Extended abstract
The role of Qajar period roads in the functioning of Companies based on the documents of Ettehadieh Company
Abstract
The establishment of Companies in the Qajar period is due to Iran's commercial position. The neighborhood of Iran and Russia and the need of these two countries for each other's products made Iranian and Russian businessmen to exchange commercial products. Iranian merchants were connected with Russian and European merchants through the sea routes and the Northern Sea, as well as the Oman Sea and the Persian Gulf and internal routes. During the Qajar period, the main goods imported from the north were sugar and spices and cloth from the south. The favorable commercial position of Iran, especially during the Qajar period, provided the foundation for the establishment of Companies with commercial use and exchange. Ettehadieh Company started its business and exchange activity in Tabriz and expanded in Tehran. This research aims to explain the trade routes and the importance of Companies, to deal with the activity of Ettehadieh Company of the union with the method of historical analysis and by referring to the family documents of Ettehadieh Company and to answer the question, what role did the trade routes play in the development of Ettehadieh Company? It is assumed that the insecurity of the internal roads and their unsuitable conditions for the passage of goods had faced obstacles to the trade union's activity, which slowed down their activity, of course, the political system ruling Iran was also not unaffected. Many articles and books have been written in the field of commercial economy and foreign trade, each of which examines an aspect of this issue. Several researches have been written about the economic history of Iran during the Qajar period and have described events such as the granting of commercial concessions, the influence of the Russian Borrowing Bank and the Shahshahi Bank in the Iranian economy, or the commercial or urban trade. However, in none of these researches and other sources, there has been no analytical and coherent research on the ways used in foreign trade relying on Ettehadieh Company. This article, with an analytical approach and based on the business documents of the private archive of Ettehadieh Company, aims to investigate the business methods used in this period, while explaining the operation of the Ettehadieh Company and to answer these questions about the role of trade routes in the development or non-development of foreign trade And what role did the trade routes play in the development of Ettehadieh Company activity? The hypothesis suggests that trade routes played an important role in the development of trade, but the political system ruling Iran and the government's lack of attention to the reconstruction of trade routes caused the lack of prosperity in trade in Iran This research was conducted using the library method and historical documents are the most important documents used in the research and its innovation is the use of documents of Ettehadieh Company, which have been provided to the author from the family's personal collection