The Farmer's Movement of Gilan Province During the Constitutional Era

Lack of identified farmers’ resources at the national level and the difficulties of organizing them in sporadic villages of Iran caused the farmers not to participate as a social class in the course of the Constitutional Revolution, but during the Constitutionalism, a number of the farmers’ movements took place in some regions of the country. Gilan province was one of the regions whose farmers were involved seriously, almost throughout the region, in the struggle against landowners. The farmers performed various actions to challenge against the landowners during the movement and got benefit from different political groups and parties such as Ejtemā‘iyun (the ordinary people), Amiyun (volgur people), Abbasi society and the Social Democrats of Gilan province. The main purpose of the present paper is to investigate, through application of the descriptive–analytic method, the research problem here which is the farmers’ struggle against the landowners during the movement, with regard to the political parties’ supports and based on the historical resources and some published newspapers of the constitutional era. The findings of the research suggest that the farmers during different stages of the movement did various actions such as not paying the landowners’ interest, disagreement with the property owners and sending them out of the villages, and the establishment of rural local societies. After two years of the farmers’ challenging with landowners, despite farmers’ temporary victories, due to lack of the support of the Majlis and state societies of Gilan province from the farmers, finally the farmers’ movement got defeated and the “Arbab rayati” system was established once again in Gilan province.