During the period from 1890 to 1930 Peru had been characterized by an export-led economy, a strong oligarchy-dominated state known as the Aristocratic Republic, and a hierarchical social order with strong roots in agrarian institutions – the hacienda in the Sierra and the plantation on the Coast. After 1960 the country entered into a crisis of political hegemony (with the military playing an increasingly important role), a belated quest for industrialization and economic autonomy, and a struggle to come to terms with the breakdown of the old mechanisms of social control, manifest in the collapse of the hacienda and the emergence of a political Left. The thirty years from 1930 to 1960 were a period of transition, with a ramshackle ancien regime surviving almost by default as the country drifted with the tides of history. Economic development was dominated by spurts of activity within the old framework of laissez-faire export-led growth. In contrast to several other Latin American countries, Peru undertook no new departures such as a deliberate shift to protected industrialization or an attempt to construct state capitalism. The social and economic predominance of the country's established ruling class (commonly described as the ‘oligarchy’ or ‘grand bourgeoisie’) was not challenged or even much diluted by any rising new national bourgeoisie. Equally, no organized challenge to oligarchic hegemony was mounted by the working class (still weak and divided, and with most of its leadership co-opted into the status quo), or by the peasantry (whose concerns remained focussed at the local level, in a successful struggle with the hacienda and a debilitating process of intra-class division), or by the middle class (although the professional stratum occasionally stumbled onto the political stage, more by accident than by design).

Why read Marx at all? Why take any notice of his biographical circumstances? Why read his works in historical context? Why should it matter reading one edition or translation rather than another?

In order to answer these questions we must first address some general issues about reading. The terms that characterize biographical narrative and bibliographical advice are all too familiar, and this is particularly so in the case of Marx, as the story of his life is well established and the list of standard works very well known. Familiarity is no excuse for leaving these terms unexamined, however, and I shall put my own discussion of Marx into perspective.

Seeking enlightenment from the texts of the past is an apparently paradoxical exercise. After all, the events and ideas of the past are no longer, by definition, literally in the present. “Living in the past” is generally no compliment, and taking advice from those unacquainted with present circumstances does not sound like a good idea. Indeed, it might seem that Marx is now particularly discredited as an inspiration, since nearly all the Marxist regimes of Eastern Europe have collapsed from within, and reformist Marxism seems to take its cue from contemporary economic and political liberalism. Perhaps an examination of thoughts from the past is a bad habit, and we should keep our minds on current affairs.

Marx's writings include over a thousand pages of theories, explanations, and arguments concerning capitalist societies, some brief but intriguing discussions of precapitalist societies, and at most ten pages of general statements about all (or all class-divided) societies. The meaning of the general statements, important though they are, can be discovered only by understanding how they are used in his historically specific inquiries. So no matter how abstract one's favorite questions about Marx's social and political theories may be, it is helpful to begin with his favorite specific target, capitalist society.

CAPITALISM AS A SOCIAL SYSTEM

A society is capitalist, in Marx's way of thinking, if the production of material goods is dominated by the use of wage labor, that is, the use of labor power sold, to make a living, by people controlling no significant means of production and bought by other people who do have significant control over means of production and mostly gain their income from profits on the sale of the results of combining bought labor power with those productive means. The proletariat are, roughly, the first group - in the Communist Manifesto's slightly flamboyant description - “a class of laborers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labor increases capital” (Marx, 1974b: 73). The bourgeoisie are, roughly, the second group, whose income mainly derives from the sale of commodities produced with bought labor power. Marx thinks that these relations of control in the process of production have a pervasive influence on politics, culture, and society.

For many contemporary liberals, Anglo-American democracy seems unimpeachably the best political form. In contrast, most Marxian regimes and perhaps Marx himself seem deficient in defending democracy. Further, Marxian theory identifies oppressive ruling classes in all capitalist societies and calls for class struggle and violent revolution to achieve a more cooperative regime - theses that liberal social theories tend peremptorily to dismiss.

Yet Marxian theory also affirms ethical claims about the benefits of mutual recognition of persons and self-respect, realizing a general human capacity for moral personality and individuality, which are at the heart of liberalism. Thus the Communist Manifesto envisions a society in which “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” In addition, Marx began his career as a radical democrat, seeking to spur a democratic revolution in Germany in 1848 as a prelude to "an immediately following proletarian one." His insights traced a path later to be followed by many Russian radical democrats, Chinese “new democrats,” and participants in the 1960s American Students for a Democratic Society. Marx's political theory aims to realize democracy's promise of equal liberty, now corrupted by the severe impact of capitalist wealth. His democratic insights shine through his political activity, his strategic and historical writings, and, even with attention to context, his economic theory.

The consolidation of a nation-state in Ecuador began at the end of the nineteenth century, more than half a century after it won independence from Spain, when an expansion of foreign trade, particularly the export of cacao, accelerated the accumulation of capital and strengthened the country's links with the international market. There emerged within the coastal oligarchy a group of financiers and merchants distinct from the landowners and able to impose its political leadership. This commercial bourgeoisie oversaw the liberal transformation of the country in which the support of the popular sectors was at times of critical importance. Through occasional uprisings the coastal peasantry had for some time challenged the old oligarchic regime. Urban labour and the middle class were also integral to the liberal triumph and responsible for the intermittent emergence of radical ideas. On 5 June 1895, following a popular uprising in Guayaquil, General Eloy Alfaro, the Liberal-radical leader, was appointed jefe supremo of the republic. This was the beginning of the Liberal Revolution.

Liberalism was based upon Ecuador's integration into the international economy, national economic integration, most notably by means of the Quito—Guayaquil railway, and the restoration of state authority over the Church. Church and state were separated, the clergy were forcibly deprived of many of their functions and privileges and the Church lost much of its land through expropriation under the so-called Ley de Manos Muertas — measures which constituted a major political and ideological challenge to the traditional order.

ORIGINS AND FRONTIER EXPERIENCES

The year 1688 has recently found acceptance as that of Nādir's birth, but one of the best Iranian authorities for his time, the Jahān-gushā-yi Nādirī of Mīrzā Mahdī Khān Astarābādī, spells out a.h. 1110 as the year, and 28 Muharram as the day, which gives us 6 August A.D. 1698. A Bombay lithographed edition of Mīrzā Mahdī Khān's Jahān-gushā has a.h. 1100, but this date is not supported by manuscripts and the Tehran edition of the early nineteen sixties prefers the 1110 a.h. date. Other dates are given in other sources and are discussed by Dr Lockhart in his Nadir Shah, but it so happens that another contemporary source, the ‘Ālam-ārā-yi Nādirī of Muhammad Kāzim, the “Vazīr of Marv”, gives a.h. 1109 as the year of conception and, although he does not give the precise date of birth, this date corroborates 1110 as the year of delivery. It took place in the Darra Gaz, where a first-born and for some time only son was brought into the world for Imām Qulī, Nādir's father, in the fortress at Dastgird, a refuge for Nādir's people against the border raids from which the northern Khurāsān uplands frequently suffered.

Dastgird was in the winter quarters, where Nādir's father might have lingered on account of the expected birth. The summer-grazing was near Kupkān or Kubkān, thirty-eight kilometres southwest of the Dastgird-Chāpshalā winter-grounds in the low-lying, milder Darra Gaz, “Valley of Manna”. Further to the east, on the margin of the Marv desert, lay Abīvard, the metropolis of this region and in Nādir's youth the seat of the Safavid agent or district governor.

The heading for this chapter is deliberately imprecise. It refers to urban life in the period immediately preceding that when the many changes occurred which thrust Iran into the 20th century: large-scale importation of European goods; the development of an export market for some indigenous commodities; the increasing effect upon the economy of foreign banks and currencies; and, at a humbler level, the appearance of the kerosene lamp and cooking-stove, the sewing-machine and, later, the typewriter, the bicycle and radio. There are no dates to mark the passing of the traditional Iranian city, but what this chapter endeavours to present is a portrait, along the lines of Peter Laslett's enquiry into the social conditions of pre-industrial England, of the world that the Iranians lost in that transition. Such an undertaking is fraught with problems of description, analysis and interpretation. The documentation which served as the starting-point for the researches into medieval and early modern France of the Annales School, so influential in the development of the “new” social history, is almost wholly lacking for 19th century Iran. Statistical data is scarce. Surviving records, personal memoirs and correspondence from Qājār times, while attracting increased attention from historians, have survived haphazardly. The researcher remains dangerously dependent upon the subjective accounts of European diplomats, travellers and missionaries. Thus the chapter which follows, focusing mainly upon the reigns of Āghā Muhammad Khān, Fath ‘Alī Shāh and, to a lesser extent, Muhammad Shāh, is based upon an amorphous body of random facts and personal observations.

The kingdom which Fath ‘Alī Shāh inherited in 1797 resembled an estate long neglected by successive owners. Indeed it had been for the best part of a century. Had Fath ‘Alī Shah wondered, as he presided over the first New Year festival of a long reign of thirty-seven years, what were the resources of his inheritance in manpower or revenues, it is doubtful whether anyone near him could have provided the requisite information, or even delineated the frontiers of his kingdom. The claim or aspiration was that his domain equalled that of his Safavid predecessors in the days of their greatness; certainly it exceeded the bounds of present-day Iran. In reality, however, the royal writ ran far from smoothly, authority emanating from Tehran but repeatedly interrupted. In much of Khurāsān, or the more remote marches of the Lur, Türkmen or Balūch country, the Shah was scarcely even nominal ruler. Yet in spite of the practical constraints upon his exercise of power and the humiliation of two defeats suffered at the hands of Russia which entailed a loss of territory, the close of Fath ‘Alī Shāh's reign did see the definitive re-establishment of a “Royaume de Perse”.

Early 19th-century European observers of Iran doubted whether the Shah's government had the will or the means to refurbish this derelict estate; it is unlikely that either the Shah or his kinsmen thought in terms of “improving” the kingdom's resources as a contemporary English Whig landowner would have done.

The European power geographically closest to Iran was Russia. Peter the Great had brought the two countries into conflict as a result of his ambitions in the Caspian and the Caucasus regions, thereby threatening Iran's northwestern provinces. Extended into Central Asia these Russian ambitions set a pattern which lasted long beyond the 18th century, although Peter's death in 1725 and Nādir Shāh's campaigns temporarily halted Russia's advance. In the distracted decades later in the century Iran's position in the Caucasus grew steadily weaker, and when it attempted to re-establish relationships as they had existed under the Safavids, Georgia sought the protection of Catherine the Great.

In 1795 the urge to recover one of the Safavid kingdom's richest provinces prompted Āghā Muhammad Khān's march into Georgia. Catherine responded by sending a Russian expedition (1796) under Count Valerian Zubov, and the Qājār Shah was again on his way to Georgia when he was murdered in 1797. The problem of the northwest frontier and Iran's relations with Russia were among the most difficult his nephew and successor, Fath ‘Alī Shāh, had to face. To obtain help in this problem was the main objective of Iranian statecraft in the complicated negotiations conducted throughout the Napoleonic period, but neither France nor Britain could provide the kind of support Iran needed.

Britain's diplomatic and strategic interest in Iran arose initially not from the perception of a Russian, but a French threat. In 1796, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the East India Company, Stephen Lushington, was in correspondence with Henry Dundas, President of the Board of Control, regarding the French menace to India through Egypt.

“A barbarous nation, called Afghans … rushed like a torrent into Persia, and took Ispahan, after a violent siege.” This was the way in which Sir William Jones described the ascendancy which the Ghilzai Afghan leader, Mahmūd Shāh, achieved in Iran in 1722. The Afghan occupation lasted for eight years and precipitated the end of Safavid rule. Not until the establishment of the Qājārs by Āghā Muhammad Khān in 1794 did Iran know another period of relative overall stability.

In 1722 the East India Company represented the principal British interest in Iran. The Company had begun trading in the Persian Gulf in 1616 when the James was sent from Surat to Jask with seven factors bound for Iran. By the summer of 1617 they had taken up residence in Shīrāz and the Safavid capital, Isfahān. The expulsion of the Portuguese in 1622 from Hurmuz left Bandar ‘Abbās (Gombroon) the former's replacement as the Gulf's major trading port while, from 1623 till 1765, the Dutch East India Company became Britain's chief commercial rival in Iran. In the late 17th and early 18th centuries British trade prospered. British factors reached the western coast of the Caspian “where they sold great quantities of the woollen manufactures of Great Britain”, and British and Dutch traders in Isfahān braved the Afghan invasion in 1722. The French, with consular representation there, made better terms than their rivals, although the terms involved religious orders more than trade. The French East India Company was established by Colbert in 1664, but, to a greater extent than the Dutch or British companies, it was seen, in the context on India, as a means of French national expansion and rivalry with Britain.

THE IRANIAN ECONOMY IN THE EARLY YEARS OF THE CENTURY

Economic conditions in Iran before 1912, when commercial oil exports were first made, were perceived by foreign travellers to be deteriorating. Curzon's sweeping conclusions on the state of manufacturing industry in Iran, that “factories, as the term is understood in Europe, do not exist in Persia; and the multiplication and economy of labour-force, by the employment of steam-power, or even water-power, is hardly known” and that “there was a decadence of native ingenuity, consequent upon the importation of cheap European substitutes,” were found to hold true in the early years of the twentieth century. Issawi noted that “Iran … was relatively little affected by the [economic] changes taking place in the world until the exploitation of oil.” Even as late as 1934, European assessment of the Iranian economy stressed the lack of discernible development of a modern economy, while there is evidence that the oil industry operated as an economic enclave with few linkages created into other domestic activities.Agriculture, too, while not lacking entirely its own dynamic of change arising from natural events such as occurrence of good and bad crop years, or political interventions for reasons of taxation and competition for land ownership, was for the most part unaffected by systematic improvements in production and yields. Not until 1937 was there an attempt to provide a new basis for modernization, a move that came to nothing as a result of Rizā Shāh's lack of conviction in the need for agricultural change and, later, the difficult position of the government after his abdication in 1941.

Before the 18th century relations between Iran and Russia were sporadic. Though some Persian goods found their way to Muscovy while the duchy was still under the Tatar yoke, travel and commerce remained insignificant until the mid 16th century, when the Russian conquest of the khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan opened the Volga route to the Caspian Sea. Soon Moscow became a minor entrepôt for Europe's Persian trade. From the north and the west there flowed into Iran a small stream of furs, cloth, metals, leather, amber, crystal. From Iran came silk, pearls, rugs, embroidered cloth, velvet, rice, fruit, and spices.

Political and diplomatic relations between the two states were less important. After a brief clash of interests in Dāghistān early in the 17th century, the Russians withdrew from the northern Caucasus. The raids on Iran's shores by Sten'ka Razin's cossacks were a large-scale bandit enterprise conducted against the wishes of Russian authorities. Razin's mobs pillaged coastal towns, indiscriminately massacred their inhabitants, raped and abducted women, then disappeared without trace. Occasionally Muscovite envoys would appear in Isfahān or Persian envoys in Moscow, but the contacts they established were of short duration. It was Peter the Great who broke through the barrier of the Caucasus and for the first time confronted Iran with the Russian threat.

Though Peter I was primarily concerned with Europe, “he had from his earliest years taken a lively interest in Asia”. In him, B. H. Sumner has written, “The enthusiasm of the explorer was allied with the gold-dazzled phantasy of the prospector and the merchant.”

In recent times, a significant aspect of Iran's foreign relations has been foreign interference in the country's affairs, with varying Iranian response to this. Three major factors have played a determining role in this: Iran's growing strategic and economic importance as an oil producer in a zone of major power rivalry; the national features of Iran as a predominantly Shī‘ī, but socially heterogeneous society, with no consensus over the appropriate form and functions of government; and the need of the rulers of Iran to ensure the continuation of their rule and to govern Iran effectively in these circumstances. Iran's foreign relations between 1921 and 1979 must be studied in this context. This period covers the rule of the Pahlavī dynasty, begun by Rizā Shāh's accession to the throne in 1925, following his seizure of political power through a coup in 1921, and ended with the overthrow of his son, Muhammad Rizā Shāh, in 1979. The collapse of the Pahlavī dynasty opened the way for its major opponent, Āyatullāh Rūh-Allāh Khumainī, to declare Iran an Islamic Republic and abolish the monarchy.

For historical and analytical purposes, the Pahlavī period is best examined in three parts: Rizā Shāh's rule (1925–1941), Muhammad Rizā Shāh's reign (1941–53) and his rule (1953–1979). During each of these periods, foreign powers subjected Iran to different types of pressure and encroachment, influencing the country's domestic and foreign policies in distinct ways. Under Rizā Shāh, while Anglo-Russian rivalry over Iran was kept in abeyance as the two powers' changing interests dictated, Iran's foreign policy reflected various short-term attempts to maintain this situation and benefit from it in the assertion of Iran's independence.

THE QāJāR POLITICAL SYSTEM

Before discussing the vicissitudes of late Qājār politics, it would be useful to try to understand how 19th century Iranian politics worked. Essentially these workings were only a slight variation on the general pattern of Iranian politics since the 11th century, when large-scale invasions of nomadic Turkish tribes that accompanied the Saljuq incursions, and the spread of the quasi-feudal iqtā‘ system strengthened the regional power of tribal and other military leaders and weakened the strength of central governments. Although there were, between the 11th and 19th centuries, governments of very varied powers, ranging from the strongest of the Saljuq, Mongol and Safavid rulers to periods of complete breakdown of central government, there were certain similarities that characterize the whole of this period. Among these was the status of the numerous nomadic tribes, which ranged from almost total independence to a degree of internal autonomy. Tribes managed not only their own internal affairs, subject generally to tribute and pro-forma confirmation of tribal leaders by the rulers, but also frequently ruled over villagers who inhabited territories in their regions. Beyond this internal autonomy, the tribes constituted the most effective fighting forces in Iran during most of this long period - their mastery of horsemanship and of the latest weapons giving them a decisive advantage over the city population, whom the Shahs generally showed little inclination to train. Every important Iranian dynasty from the Saljuqs to the Qājārs was either tribal in origin or relied on tribal backing in taking power. In the early 19th century, nomadic tribes were estimated to form one third to one half of the Iranian population.

The contemporary social organization of individual tribal groups in Iran has recently been the focus of some detailed studies. Historical studies of the tribes have been few, however, and research into their social history has hardly begun. The available source material for such a social history is mostly written from a distance, by outsiders viewing the tribes with hostility or some other bias. For example, the information on the tribes that can be gleaned from sources such as Persian court chronicles, manuals and local histories, and from European agents' and travellers' reports, largely concerns such matters as taxation, military contingents, disturbances and measures taken to quell them, and inaccurate lists of major tribal groups, numbers and leaders. Economic and social organization are treated superficially if at all, and even for the last two centuries their basic features must be inferred circumstantially or deduced from later, more complete studies.

This chapter gives in the first instance a general survey, based on available source materials, of the distribution of the tribes and their political history as a “problem” for the Iranian government in the 18th and 19th centuries. The second part of the chapter attempts an analysis, on the one hand, of the processes of ecological adaptation and social and economic organization which may be considered to have contributed to the “tribal problem”, and, on the other, of the development of different tribal groups during the period as the product of interaction between these various kinds of processes: ecological, economic, social and political.

The Safavid period marks an obvious watershed in the religious history of Iran in that it witnesses the elevation of Twelver Shi‘ism to the position of state religion and the practical fusion of Iran and Shi‘ism into a single religio-national entity. Although the proximate causes of this process are to be sought in a Türkmen military invasion of Iran from the west and north-west, followed by an influx of Shī‘ī scholars from Arab lands, there can be no doubt that a species of marriage between Shi‘ism and the Iranian national consciousness had been concluded by the close of the Safavid era. The marriage has proved lasting, and its effects irreversible. Yet the precise content of the Shī‘ī-Iranian identity and the forms of expression that were to be assumed by Shi‘ism on Iranian soil were not fully formulated in the Safavid period. Indeed, it was only when the Safavids were driven from the scene in the first quarter of the 18th century that Iranian Shi‘ism became emancipated from all essential dependence on the state, and was able to embark on a process of self-elaboration and internal differentiation that makes of the post-Safavid period one of great interest and richness. The 18th century has been called “by far the blackest period in the history of Islamic Iran”, and the anarchy that prevailed throughout much of the period goes some way to justifying this judgement. The 19th century, too, was one of almost uninterrupted socio-political decline, arrested only by the beginnings of westernizing reform.