Resistance to Economic Penetration

The Kārguzār and Foreign Firms in Qajar Iran

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8965660
AutoresGad G Gilbar (autor de correspondencia)
Año2011
Volumen43
Número1
Páginas5-23
Fecha de publicación2011-01-24
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaInternational Journal Middle East Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0020-7438 • E-ISSN: 1471-6380
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0020743810001170
OpenAlexW2037278692
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas30

European merchants and investors doing business in the Middle East during the long 19th century expected that commercial disputes in mixed cases would be conducted according to procedures and laws familiar to and accepted by them. In the Ottoman Empire and Egypt, mixed courts based on the French commercial code were established during that century. The Qajars, however, offered the foreign commercial community a different judicial institution: the local kārguzār (agent) and his majlis (court). By the beginning of the 20th century, thirty-six kārguzār offices operated in Iranian towns and harbors. Nevertheless, foreign (mainly British) merchants and their consuls complained bitterly that it was not an effective institution and that it clearly favored the local tujjār (big merchants). They claimed that these defects meant huge financial losses to them. The Qajars viewed this institution and its functioning differently. It served their policy of discouraging foreign penetration, and it contributed to the competitiveness of the Iranian tujjār in their struggle for commercial superiority

Ancient history · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Empire · Institution · Management · Ottoman empire · Penetration (warfare · Political science · Resistance (ecology · Archaeology and Historical Studies · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Islamic Studies and History · Law