ANTISLAVERY DEBATES WITHIN IRAN

This chapter examines the internal processes that encouraged the Iranian government to uphold a viable abolitionist mandate. Although attention will be paid to the process that led to full emancipation in 1929, much of the discussion will concern the political and judicial reforms that underscored its realization. In that regard, emphasis will be given to the relationship between Iran’s response to slave-trading activities on its frontiers and the country’s emerging sense of autonomous self-determination and national identity. Political pressure and territorial occupations by both the Russians and British had undermined the operation of particular slave markets into and through Iran—