Introduction / Roxane Farmanfarmaian -- Prologue : the dream of empire / Peter W. Avery -- War -- Between Scylla and Charybdis : policy-making under constraint in early Qajar Persia / Manoutchehr M. Eskandari-Qajar -- Building a new army : military reform in Qajar Iran / Stephanie Cronin -- The Turko-Persian War of 1821-1823 : winning the war but losing the peace / Graham Williamson -- Social networks and border conflicts : the first Herat War 1838-1841 / Vanessa Martin -- Peace -- The consolidation of Iran's frontier on the Persian Gulf in the nineteenth century / Lawrence G. Potter -- Narrowing the frontier : mid-nineteenth century efforts to delimit and map the Perso-Ottoman border / Richard Schofield -- Crime, security, and insecurity : socio-political conditions of Iran, 1875-1924 / Mansoureh Ettehadieh (Nezam-Mafie) -- Merchants without borders : trade, travel and revolution in late Qajar Iran (the memoirs of Hajj Mohammad-Taqi Jourabchi, 1907-1911) / Ali Gheissari -- The politics of concession : reassessing the interlinkage of Persia's finances, British intrigue and Qajar negoation / Roxane Farmanfarmaian