Credit: Kaveh Ehsani, Leiden University
From “The social history of labor in the Iranian oil industry : the built environment and the making of the industrial working class (1908-1941)”
Prior to 1925 when the new central government institutions began to be set up in Khuzestan, APOC would routinely take drastic coercive measures to evacuate and expel squatters or settled populations out of the way of its projects with the help of its local allies. In Masjed Soleyman and Bawarda it set fire to reed houses and shops and demolished huts to clear the path for oil installations or company neighborhoods (see above, and chapter 3). When necessary it relied on the assistance of local magnates to enforce its projects. These actions were justified on two bases: first, the recurring theme of “empty land” which presented seasonally or collectively used territories as uncultivated or dead land and; second, the contractual deals with the local magnates, as well as the legal clause in the D’Arcy Concession, which gave the Company the right to obtain uncultivated land free of charge, or to purchase cultivated land at the established local price from its owners (chapter 3). Since these contractual property categories were vague, incongruous with local realities, or highly disputed, they created resentment among the dispossessed, which were left with few options but to move to the urban spaces created by oil in search of wage labor or some form of livelihood on the margins of the oil industry. The handful of central government officials stationed in Khuzestan also resented these Company actions, not so much out of sympathy with the plight of the local population as for the contempt toward their own nominal authority, as shown by this report of the Kargozar in 1923: “ The Company acts as it pleases with Iranian citizens. There are no government agents at present to deal with complaints, except at Mohammareh. To monitor the Company we need offices in Masjed Soleyman, Naseri [Ahvaz], and Ebbadan [Abadan]”[79].
However, with the fear of Sheikh Khaz’al gone, the remaining residents of the Bazaar neighborhood resisted intimidation when the Company tried to evict them. By May 1925 the Company had destroyed some 140 dwellings, but demolitions and evictions ground to a halt when the rest refused to move or be intimidated. The residents were from all over. At least 20 of those demolished dwellings housed Indians who had come there from Mesopotamia. Others came from Bushehr, Shiraz, Kazeroun, Isfahan, and elsewhere, mostly it seems from southern Iran, as evidenced from the names of signatories on the petitions. The Kargozar in Mohammareh received 57 written complaints demanding justice and protection[80]. The Company was refusing to pay compensation and threatened to take matters to Tehran[81]; but the conflict was becoming politicized, with some “troublemakers” urging residents to resist eviction:
“The Company is asking the government permission to build a bazaar in the so-called Sheikh area. Previously, the Company and Sardar Aqdas’ [one of Khaz’al’s tiles] agents had demolished the houses there. Whoever does not have a compensation contract from the Company can get paid according to the type of room they had: Brick room 175 Rupees, Mud brick 88 Rps, Mud 55 Rps. There are some troublemakers involved. The Company persists. It has held multiple meetings and refuses to acknowledge any claims, stating that they have already purchased the titles [to the land], and if they agree to pay anything it will be only out of goodwill”[82].
The oil workers living in the neighborhood were intimidated and did not appear to be willing to confront the Company openly, fearing for their jobs and livelihood. The Kargozar arranged a meeting, but in spite of official invitations by the Company for them to participate oil workers and Company employees kept a low profile:
“A final meeting was held with the Company on the 20th of May. Some of the plaintiffs are employees of the Company, and thus refused to appear in the commission, in spite of multiple invitations from the personnel office. It was determined that the Company has to pay an additional compensation of 18,000Rupees, or 6,000Touman to those displaced”[83].
“An atmosphere of fear and surveillance reigned in Khuzestan, and especially in Abadan”[84]. At the same time, Company public relations and propaganda was lauding the place as a pleasant and safe destination for visits, and a great place for Europeans to work (Chapter 5). However, things were rather different from the perspective of migrants and unskilled workers: “My difficulty was how to travel in Khuzestan because the English had put up barbed wire everywhere and forbade anyone from entering [any of the Company controlled areas]…wherever you went you would be interrogated: Where are you going? Why have you come? Who are you here to see? … I wanted to go to Aghajari, but it was all fenced in and there was a guard at the gate. The place was in the middle of the mountains…In Khuzestan everything was forbidden. Iranians couldn’t start a club, a cooperative, or any associations. We received permission from the Abadan Cultural Office to establish a sports club for Iranians…The English immediately put us under surveillance…we had only athletic activities, but the club became very popular and the whole town was participating, so the Provincial Government shut us down after two months… Things were very difficult for migrants and newcomers to Abadan and Masjed Soleyman. Masjed Soleyman was all fenced in, and you couldn’t enter without government permission. Abadan was equally bad.”[85]
APOC was creating fortified enclaves by enclosing its areas with fences, behind which the business of accumulation in oil capitalism could operate according to its own rules of social, spatial, and economic behavior. In these de-territorialized spaces carved out by the Company those higher up the corporate hierarchy had a different experience of everyday life than the masses of casual unskilled workers and urban migrants. For some the fences and barbed wires represented a sense of safety and comfort behind defensive fortifications, for others they evoked fear, alieanation, and incarceration. However, they all had to live by the rules being imposed by the Oil Company. Marx drew attention to the stark contrast between the geographies of market exchange versus the domain of production when labor is commodified under capitalism[86]. We can broaden this geographic contrasts and think of Company towns as corporate extensions of the disciplinary power exercised in coercive work spaces into the everyday urban spaces of reproduction:
APOC was attempting to carve out an isolated, enclosed, militarized, and deterritorialized geography of oil extraction to contain and defuse the frictions caused with labor relations, national laws, and popular resistance[87]. In isolated locales, such as Masjed Soleyman and Aghajari, which were in fact mining towns with a limited life span and utility beyond the productive phase of the oilfields, the Company had greater freedom of action to create company towns under its more or less exclusive disciplinary control[88]. However, the sheer scale of Abadan, and the fact that as a city it was becoming many things at the same time — an industrial city built around the world’s largest refinery, a strategic border town, a major port, a city of desperate immigrants, expatriate employees, and of increasingly desperate indigenous population witnessing the dismantling of their customary rights and familiar social structures — simply limited the ability of the Company to completely hegemonize the spatial order. Furthermore, the frictions with the emerging state institutions and the teaming local population, not all of whom worked for the Oil Company, were to force the Company to negotiate more than it had anticipated, and shaped the built environment of Abadan in a highly contested dynamic[89]. Although oil workers may have been too intimidated to participate openly in negotiations over their eviction from the “Sheikh Neighborhood”, their neighbors and others did; forcing the Kargozar in Mohammareh to form a committee to address the losses incurred by “Iranian citizens”. The Company claimed its actions were humanitarian, and refused to enter into any formal negotiations since it considered its dealings to have been proper and contractual. The Grievance Committee set up by the Kargozar was informed y the Company that the evicted people had signed a contract and been compensated; their signatures had been witnessed by the Municipality, and that concluded the deal. Any further action on the part of the Company would be purely voluntary and undertaken solely on humanitarian grounds[90].
Meanwhile trouble had reached the capital and Teymourtash, the powerful Minister of Agriculture, Trade, and General Welfare inquired from his counterpart at the Foreign Ministry “whether or not the rights and privileges of the Government and of citizens had been respected according to the article 3 of the D’Arcy Concession”[91]. It was clear from the message that the primary concern was the dignity of the Government, and whether the Company had ignored its sovereignty. The Kargozar was asked to provide a full account to his superiors, who were becoming uneasy. His report is an important document worthy of quotation, as it reveals the views and anxieties of state officials, especially at the local level: “Shaykh Abdollah and the Company have demolished a number of houses situated in the so-called “Company Area”. In fact Abadan has two neighborhoods, respectively called ‘Company’ and ‘Sheikh’. Most houses and shops are in the latter, which are left to their own, although people are constantly trying to improve things. In the Company area homes were demolished and people were forced to sign consent forms. The Company’s motives in demolishing houses is unclear. Some believe they intend to expel all Iranians from Khuzestan, others think they want to dig a canal to separate their buildings and factories from the city. In your servant’s opinion they intend to turn Abadan into something like Masjed Soleyman, where they own everything and nobody else has any authority… They intend to replicate that situation in Abadan and undermine the current city, as once the bazaar is completed the Company will control all transactions through its own lackeys. We should resist allowing the situation in Abadan coming to resemble that of Masjed Soleyman. On the other hand, since the municipality has some revenues and is under the control of the government it needs to work hard to pave roads and keep the city clean in order not to give any excuses to the Company”[92].
The Kargozar was alarmed about the absence of any tangible government authority in Masjed Soleyman, which appeared to him as occupied territory. He felt the Company had similar plans for Abadan, and his primary concern was to impose government sovereignty over the city and to check the mysterious and questionable machinations of the Company. The fate of the evicted population did not appear to overly concern him. However, he was clear that if the government were to exercise any authority it needed to work hard to perform certain social tasks, such as building and maintaining an urban infrastructure, and to insure that sanitary concerns were being addressed. “The state” as such was not an institutional presence in the city, but
to make a state and to claim sovereignty over the territory and the population required performing certain social tasks that were now being defined as general welfare. The Kargozar followed his report with a further note, this time providing a historical background to the conflict, and framed the frictions with the Company within the changing political situation of the demise of Sheikh Khaz’al and the new order being imposed by the central government in Khuzestan. Again, it is an important historical document worthy of full quotation:
“Last June (June 1924) The Company warned some home owners to vacate their premises to clear way for demolition. We have objected to the Company and to the [British] Consulate [in Mohammareh] that the Company had no right to so threaten the residents. We demanded to know how the Company intended to proceed with the evictions if residents ignored the warning? For now they say they do not intend to be unjust, and they will wait while [their] workers look for alternative housing. Meanwhile the revolution had begun in Khuzestan. Sheikh Khaz’al was openly challenging the government. The Company took advantage of this situation and without informing this office or the Foreign Ministry asked Sheikh Abdollah who, at the time, was Khaz’al’s appointed governor in Ebbadan [Abadan], to demolish the houses and transfer the land to the Company. They employed the services of a Company secretary, a certain Mirza Hossein Shushtari, to give a veneer of legality to these proceedings. When I objected to this, Sheikh Abdollah showed up at the Kargozari with a number of Arabs and threatened me not to interfere. The houses were demolished. Residents were complaining in secret but we couldn’t do anything. We held seven meetings with the Company. Finally, [the General Manager in Mohammareh, T.L.] Jacks agreed to pay compensation, but [APOC Chairman Charles Greenaway] his boss refused and insisted the issue must be resolved in Tehran [my emphasis].”[93]
The accusation of threatening and intimidating government officials did not sit well in Tehran, nor did the impression that the Company was acting like a state; although a confrontation could be avoided by blaming Sheikh Khaz’al and his rogue agents acting with impunity; and now that a “revolution” had taken place and Khaz’al had been removed by the army and Reza Khan, everything would be different. The conflict with Sheikh Khaz’al had focused public attention on Khuzestan, by highlighting the state of Iranian oil workers and the details of the oil concessions in the growing national press at a time when nationalist sentiment was running high following the rejection of the 1919 Anglo-Persian Agreement by the Majles and the increasing centralization of the state under Reza Khan (Chapter 2). The newspaper
Tajadod published a series of seven reports titled “Naft” [Oil] that reviewed the history of oil concessions granted to the British and Americans, and how Iranian statesmen had handled these agreements[94]. The newspaper received a critical reply to its coverage, titled “About Oil”, which it published, and then proceeded to publish a longer series of more critical assessments titled “The history of the Anglo Persian Oil Company[95]. Bad publicity in the nationalist press, at a time of transition when the British Government and APOC were trying to reconfigure their long term strategy and felt highly threatened by Soviet influence, American competition, and the radicalization of the masses was a headache that the Oil Company wished to avoid. July 1925 became a pivotal month in the struggle over the Abadan Bazaar and the evictions planned by the Company. The Prime Minister, his cabinet, and the Majles received a series of telegraph petitions from “Ruined Abadanis made homeless” (Khaneh Kharaban-e Abadan), which declared their patriotism and claimed, “The Company intends to demolish our homes and has caused us 150 thousand Rupees of damages. The former Kargozar was useless and refused to carry out serious investigations or make accurate reports. We plead for your assistance”. Other telegraphs arrived complaining, “We have been made homeless for more than a year. Please investigate and follow up on this complaint”. The pleas were signed by a coterie of people whose names indicated they were immigrants from other cities and regions (Hassan Shirazi, Mohammad Javad Qomsheyi, Seyyed Mohammad Shirazi). Some of their names indicate a degree of literacy, carrying the title Mirza which means secretary/notary (Mirza Jani, Mirza Hossein Isfahani); many petitioners were shop owners (Qahvehchi ). It is unclear if any were employees of the Company, since this was the era before the universal compulsory registration of individual information, the adoption of formal last names, and the issuance of birth certificates[96]. But since the Kargozar’s reports highlighted the residence of many oil workers in the neighborhood, and their intimidation by the fear of retribution by the Company, we can surmise that this was a collective neighborhood movement, publicly fronted by those individuals who felt less vulnerable to direct Company intimidation. Petitioning authorities for justice in the name of loyalty and patriotism had a long tradition in popular politics during the Qajar period. It was one of the few ways that ordinary people could seek justice against abusive officials by petitioning higher placed members of elites and pleading for their protection; but now the strategy had begun to become part of the repertoire of the new wage working class of the industrial proletariat and urban subalterns in industrial towns[97].Teymourtash, who was becoming Reza Khan’s right hand man, was alarmed by these mounting frictions and demanded an investigation by the Foreign Minister[98]. At stake were the potential political repercussions stemming from the unexpected resistance of local residents, the bad publicity in the press during a critical period of uncertainty and crisis, and concern over the actions of the Company that was acting like a sovereign government:
“The Majlis has received numerous complaints from shopkeepers and residents of the so called “Company” neighborhood of Abadan against the demolition of their property. At present a commission made of the representative of the Provincial Military Government and the Cabinet of Ministers is negotiating for adequate compensation of the residents. What is alarming is the collection of the so-called public health taxes by the Company. This seems to be the same as municipal taxes that the Company was collecting and spending until recently due to the absence of a municipality in Abadan. You ought to establish a regular municipality as soon as possible in the city in order to end this irregular state of affairs, which is contrary to the national regulations. Until this happens it will be impossible to resolve the disputes between the Company and residents”[99].
On 24th July 1925 matters came to head and the whole region erupted. After the military had displaced Khaz’al the Arab populations of Mohammareh, Abadan, and southwestern Khuzestan were apprehensive and resentful of the humiliating manner in which they were being treated by the government soldiers and bureaucrats. The non-Arab migrants were initially glad to be rid of the oppressive yoke of Khaz’al, but soon discovered that the new government agents and soldiers had little leeway with the Company to offer them effective protection; or were equally abusive as Khaz’al and the Company lackeys. The notion of the Company funding the Municipality’s budget, building schools (chapter 5), subsidizing the wages of mayors and school teachers, etc. did not exactly give credibility to the autonomy and impartiality of government officials: “The Iranian Police Department in Khuzestan was very weak…and because they were funded by the Oil Company and were their lackeys, they were busy intimidating and extorting the wretched people of Khuzestan… the Oil Company supported the Police Department only to intimidate and suppress any opposition”[100]. Eftekahri, who was trying to organize the oil workers in Abadan in 1927-1929 felt the only significant threat against the secret nucleus of labor activists he had managed to set up came from the Company’s own secret police, and not from any intelligence gathered by the thuggish and ineffective Iranian police[101].
When the military government of Khuzestan refused to pay compensation for requisitioning food and pack animals, and began to impose a new tax on date trees, a major tribal insurgency ensued among the rural Arab population (see Chapter 7). The British Minister Percy Loraine, as was to be expected, claimed that a sinister conspiracy was at play: “they were further agitated by the intrigues and incitement of the agents of the parties whose interest is to create trouble for the Central Government or to provoke disorder that would affect British interests and Anglo-Persian relations”. However, he did concede that, “circumstances were, on the whole, favorable to such a general uprising”[102]. In spite of this, a “general tribal uprising” did not materialize because in the absence of the unifying power of Khaz’al some of the insurgents broke rank and acted prematurely. The Company and the army had been alerted by,
“ The isolated and premature outbreak of a band of 400 hungry Arabs, who broke into Mohammareh on the 24th of July, temporarily immobilized the small garrison and had possession of the town for a few hours. His Majesty’s consul was isolated and unable to enter into communication with the APOC, whose senior official, Sir Arnold Wilson, considered that the seriousness of the situation justified a direct request for the urgent dispatch of a gunboat of troops from Iraq for the protection of the Company’s interests. At the same time, he placed his [APOC’s] transport at the disposal of the Persian military authorities for the transport of reinforcements from Ahvaz. These arrived with commendable promptitude during the night, and had so far restored the situation before the arrival of troops from Iraq that it was found unnecessary to disembark them”[103].
This event catalyzed a significant change in the provincial dynamic (see more detailed discussion in Chapter 7). It made the Company more convinced of the “efficacy of Persian methods in tribal warfare” and came to trust that the Central Government could effectively impose security and safeguard Company operations. It formalized the Company’s change of alliance with the government against its erstwhile local allies, the Arab tribes. The use of motorized transport revolutionized the logistical geography of the region, as Iranian troops were transported within hours to confront the popular protests instead of taking days to arrive on foot and horseback. It also signaled how oil, or more precisely fuel oil for motorcars, produced in Abadan refinery, was facilitating new political alliances and the application of modern
technology to engineer a whole new built environment of access roads and rapid transportation and communication. Last, it alerted the Oil Company as well as the provincial junta of the simmering danger of popular discontent, and the necessity of preventing further insurgencies, especially in congested and destitute urban areas with a teaming population of anonymous and desperate denizens. In Mohammareh a new attaché replaced the former Kargozar, Haj Mirza Moqaddam, who was re-assigned to Tehran, thus conveniently annulling all the provisional agreements he had drawn out during his mediations between the residents and the Company: “The former Kargozar had several friendly meetings with the Company, which cannot be acknowledged as formal agreements”[104]. By insinuating, perhaps unfairly, a lack of integrity in his predecessor, the new Kargozar reported, “The Company claims all negotiations with the former Kargozar were informal and merely a good-will gesture, since the plaintiffs had all signed over their property titles to the Company. Report #295 claimed that APOC had agreed to pay a compensation of 18 thousand Rupees [indicating the Indian currency was more prevalent in the province and widely used by the Company instead of the Iranian national money], but they now deny this. Nor do we have any document proving the Company had ever agreed to pay such a sum. It may be appropriate to ask Hajj Mirza…Moghaddam, the former Kargozar, whether he has any legal proof in support of his report”[105]
The situation in Abadan had stayed relatively calm during the July events, but simmering anger now threatened to spill over into open confrontation in the highly tense city, as former allies and subjects of Sheikh Khaz’al felt betrayed and their anger added to an already confrontational situation: “Approximately a hundred evicted people gather on a daily basis to pressure the Kargozari. Some local thugs, who used to be formerly in the pay of the Company, are now causing trouble and agitating. A few days ago Seyyed Jaani Shirazi, a leader of Ebbadan [Abadan] thugs, attacked Mr… [illegible] the Company’s head of operations with a stone. The latter was almost killed, but managed to escape. The military government has made several arrests, but the situation is unruly”[106].
In spite of the tense situation, and encouraged by their newly established cooperative alliance with the government and the dismissal of the over-critical former Kargozar, APOC decided to dig in its heels. They informed Tehran that they had legally purchased these properties from their former owners with their signed consent, and paid a fair price that according to the terms of the concession was not to exceed the local fair market value of similar land[107]. It was conveniently overlooked that land prices had changed since 1921, when a “fair market value of land” had been last agreed with Khaz’al. The Acting Director F.C. Greenhouse met Teymourtash at his house in Tehran to hammer out a resolution. “Following the 2nd of August meeting of the committee investigating the situation in Abadan at your home we arrived at the following conclusions: – The demolition of buildings in the Company area of Abadan was deemed necessary and was carried out for the general welfare of the population and according to the recommendations of the Company physicians and public health professionals.
– Concerning the demolished houses that had been previously compensated it is unnecessary to carry out any further investigation. Beware that the same troubles that are being created for the Company in its small area may soon bedevil the Government in the city of Abadan – The refusal of some Iranians in the Company Area to pay rent or Sanitation Duties. Company does not make any profit on these dues, and they are all spent on sanitation expenses.
– The new and large bazaar of Abadan: The area had been previously delineated and cleared by Khaz’al and the Company was supposed to build a bazaar for the Sheikh. To insure safety and sanitation it is best to complete the construction before the start of the rainy season”[108].
The remainder of 1925 and 1926 were the short-lived period of honeymoon between the British Government, APOC, and the Central Government of Iran. By 1927 relations became testier, eventually breaking down during the acrimonious renegotiations of the D’Arcy Concession between 1928-1933[109]. In the above cited summary of his meeting with Teymourtash, Greenhouse made several claims: That the whole idea of the Bazaar and the subsequent evictions had been the work of Sheikh Khaz’al and not APOC; that the Company’s sole aim was the improvement of the general welfare and public sanitation, based on the recommendations of scientific and sanitary experts. He implied that the plaintiffs demanding redress were opportunists out to extort the Company, which had already paid fair compensation. He warned that opening the Pandora’s box of compensations for confiscated property would be just as harmful to the Government that was now busy reclaiming all customary held land and properties as state land. He eased the Minister’s mind by implying that the Company was not acting as a political authority by collecting taxes which, he acknowledged, was the purview of the government only, but merely charging rent and sanitary fees within its own area to maintain and improve the generally beneficial infrastructure. The urgency in Greenhouse’s missive was evident, and he followed it up with another pressing request a month later when the government stayed cautious and did not act quickly enough: “[We had made an] arrangement last year (1924) to build a new bazaar in Abadan town at the request of the Shyakh of Mohammerah…The need for the bazaar is very urgent in the interest of the public and of the good sanitation and hygienic control…The Company would consent to build the bazaar if the government so wishes…It is suggested that the shopkeepers displaced by the recent demolitions be given first refusal of shops, and permission be given to the Company to lease out these shops at a rent to be agreed with the military governor sufficient to pay the cost of electric light, water, sanitation, and administration plus 10% per annum to cover the original cost of construction. The bazaar is designed for the sale of foodstuffs…and is almost as important as the provision of a good water supply”[110]
Notes & References
79. Kargozar to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Tehran, 29 December 1923, INA 240009253
80. Kargozar to Foreign Ministry, 5 May 1925, INA 240009253
81. Mohammareh to Foreign Ministry, 8 May 1925, INA 240009253
82. Mohammareh to Foreign Ministry, 8 May 1925; 12 May 1925, INA 240009253
83. Mohammareh to Foreign Ministry, No. 295, 21 May1925, INA 240009253
84. Eftekhari, Khaterat-e Dowran-e Separi Shodeh, 129.
85. Ibid., 34, 123–124. See also the fictional masterpiece of Abdelrahman Munif, Cities of Salt (New York: Vintage, 1989). Set in a fictional kingdom in the Persian Gulf, the story recreates a similar haunting landscape of fear and estrangement among the indigenous population confronted with the Leviatan of oil capitalism.
86. “This sphere that we are deserting, within whose boundaries the sale and purchase of labor power goes on, is in fact a very Eden of the innate rights of man. There alone rule Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham…On leaving this sphere of simple circulation or of exchange of commodities, which furnishes the “free-trader vulgaris” with his views and ideas, and with the standard by which he judges a society based on capital and wages, we think we can perceive a change in the physiognomy of our dramatis personae. He, who before was the money-owner, now strides in front as capitalist; the possessor of labor-power follows as his laborer. The one with an air of importance, smirking, intent on business; the other, timid and holding back, like one who is bringing his own hide to market and has nothing to expect but — a hiding”. Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (London: Penguin, 1976), 281.
87. This segregated and enclosed geography has become a common feature of late capitalism, both in mining and extraction, but also in the free trade zones of various kind. See Dara Orenstein, “ForeignTrade Zones and the Cultural Logic of Frictionless Production,” Radical History Review 2011, no. 109 (2010): 36–61; Robert Vitalis, America’s Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier, 2nd ed. (London: Verso, 2009); Hannah Appel, “Offshore Work: Oil, Modularity, and the How of Capitalism in Equatorial Guinea,” American Ethnologist 39, no. 4 (2012): 692–709; James Ferguson, “Seeing like an Oil Company: Space, Security, and Global Capital in Neoliberal Africa,” American Anthropologist 107, no. 3 (2005): 377–82.
88. I have extensively discussed the comparative dynamics of company towns in Ehsani, “Social Engineering and Modernization in Khuzestan’s Company Towns.”
89. Questioning the reductive notion of “dual city” that explains the spatial logic of colonial and industrial cities as Europeans versus the indigenous, or employers versus employees, Marcuse suggests the alternative notion of “a quartered city”, where multiple forms of distinction and hierarchy are simultaneously at work shaping a divided urban space along more fragmented lines than a simple binary dichotomy. See Peter Marcuse, “‘Dual City’: A Muddy Metaphor for a Quartered City,”
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 13, no. 4 (1989): 697–708.
90. Kargozar to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 25 May 1925, INA 240009253
91. Minister of Agriculture, Trade, and General Welfare to Minister of Foreign Affairs, No. 1881, 6 June 1925, INA 240009253. Clause 3 of D’Arcy Concession is available in Ferrier, History of the British Petroleum Company, 1:640.
92. To the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Ebbadan Houses and Company Actions”. (Abadan is spelled two different ways in the same letter), 3 June 1926, INA 240009253; Kargozar to Foreign Ministry, No.474, 6 June1925, INA 240009253
93. Kargozar to Foreign Ministry, No. 490, 16 June 1925, INA 240009253
94. “Naft”, Tajadod, Nos.9-12, 14, 16-17, from 25 June 25 to first of July 1924
95. “Dar Atraf-e Naft”, No.15, 9 July 1924; “Tarikh-e Company-e Naft-e Iran va Inglis”, Nos. 62, 71-75, October to 18 November 1924, in Tajadod
96. 14 July 1925, INA 240009253
97. Irene Schneider, The Petitioning System in Iran: State, Society and Power Relations in the Late 19th Century, Iranica 11 (Weisbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006); Serhan Afacan, “Revisiting Labour Activism in Iran: Some Notes on the Vatan Factory Strike in 1931,” International Labor and Working Class History, Forthcoming.
98. No. 4250, 21 July1925, INA 240009253
99. Ministry of Agriculture to the Ministry of Interior, No. 1350, 6 July 1925, INA 240009253
100. Eftekhari, Khaterat-e Dowran-e Separi Shodeh, 126–127.
101. Ibid.
102. “Military Operations – Khuzestan”, Persia Annual Report 1925, Burrell, IPD, 432.
103. Ibid.
104. No. 1369, 13 July 1925, INA 240009253
105. Kargozar to Foreign Ministry, No. 889, 10 August 1925, INA 240009253
106. Ibid.
107. APOC to Foreign Ministry, Nos. 25/79/27/637, 15 August 1925, INA 240009253
108 Greenhouse to Teymourtash, No.9/251, 18 August 1925,
109. Nasrollah Fatemi, Oil Diplomacy; Powderkeg in Iran (New York: Whittier Books, 1954); Mostafa Elm, Oil, Power, and Principle (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1992); Ferrier, History of the British Petroleum Company, 1:588–635.
110. “Greenhouse to Ministry of Agriculture”, No. P/316, 15 September 1925, INA 240029099
The Abadan Times 