A COLLECTION OF ARCHIVAL DOCUMENTS OF THE FRENCH CONSUL AT TABRIZ, 1897 - 1903 MANDATE
France and Iran, ca. 1890s - 1900s

A COLLECTION OF ARCHIVAL DOCUMENTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE FRENCH CONSUL AT TABRIZ, PIERRE ABEL-BERGERON (1855 - 1925)
PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE ENGLISH BIBLIOPHILE
France and Iran, ca. 1890s - 1900s

A valuable group of letters, notes, telegrams, and photographs relating to Pierre-Abel Bergeron during his mandate in Iran as French Consul at Tabriz from 1897 to 1906, outlining interactions with Persian dignitaries; assistance to French citizens in Iran; and the collection of information and intelligence by them in the country, including 32 photographs taken from 1891 to 1901 of Iran, the Ottoman Empire, Georgia and Dagestan, and of prominent Iranians who the French Consul had dealings with, the written material totalling 77 pages, in transparent pouches in a modern arch file folder, approx. 31.5cm x 28.5cm.

Provenance: purchased from Jean Philippe Geley, Librairie Oriens, Paris, in 1992.

Pierre Abel-Bergeron (1855 - 1925) was a Paris-born French diplomat belonging to a family involved in the French diplomatic service for close to a century. He joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1875 and was promoted to the level of Section Head in 1883. His first foreign posting was in 1888 as Vice Consul to Bourges (Bulgaria), then with the same rank to Erzerum in 1891, where he was promoted to Consul General in 1893. His posting at Erzerum coincided with the massacre of the Armenians by the Ottomans, which led to his lifelong involvement in trying to help the persecuted Armenian community, for which he was awarded the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur in 1899. In 1897, he was appointed Consul General at Tabriz, a position he held until 1906 at the height of the Persian Constitutional Revolution.

The position of Bergeron as French Consul at Tabriz at the turn of the 20th century enabled him to witness firsthand important changes in Persian foreign politics and to meet very influential players in the history of modern Iran. In fact, these documents testify his interactions with Amir Nizam Garrusi Hassan Ali Khan, the Governor of Azarbaijan; Mohammad Hassan Mirza Heshmat al Saltaneh (1830-1902), the Governor of Urumieh and seventh son of Abbas Mirza, the Qajar crown prince until his untimely death in 1833; and Faramarz Khan Licingoff, a fierce defender of the constitutionalists during the Persian constitutional revolution of 1906. Khan Licingoff was a well-connected warlord from the Urumieh district, son of a Russian colonel and a Chaldean Christian mother, who in virtue of his French education maintained his contacts with the French community in North-West Persia. Among the three above-mentioned personalities, Amir Nizam Garrusi (1820 - 1900) became one of the most important and distinguished military officers, diplomats, and administrators of 19th-century Persia. A sincere advocate of reforms and foreign investments, he played important diplomatic roles in both foreign and local affairs, granting and cancelling concessions to foreign countries and companies. In the 1880s and 90s, a wave of tribal uprisings and urban dissent gave Hassan Ali Khan new prominence, since he was assigned the task of crushing unrest.

In terms of internal French politics instead, his relation with Jacques de Morgan and the late 19th-century French Scientific Delegation in Iran sheds light on the sixty-year monopoly the French had on Iranian soil's excavations throughout the country thanks to a decree issued by Mozzafar al-Din Shah and the operational logistic support the French Consulate located in Tabriz provided. In particular, in 1901 Bergeron asked De Morgan to re-route his return trip to France through Dagestan and Georgia, in order to observe, document, and report back to the Consulate the status of a road constructed by the Russians in those provinces, creating a strategic transportation link between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea, which the French thought was possibly meant to be used for military transport and the shipment of oil from Russian Azarbaijan to the Black Sea for further transport to Europe. The regions of North Azerbaijan, Dagestan and Georgia were kept under close observation and documented by French officials, as part of the ever-playing Great Game policies. The present collection of documents paints a vivid picture of the time and place, and the significance of Iran in the diplomatic chessboard of Western countries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

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Dimensions: approx. 31.5cm x 28.5cm