Includes bibliographical references (pages 650-681) and index.
SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
Text of Note
Willem Floor has compiled an all-encompassing analysis of nineteenth-century Iranian agriculture based on extensive research into previously untapped Persian and European archives. His investigation covers farming methods like irrigation and seeding, the raising of livestock, and the range of crops cultivated, from wheat, barley, and rice, to the more notorious cash crops of tobacco and opium. Floor also delves into methods of forestry and fishing, subjects about which very little is known and even less has been written, until now. Agriculture in Qajar Iran traces the commercialisation of Iranian farming, and explains how this process altered the structure of Iran's economy. The change included the rise in cash crops, the growth of wage labor, the rise in off-farm employment, and the market economy's growing influence in the countryside. Floor also highlights the importance of trade within this burgeoning system, and gauges the impact of the commercialisation of agriculture on the rural population's socioeconomic status.