of archival material not available to Edouard Driault in writing his classic La Politique Orientale de Napoleon (1904). As for secondary sources, Amini employs mainly French works, missing, for example, Edward Ingram's relevant Britain's Persian Connection: Prelude to the Great Game, 1798-1828 (1992). It's unfortunate that Iranian sources, either primary or secondary, were not used to round out the story; though an appendix, written by Farrokh Gaffary, does give contemporary Persian views of Napoleon.

A discussion of Persia's military strengths and weaknesses would have filled out the story. What troops did Persia have, in what numbers, how were they armed, where were they stationed-these questions I had reading the book. I detected some minor errors, such as the implication that the Treaty of Lunéville (8 February 1801) was signed within a few days of the Battle of Marengo (14 June 1800). Amini might be confusing this treaty with the Convention of Alessandria. But the fascinating story is told with economy and flair. The book includes one map, showing the Persian empire and its environs, and twelve pages of black and white illustrations depicting, chiefly, the personalities discussed in the text.

Napoleon and Persia was originally published in French in 1995 and received the Potiers-Boès Prize for History from the Académie Française in 1996.

Amini's work fills a void in both Napoleonic and Iranian history with surprising success. This history, not from the pen of an academic but a former diplomatist, will be an informative read for the student and curious reader alike.

This history is the tale of the betrayl of Fath Ali Shah the Qajar of Persia by Napolean Bonaparte, Emperor of France, King of Italy, in 1807. It tells the story of the British, French and Russian imperial ambitions in Iran, or Persia as it was know before the Pahlavi dynasty. It outlines the attempts by Fath Ali Shah to play France off against both Britain and Russia, so as to regain control of Persian territory in both the Caspian Sea region and on the shores of the Persian Gulf. These attempts culminated in the Treaty of Finkenstein signed between Persia and France in 1807, only to be brocken when Napoleon made peace with the Russian Tzar two months later, abandoning his Persian allies to the Russians. Britain would assume the role abandoned by France as Persia's 'ally' in 1809, a role she would pursue until the Second World War.

The insights one gains from Amini's work on the immense difficulties of diplomacy and statecraft before the age of telephones and aircraft is enlightening. Furthermore, as it is written from an Iranian and diplomatic stand-point it is even more valuable and readable for the student of history.

Visiting Paris recently, I had the pleasure of seeing a protrait of Fath Ali Shah in the Louvre, brought back to France from Persia by Amedee Jaubert, a portrait admired by the Persian Ambassador in the Apollo Gallery of the same institution some 190 years previously. Particularly amusing are the anecdotes of the Persian Ambassador's adventures in the Parisian social set and the travails of the European adventurer/diplomats in Persia.

I would recommend this work to anyone interested in the history of diplomacy, Iran, or Europe's relations with the Near East. I certainly hope this is not the last of Ambassador Amini's non-fiction works.