Glimpses of Importation and National Production in Naseri Era

Iran had witnessed massive economic, political, social and cultural evolutions in the fifty-year era of Naseri(11313-1264/1897-1848). This era was contemporaneous with international developments and industrial revolution in Europe which had a tremendous impact on Iran’s economy and society. The economic condition of Iran in this era which had been formed partly under the influence of Western countries had caused a different situation for some businessmen, which in turn had a direct effect on the country’s social and economic life from the form of foreign trade to consumption patterns.The starting point of modern history of capitalism in 19th century in Iran’s society had been accompanied by a devastating movement. The penetration of Western countries from the very first steps left extremely noisome impacts economic, social and political context and structure of this society, to such an extent that the subsistence economy of Iranian’s rural communities, which had its own special traditional agriculture and trading, affected by the entry of Western countries’ commodities had been fallen into the abyss of destruction. Cultivation of lucrative products became widespread and substituted the subsistence agriculture. Importing European goods such as: English textiles and other industrial and factory manufactured products caused damage to Iranians’ handicrafts. By the invasion of foreign commodities to Iranian’ markets and their total influence over domestic markets due to their variability of products and consequently changing the taste of all social classes and also lack of governmental support for national productions, handicrafts ended up in destruction. This factor had seriously damaged the rural self-sufficient economy, to such an extent that the rural self-sustaining economy began to decline without finding a convincing and new alternate in this area.The main focus of this research is on studying the impact of importation on national production by adherence to the basic framework of the Iran’s economic domain in Naseri era. In the first stage; the foreign trade of Iran in this era will be investigated, thereby drawing some conclusions associated to the European countries relationship with Iran. Then, the impact of excessive importation on national production will be studied. Finally, the present research attempts to answer the following questions; what was the effect of agricultural economy and industries’ traditional methods of production and Western commodities’ importation on Iranian’s life style? At this juncture, were some imported items capable of monopolizing Iran markets or not…?