The Beginning Of Acquaintance With Western Society In Modern Iran

Qajar dynasty is a significant historical stage in terms of the transformation of Iranian society. Iran witnessed the growing interaction with the world outside especially with the West and the fundamental variation of East-West interaction pattern. In this historical context, various pieces of travelogues, such as envoy journals, oversea studying logs, foreign investigation note, etc., emerged in large numbers. These texts, as important historical text materials for the history of modern Iran cultural development, provided abundant western social information, modern western knowledge and keen thoughts for the Qajar Iran. This thesis mainly investigates two visiting Britain travelogues in Persian language. From the aspects of the historical background, the authors’identities and the contents of the works, this thesis analyzes and expounds the connections between these interrelated issues. Through modern west social images that reflected in these two visiting Europe travelogues during early Qajar period, this study attempts to find out the cross-cultural significance behind it and to picture the Iran-West interaction scene during that specific historical moment. Thus, the nuance of the modern Iran transformation process would be addressed.The choosing of the texts is based on a comprehensive consideration of the particularity of the historical context, the self-uniqueness of the texts and the cross-regional, cross-cultural feature of the texts. From the historical development of Iran, it is a period when Iran transformed from a feudal nomadic society to a modern and contemporary society. The domestic and diplomatic policies of the early Qajar period generated a continuing impact on the local Iranian society. The great domestic and interactional changes during the early 19th century made the young Qajar dynasty started to observe and stud) the West. As products of this specific era. these two travelogues serve as a vivid picture of how Iran observed and. later on accepted the western society, cultures, systems, thoughts and ideologies. The main content of this thesis includes analysis of the text, the traditions and historical features, social changes of different historical segments in Qajar dynasty, the overall outlook of the foreign visiting writings at this era. The main objects of the text analysis include the first Qajar diplomatic envoy to Britain, Mirza Abu al-Hasan Khan’s hayrat namah and Mirza Saleh Shiraz’s European oversea studying dairy. With a subjectively selective text description and construction, these two authors presented us a foreign land--Urban landscapes, appliances, industry organizations, institutional rules, customs and rituals, etc. These experiences and feelings indicate the difference of individual observations and the writing of otherness. Through the analysis and discourses of the texts, this thesis will address the inner connections and mutual affects between the western social images presented in the travelogues, the perspectives of the subjects, the purposes of writing and the external historical context; thus, try to outline the gradual process of early Qajar Europe visitors from acquaintance to adoption of the Western society. This thesis will utilize interpretation theory, image science, and related theories of travel literatures as the theoretical supports for the analysis and discourses of the texts. It would be based on the re-reading of descriptive texts and the self-placement in the context to investigate the dual connotations of the history and literariness.Through the analysis of discourses of these two early Qajar travel works, this paper expects to use travelogue as a medium to rethink modern Iran’s knowledge of the foreign world and the transformation process of the local society; through the investigation of Qajar period’s western waves, extraterritorial trip writings, this study hopes to reconstruct a clearer historical view of the early stage of Iran-West interactions and mutual understandings. Meanwhile, I hope to provide certain references for the understandings of the current Iran-West relationships and the studies of non-western societies’modernization process.