Speaker
Description
Around 1930, Persia was an important nodal point in the growing global network of air routes. Because airplanes could only fly for comparatively short distances, they were not meant to immediately connect two distant cities but made many scheduled intermediary stops. In 1928, Persia became such a stopping place for French, Dutch, and British airlines on their way to their colonial outposts in South Asia and the “Far East”. Two years earlier, in 1926, the young Persian government had already invited the German Junkers company into the country and contracted Junkers to develop and operate three domestic air routes. However, by the mid-1930s, all these airlines had ceased operations in Persia with the Trucial States becoming the new stopping place for imperial air routes.
This presentation investigates the Persian state’s engagement with the new technology, aviation. Based on archival research in the company archives of Imperial Airways and Junkers as well as the national archives of the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, it argues that the Persian government embraced the new technology in an effort to both “modernize” the country and connect it with the nascent global network. To this end, the government not only provided subsidies but also exerted pressure on all imperial airlines, trying to force them to add scheduled stops in central Persia to their intercontinental air routes. Because Persia was persistent in this demand, the airlines eventually left the country. Primary sources and official communication document that it was Persia’s ambition to coopt the imperial infrastructure system in order to increase the country’s – and its capital’s – connectedness. The presentation thus provides evidence that – because they held sovereignty over their aerospace – comparatively smaller states were able to resist the pressure of world powers and to utilize imperial infrastructure to serve their own ends.
Biography
Andreas Greiner is a research fellow at the German Historical Institute Washington. He received his PhD in history from ETH Zurich. Before joining the GHI in January 2021, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Max Weber Program at the European University Institute in Florence. His first monograph Human Porterage and Colonial State Formation in German East Africa, 1880s–1914: Tensions of Transport (2022) explores the shifting role of caravan transport in colonial East Africa. His current research project examines the entangled history of intercontinental airline networks in the interwar period.
