Live Stream of MIHAN guest speaketr Abbas Amanat

[Behrad Nakhai]

MIHAN - The Manchester Iranian History Academic Network and

REES - Russian and Eastern European Studies at the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, University of Manchester

 

present a Live Stream of

 

Anxious Onlookers:

Qajar Iran, Tipu Sultan’s Anti-British Alliance 

and Russian Expansion in the Caucasus (1797-1813)

 

Speaker: Professor Abbas Amanat - Yale University

Discussant: Professor Vanessa Martin - Royal Holloway, University of London.

 

Date and Time: Friday, 15 May, 5.15pm UK Time - Live on the MIHAN homepage, http://www.mihan.org.uk and on the MIHAN Facebook Page, http://www.facebook.com/mihan.org.uk

 

Web Audiences will have the opportunity to pose questions to the speaker, via Youtube and via Facebook.

 

Abstract:

 

British consolidation in South Asia at the turn of the 19th century witnessed the resistance of Tipu Sultan, the renowned ruler of Mysore. His call for an anti-British alliance, with, among others, Qajar Iran, came at a time when Iran was facing Russian expansionist pressure on its northern borders. British diplomatic efforts to offset Tipu Sultan, which included Captain Malcolm’s first mission to Iran in 1800 straight from the campaign that destroyed Tipu, triggered a race for access to the Qajar court, which in due course turned Britain into a cunning mediator in the Russo-Persian conflict. Tipu’s appeal, despite its fascinating Perso-Shi’i undertone shared with Qajar Iran, remained a mere potentiality overshadowed by European race for domination and the harsh realities of global rearrangement at the turn of the 19th century.