Rudolph P. Matthee. The politics of trade in Safavid Iran: silk for silver, 1600-1730 (1999)

Rudolph P. Matthee. The politics of trade in Safavid Iran: silk for silver, 1600-1730. Series: Cambridge studies in Islamic civilization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, XXI+290 p. ISBN 0521641314

Rudolph P. Matthee’s book offers a sophisticated, revisionist interpretation of the economy of Safavid Iran. Using a wide range of archival and written sources in languages ranging from Persian to Dutch and Russian, the author considers the economic, social and political networks established between Iran, its neighbors, and the world at large, through the prism of the late Safavid silk trade. In so doing, the author demonstrates how silk, the only commodity which spanned Iran’s entire economic activity, was integral to various aspects of late Safavid society, including its approach to commerce, export routes, and, crucially, to the political and economic problems which confounded the Safavid state in the early 1700s.

Contents

List of plates … x
Preface … xi
Acknowledgments … xiii
Note on transliteration … xv
List of abbreviations … xvi
Maps … xvii

1. The Iranian silk trade: from the Silk Road to the Safavids … 15
2. Procedures, logistics, and finances … 33
3. Shah ‘Abbas I and the Safavid political economy: territorial expansion, anti-Ottoman diplomacy, and the politics of silk … 61
4. Government control and growing competition: the silk export monopoly and the advent of the European maritime companies … 91
5. The complications of privatization: from the abolition of the silk export monopoly to the peace of Zuhab, 1629-1639 … 119
6. Conflict and reorientation: silk to silver, 1640-1667 … 17
7. Renewed regulation and the rise of the Russian connection, 1660s-1690s … 175
8. Contraction and continuity, 1690-1730 … 203
Conclusion … 231

Appendix … 243
Glossary … 247
Bibliography … 252
Index … 276