Anglo-Russian Relations in Iran - Personal Relationships Between British and Russian Consuls in Early 20th Century

Iran Heritage Foundation & London Middle East Institute at SOAS.

Antony Wynn

The history of the late 19th and early 20th century in Iran is coloured by the rivalry between Britain and Russia. Russia established a chain of consulates across northern Iran and turned the country between Tabriz and Mashhad into a virtual Russian colony, even going so far as to collect taxes from the local population. The British, much further from home, tried to counter this influence by establishing their own consulates, of which the most splendid was at Mashhad. To keep an eye on each other's doings in the border regions, they both established a string of vice-consulates in the remotest parts of Khorasan. With no other Europeans, or even educated Iranians, to entertain them, the lonely consuls from these rival nations were thrown into each other's company, creating a sometimes surreal reflection of the greater political game that was being played in the chanceries. Drink and insanity was often the end of them. Those who retained their sanity had some entertaining stories to tell.

Antony Wynn is the author of Persia in the Great Game, the biography of Sir Percy Sykes, who was the most famous of all the British consuls in Iran. He himself has lived and worked in Iran and has visited many of the far-flung consulates established by the British in eastern Iran in the course of his research, and is thus able to give a good feel for these places in his lectures and writing.

This lecture is organised in conjunction with the Images from the Endgame: Persia through a Russian Lens 1901-1914 exhibition which is on view at the Brunei Gallery of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London from 10 October to 9 December 2006.