This encyclopedic histoire événementielle, based on a staggering amount of research, fully reflects Willem Floor’s legendary energy and discipline as well as his determination to present an exhaustive picture of every topic he decides to take on.
Six hundred large, densely printed pages long, the size of the Philadelphia phonebook or, at some 450,000 words four times the length of the average monograph, The Persian Gulf is not exactly bed-time reading, except perhaps for the most ardent and persevering specialist. The forest is vast and dense and the trees are so numerous that the eye frequently wanders in search of light and space. It would have been much better if the author had split up his work into three or four studies, focusing on individual ports or on a shorter period of time. There is much to make up for these flaws, though.
Organized by port city and subdivided by period, the book recounts, in great detail, each and every political and diplomatic fact known to have occurred in the period discussed. Part one, consisting of the two initial chapters, narrates the vicissitudes of Hormuz in the period between the fourteenth century, when the isle was still independent, and 1550, when the Portuguese were firmly entrenched on it. Floor makes several important points here, puncturing a few (Iranian) myths in the process. One is that the Safavids were very interested in the Persian Gulf. In modern Iran it is an article of faith that this waterway and its littoral has always been an integral part of the country. The reality is different. The Achaemenids were heavily invested in it, but since then, aside from keeping a keen eye on the revenue generated by the trade of the Gulf, Iranian regimes were never much concerned about it, either from a lack of affinity with the sea and maritime affairs, or because wars with neighboring landed states and tribal forces kept them busy in the interior. Until the twentieth century the Persian Gulf was enmeshed with the opposite Arab shore and India more than with Iran, with regard to its resident population, the merchant community, religion, food, currencies and, most importantly, the flow of commodities.
The second observation, which flows from the first, concerns the relationship between the Safavids and the Portuguese, initially the most influential of the non-regional powers that would establish a presence in the Persian Gulf in the Safavid period. As would be true of “outsiders” who entered its waters in the seventeenth century, the English and the Dutch, this was a relationship based on mutual interest rather than one dominated by a hegemonic European power. Iran, for one, profited from shipping facilities and relied on the Portuguese for military assistance against rebellious coastal principalities.
The third dispels the myth that the Portuguese sought to cut off the trade coming in from the Levant. They did not, Floor argues, for blocking commerce would have played into the hands of the Ottomans who could have beefed up their Red Sea trade in response, and it would have been detrimental to their own operations in Hormuz which were very much dependent on the transit trade from Basra.
Basra in the sixteenth century is the topic of chapter three, which offers a thorough discussion of its rise involving a protracted battle between various contenders for power and control over the town and its hinterland. This includes a great overview of the power struggle between the Ottomans and the Portuguese in the Persian Gulf until 1563, when they concluded a truce that would last until 1621.
In chapter four, the author returns to Hormuz, covering the period between 1550 and 1622, the year of the expulsion of the Portuguese from the island. This chapter specifically demonstrates that the Safavids were little interested in the coast for the duration of Shah Tahmasb’s reign. It discusses the reasons why the Portuguese staked a claim in the Gulf, asserting that the diversion of the silk trade was not one of them and that they did not settle anywhere beyond Hormuz. In the process the author demolishes the myth of the ubiquitous Portuguese fortresses, arguing that they were few in number—only Hormuz, Bandar ‘Abbas, and Qeshm are indisputably Portuguese—and that some fortifications ascribed to the Portuguese, such as Bahrain, were reinforced and modified rather than constructed by them.
He also discusses Portuguese missionary efforts and diplomatic activity, which centered on attempts to get Iran’s rulers to join their anti-Ottoman struggle. These attempts definitively foundered in 1619, during the reign of Shah ‘Abbas I, when various Portuguese-held islands and ports, Bahrain (1602), Gamru (Camorao/Gombroon) (1614), Qeshm (1608), and finally, Hormuz (1622), were brought under Safavid control. This growing Iranian hold over the Persian Gulf littoral clearly reflects Shah ‘Abbas’s ambitions, yet Floor cautions that taking Hormuz did not transform Safavid Iran from an agrarian-dominated to a commercially minded state.
The lengthy chapter on Bandar ‘Abbas, which perhaps should have been offered as a separate book, is especially pertinent to Iran. It charts the port’s development from its founding to its status as the premier commercial outlet for Safavid Iran, discusses the town, its fortifications, and the make-up of its population—which, one third Hindu, clearly shows an Indian orientation. The author also offers a detailed description of the political administration and changes therein, as well as of the town’s relations with Lar in the interior, under whose jurisdiction it came in the late Safavid period. The chapter closes with an extensive discussion of the nature of the trade of Bandar ‘Abbas, focusing on relations between local merchants and the maritime companies, who often banded together against extortionate political officials.
Chapter six, on Masqat, tells the story of the Portuguese failure to gain control over this port following the fall of Hormuz. Instead it fell to the Ya‘riba Imams and became the center of a growing thallasocratic power that ended up challenging the Safavid ports as much as the Portuguese. The latter engaged in unprecedented aggression in this period, sending an annual fleet to collect revenue, harassing merchant vessels and clashing several times with the Omanis in 1652 and again in 1668-69, until the two parties concluded a (temporary) truce in 1673.
Chapter seven focuses on Kong, which in the later seventeenth century turned from a small fishing village into something of a rival of Bandar ‘Abbas, mostly because of misrule and the high cost of doing business in the latter port, as is amply documented in the Dutch archives. The Portuguese acquired a moiety of its toll income, but never collected more than a fraction of the amount due to them. After 1668, when Kong and Bandar ‘Abbas were brought under one toll regime, Kong lost its advantage as a less tightly controlled alternative to Bandar ‘Abbas, and private trade moved further westward to more unregulated small ports like Bandar Rig and Bushehr.
The closing chapter, over 100 pages long, revisits Basra, exploring its history in the seventeenth century, when the port came under Ottoman jurisdiction, until the fall of the Safavids. Here, too, the reader is treated to a wealth of information about the town and its environs, its lay-out, population, as well as agriculture, commercial life and the commodities that flowed in an out of its port.
Perhaps the most important contribution of this study is that it definitively gives the lie to the notion of early modern Western imperialism. The Portuguese did not get involved in Persian Gulf matters beyond necessity. They chose to focus on the Strait of Hormuz and the Sea of Oman, and only extended their ambit when they were challenged by the Ottomans in the 1560s. In spite of their terrible reputation, they rarely displayed aggressiveness in the sixteenth century, and when they did it was mostly to lend a military hand to other powers. It is true that they became more aggressive in the seventeenth century, mostly, as Floor argues, because, by then, they had little to lose, having given up most of the trade activities. All along, they had little intrinsic interest in Iran, a hot rather poor country, religiously and sexually impenetrable, that offered no foundations for what later would become colonial settlements—no Goa or Macao or Batavia/Jakarta. The state of neglect of the fortress of Hormuz in 1620, prior to Shah ‘Abbas’s attack, is telling in this regard. The English and the Dutch were even less intrusive. Like the Portuguese before them, they came to trade, not to gain territory. They even lacked the proselytizing fervor of the Lusitanians, leaving missionary activity to Iberian and, later, French missionaries. Operating at the shah’s sufferance, in the interior as well as on the coast, and offering protection in exchange for commercial privilege, they insinuated themselves into an existing web of tributary arrangements that would endure until the rise of the nation state in the twentieth century.
The book is relatively free of typographical errors—except for some of the author’s trade mark ones, e.g. “choose” for “chose” “loose” for “lose,” “lead” for “led,” “ibid.” for “idem.” The writing, on the other hand, is unpolished at best and frequently poor. Sloppiness—the price of writing too much or too fast—abounds. Floor manages to spell the name of the Dutch Jesuit active in Hormuz, Gaspar Barzaeus, in four different ways in a section spanning less than two pages (28-29). Another example is found in the constant references to Filipe (Philip) I as the Spanish ruler in 1596 (p. 200), and to Filipe (Philip) II as the Spanish monarch involved with relations with Iran between 1604 and 1607 (pp. 206-08). In reality Spain was ruled by Philip II in 1596; he died in 1599, to be succeeded by Philip III. A random check of one source, on p. 215, fn. 88, reveals erroneous page numbers for an article, 251-98, instead of 245-76. The letter the Portuguese envoy-cum missionary Antonio de Gouvea brought with him from the pope in early 1602 did not express surprise at the shah’s taking of Bahrain earlier the same year (p. 204). That news could never have reached Europe and traveled back to Iran even if the seizure had taken place in January. The information was rather included in the letter De Gouvea brought with him during his second visit to Iran, in 1609. It should also be pointed out that, always quick to criticize others, Floor is less than generous in acknowledging the work of his colleagues in his own writings. The index, finally, is a mystery. With little more than 500 entries, or less than one per page of text, it was seemingly randomly selected. Bahrain isn’t mentioned. Under “c,” to pick but one letter, we find “cayda” and “cement,” but not “cartazas,” the commercial transit passes introduced by the Portuguese in the early sixteenth century. Under “p,” one finds such exotica as “picota” and “pimentieros,” and “prostitution” and “prostitutes” as separate entries, but no reference to pepper or pearl fishing. “S” includes the exotic “snow,” yet lacks an entry for “slavery.”
Rudi Matthee
University of Delaware