Abstract This article analyzes the political ecology of modern Iran as envisioned in the report of Arthur Hills Gleadowe-Newcomen’s 1904–-05 Commercial Mission to South-Eastern Persia and a covert Persian counter-narrative penned by its military attaché, Mirza Riza Muhandis. The commercial ambitions of the British Empire in Qajar Iran involved a transformation of Iran’s environment. The critiques of these programs outlined in the travelogue of Mirza Riza Muhandis concern whom these interventions by science and engineering should serve. This case study highlights tensions over development and inequality at a critical moment in Iran’s history, just months before the beginnings of the 1906 Constitutional Revolution.
James M. Gustafson (Thu,) studied this question.