Conclusion • 201fluence in Persia. Britain was to have primary influence over the southeast,
close to its Indian empire. Russia acquired the right to send troops and ad¬
visers to the heavily populated north, including the key provinces of Azer¬
baijan and Khurasan, plus Tehran itself. Russia backed the new shah
enough to enable him to close the Majlis in 1908. Though one of the main
tribes helped the constitutionalists to regain control of Tehran and then to
reopen the Majlis in 1909, Persian nationalism now lacked the fervent
popular support it had enjoyed three years earlier. The Majlis got bogged
down in debates and achieved nothing.
Oil Discoveries
Persians might have welcomed news from Khuzistan, located in the south¬
west, where a British company had begun oil exploration in 1901. In 1908
it made its first strike. By 1914 thousands of barrels were being piped to a
refinery on the Persian Gulf island port of Abadan. When Britain's navy
switched from coal to petroleum just before World War I, the future of
Persian oil looked even brighter. But to the nationalists this growing in¬
dustry was cold comfort. It was far from Tehran, in lands controlled by
tribal shaykhs. The revenues were going mainly to British stockholders—
not to the Persian government, let alone its impoverished subjects. In the
years leading up to World War I, Persia as a whole seemed to be drifting
toward becoming a Russian protectorate.
CONCLUSIONNationalism in the West earned a bad name in the twentieth century,
partly due to the destruction caused by two world wars, partly because of
the excesses of such dictators as Mussolini and Hitler, and maybe also be¬
cause our intellectual leaders have become more cosmopolitan. Even in
the Middle East, people now attack secular nationalism and exalt Islamic
unity. Nearly everyone recognizes the artificial character of most of the so-
called nations set up by foreign imperialism.
Generally speaking, Middle Eastern nationalist movements fared badly
before World War I. They did not increase the power, the lands, or the
freedom of the Muslim states in which they arose. Except for a few suc¬
cessful moments, which now seem like lightning flashes within a general
gloom, these movements did not win any wide popular support. There is
no nationalism in Islam, said the critics, so these movements could appeal