During the reign of Peter the Great (ruled 1689–1725), Russia started to pursue expansionist designs against Iran, culminating in the nineteenth century with the annexation of Iranian lands and aggressive interference into its internal affairs. According to the reports of some Arab geographers, contacts between Iran and Russia, at least in the area of trade, already existed in the ninth century. The main route, which connected ancient Russia with Iran, was along the Volga River and the Caspian Sea. The Mongol invasions in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries interrupted the trade, but it started to revive by the mid-fifteenth century. At that time, the liberation of Russia from the Mongol yoke and the foundation of the centralized state of Moscovy were under way. Russian merchants often combined trade missions with diplomatic assignments from their rulers, who through them sent not only letters concerning trade but also assertions of friendship.
The liberation from the Mongols of the cities of Kazan’ in 1552 and Astrakhan’ in 1556 by Ivan IV favored active trade between Iran and Russia via the Volga–Caspian route. At the same time, fairly regular diplomatic relations started between Safavid Iran, which had recently been united, and the Moscovy state. Before the time of Peter the Great, even though there were occasional disagreements, Russia and Iran treated each other as equals, since they were at approximately the same level of military and political development.
It was Peter the Great who initiated aggressive policies towards Iran. In 1715–18, a young officer, Artemii Volynskii, was sent to Iran to gather strategic information, promote Russian trade in Iran, and explore the possibilities of a military union against the Ottomans. Peter used the deteriorating situation of the Safavids to his advantage and invaded the Caucasian coast of the Caspian in 1722, two months before the Safavid Shah, Sultan Husayn, was overthrown by the Afghans. In 1723, the envoy of Shah Tahmasp II signed a treaty with Russia in St. Petersburg, according to which Iran ceded to Russia the towns of Darband and Baku with their territories and the provinces of Gilan, Mazanderan and Astarabad. Shah Tahmasp himself refused to ratify the treaty, but Russia maintained its garrisons in Darband, Baku and Gilan. In 1724, Russia signed another treaty concerning Iranian territories with the Ottomans, whose armies had moved into Transcaucasia and western Iran. Russia recognized Ottoman control over Azerbaijan and much of Transcaucasia, while Iran’s Caspian provinces remained under Russian control. Though Peter was determined to annex the Caspian provinces permanently, the enterprise was a failure. Much of the territory in Gilan lay outside actual Russian control, while no attempt was made to send garrisons to Mazanderan and Astarabad, which Russia had also claimed. In addition, many Russian soldiers died of disease caused by the unhealthy climate. Peter the Great died in 1725, and Empress Anna (ruled 1730–40) agreed in the treaties of Rasht (1732) and Ganjeh (1735) to withdraw Russian forces from all Iranian territories.
Relations between Iran and Russia remained minimal until the late eighteenth century, when Catherine the Great (ruled 1762–96) resumed the expansionist policies of Peter the Great. The nineteenth century opened a new page in the relations between Russia and Iran due to the dramatically new internal situation in Russia and Iran and the emergence of imperialism and colonialism as the new factor in international politics.
Russia entered the nineteenth century as a powerful Eurasian empire, with high international prestige and strong influence in the European political arena. It had gone through the century of Westernization introduced by Peter the Great and continued by Catherine the Great. “The absorption of Western technology and military skills turned [Russia] into a major European power. It also prepared [her] for the confrontation with Napoleonic France and participation in the European concert of powers (1815–1914).”
Expansion into new lands had been one of the most important political agendas of the Russian Tsars since the time of Ivan IV (ruled 1533– 84), but the nineteenth-century conquests reflect a new stage in the historical evolution of Russia: the emergence of imperialism created a colonialist outlook on expansion. Territorial aggrandizement came to be combined with the extension of political sovereignty over conquered peoples in the belief that the colonies would make the empire rich and that the empire could in return benefit subject peoples by introducing them to civilization and Christianity. Unlike Western Europe, Russia was expanding overland, not overseas, and the pace of the extension was impressive. According to one scholar, “In 300 years (1600–1900) Russia grew by 17 million square kilometers. It resembled the great empires of the past: China, Rome, and the Ottoman empire.”7 According to another estimate, “In 1914, the explorer Fridtjof Nansen reckoned that over four centuries the Tsarist realm had expanded at an astonishing rate of fifty-five square miles a day, or about 20,000 square miles a year.”
Host–guest relationships and the socio-cultural impacts of tourism
