A huge volume of messages exchanged in all directions: between constitutionalists in the provinces, the ulama in Iran and Iraq, the government and the provincial authorities, the shah and his officers, the foreign representatives and European capitals, the Majles deputies and the anjomans, the leaders of the bazaar, the Caucasian revolutionaries and socialists of Tabriz. Likewise, a vast number of complaints, petitions, and messages of both support and protest were transmitted from the ordinary people in remote towns and villages throughout Iran who had found a new voice through telegraphic communication.
The press and the telegraph, both modern means of communication in the public space, elevated the Majles in the eyes of the people to a sacred institution, as the epithet: “sacred” (moqaddas), attached to the full name of Consultative National Assembly, denoted. The Majles became the embodiment of lofty goals of the constitution, expected, quite unrealistically, to dispense social justice; to ensure peace, prosperity, and security; and to defend the country against foreign intrusions—all goals far beyond the frugal means of the Majles and the competence of most its deputies. Yet despite inexperience and inefficiency, the Majles’ record was still impressive enough to alarm its opponents and ensure continued animosity.
Beyond the drafting of the Fundamental Law and its Supplement, the Majles had tried, with some success, to tackle the urgent overhaul of the state’s frail finances and arcane practices. By 1907, Iran’s total state revenue was about 7,700,000 tumans (about $20,000,000), whereas annual expenditure for that year was projected at 10,700,000 tumans ($27,500,000), a deficit of 37 percent. The foreign debts that had accumulated since the 1890s only added to the burden. By 1909, it amounted to a colossal $30,000,000, with cumulative interest to be serviced by acquiring new loans. Greater dependency on imports added to global inflation and increased trade deficits. As much as the Majles tried, it shaved a mere 400,000 tumans ($1,000,000) from state expenditure. It abolished the ancient land tenure (toyul) system, an important move that nevertheless in practice proved largely symbolic.
Most tenured lands were already incorporated as private estates during the Naseri and Mozaffari periods and were soon to be ratified, in 1910, by the legislation of the second Majles. The pensions of the Qajar princes and hereditary bureaucratic elite were also reduced or terminated altogether, an act of greater consequence for the decline of a sector of the nobility that was devoid of private estates. The court budget too was cut to a mere 75,000 tumans, an act viewed by the shah as a deliberate offense against the monarchy and its public image. Yet he and his weakling court could do nothing but wait. For the time being, the climate was not in their favor. Popular support was for the Majles.
On other items of the reform agenda, the Majles’ record was less impressive. Efforts to create a national bank and national army faltered. Ending the monopoly of the British-controlled Imperial Bank of Persia over the issuance of Iranian paper currency and its grip on Iranian finances (only to be rivaled by the Russian-controlled Mortgage Bank of Persia) had long been a national aspiration. The Majles’ hesitation to establish a national bank was motivated less by insufficient capital, lack of expertise and misuse of the funds, pretexts under which the measure was eventually abandoned, and more by fear of injuring British financial interests at a time when the Majles needed that great power’s unsparing support. The creation of a uniform national army seemed even less of a tenable proposition given the other imperial power’s vested interest in the Russian-trained and Russianbacked Cossack Brigade, the most effective of the forces in the Qajar army. The coup d’état of July 1908 reaffirmed Russia’s use of the Brigade as an instrument of violent repression to sustain Qajar rule.
Modernization, Rule of Law and Formation of Civil Society in the Age of Nasir al-Din Shah
