Long-Distance Constitutionalists: Trans-Imperial Mobility and Cross-Border Strategies of the Iranian Constitutional Movement (1850s-1910s)

This study investigates the history of the Iranian constitutional movement between the 1850s and the 1910s through the lens of trans-imperial mobility and the connections between its activists and global events. I argue that “long-distance” Iranians, i.e., mobile subjects of Qajar Iran who spent at least a part of their lives abroad, were constantly involved in the constitutional movement and that their foreign location facilitated their role as intermediaries between Iran and other contemporary constitutional and anti-imperialist developments. Rather than focusing on their intellectual formation, this research emphasizes the practical side of their connections. I mapped their locations and the trajectories of their cross-border strategies at different stages of the movement, stressing the coexistence of the importance of proximity even when at a distance – visible in the recreation of Iranian spaces abroad and the formation of acquaintances and friendships – and the establishment trans-imperial connections, taking advantage of new technologies (print, post, telegraph) to develop a constitutional movement scattered across Asia, Europe, and Northeast Africa. This thesis is based on published and unpublished sources in Persian, English, Italian, French, German, and, to a lesser extent, Turkish. These sources include correspondence and memoirs of Iranian revolutionaries and people who interacted with them, print media of the time, as well as appeals from the Iranian revolutionaries to foreign governments and dispatches from eight different archives. In addition to drawing upon their content, the sources were exploited as objects that demonstrate the trajectories, connectors, and relationships between “long-distance constitutionalists,” other Iranians abroad, and foreign activists. The thesis consists of three parts. The first part provides a background to the emergence of the movement by highlighting the transformations that occurred in Qajar Iran during the 19th century and mapping the presence of Iranian communities abroad in Europe, Asia, and North-East Africa. The second part examines the formative period of the constitutional movement. It shows the shift from small groups of reformist acquaintances, mainly at the elite level, to a broader public. It studies the communication strategies and networks used to disseminate materials, leading to the emergence of a proto-constitutionalist public sphere among Iranian communities abroad. At the same time, it shows the hindrances to its emergence, primarily through border policing, and the constitutionalists’ plans adopted to overcome them. The third part investigates three main forms of trans-imperial connections of the Iranian constitutional movement during the revolutionary years. It demonstrates the importance of the return of formerly mobile Iranians in the first phase of the revolution, from its outbreak to the bombing of the Majles. The latter event stimulated the internationalization of revolution in Iran with the arrival of foreign revolutionaries, activists, and adventurers from the South Caucasus, India, and Europe. Second, it reconstructs how Iranians abroad, both recent exiles and long-established communities, organized their actions to support the resistance and provides a detailed account of their personal and political relationships, locations, and trajectories. Finally, it shows that in the final years of the revolution, different strategies were employed to turn the Iranian cause into a global one. To this end, the constitutionalists developed an unofficial diplomacy and took advantage of other ongoing events, from growing Indian activism to the Tripoli war, to connect it with pan-Islamic and anti-imperialist demands.