About this book:

*Borderlands and Empire* provides a comprehensive geopolitical and social history of Iran’s relationships with the Ottoman and Russian Empires from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. It shifts the historical focus from imperial centers to the frontiers, arguing that modern boundaries were not merely created by high-level diplomacy and treaties like Amasya (1555), Zuhab (1639), and Turkmenchay (1828), but were co-produced through the everyday practices of people living at the edges. By examining the lives of tribal khans, merchants, smugglers, and pilgrims, the book illustrates how contested marches were gradually transformed into formalized national borders through a combination of military conflict, scientific mapping, and state centralization.

The narrative tracks the evolution of these frontiers through several transformative eras, beginning with the ideological and religious schism between the Safavid and Ottoman states. It details how the "science of empire"—characterized by boundary commissions, telegraph lines, and customs houses—sought to fix lines in rugged terrains like the Zagros and the Caucasus. Simultaneously, the study highlights the human cost of these shifts, exploring microhistories of captivity, conversion, and the displacement of plural societies, including Kurds, Armenians, Azeris, and Assyrians. These communities often navigated overlapping legal regimes and capitulatory rights, using the border’s inherent fluidity to maintain kinship ties and economic livelihoods despite imperial dictates.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the book analyzes the impact of Great Power rivalry, specifically the "Great Game" between Britain and Russia, which culminated in the de facto partition of Iran via the 1907 Anglo-Russian Convention. The text explores how the Iranian Constitutional Revolution and the "war without borders" during World War I further destabilized these regions, leading to a vacuum that was eventually filled by the centralized Pahlavi state. Under Reza Shah, the Iranian government implemented aggressive policies of sedentarization and linguistic homogenization, attempting to replace traditional tribal mobilities with a singular national identity and a rigid border regime.

Ultimately, the book concludes that while the physical and legal boundaries of modern Iran were solidified in the twentieth century, they remain repositories of contested memory. The transition from empire to republic in Turkey and the emergence of the Soviet Union forced Iran to reimagine its northern and western horizons once more. By blending diplomatic history with social and cultural analysis, the author demonstrates that the making of modern Iran was a process of both remembering and forgetting, where the state's drive for territorial integrity constantly grappled with the enduring, transnational realities of its diverse borderland populations.