Discussion of the project for the construction of the Anzel port in Persia in Russian government departments at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries

Annotation

The author examines the materials of meetings of various government departments on the issue of modernization of the Anzeli port at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. The source body of the study is based on office documents of the Russian State Historical Archive, which present the position of representatives of technical specialists and the royal bureaucracy who participated in the discussion of the construction of the Anzeli port. The author came to the conclusion that the long duration of the project development was due to the extreme complexity of natural conditions: the mobility of the seabed of the Anzeli coastal area, the shallowing of the bay and the intensive formation of sand drifts. Marine engineers, who had experience in constructing port facilities on the Russian shores, were faced with the difficult task of constructing moles and carrying out dredging operations in completely new conditions. This situation required additional research and additional discussions. It also took some time to obtain the concession itself from the Persian Shah and to resolve the issue of establishing control over the Anzali-Qazvin Road Society, which was granted the said concession.

Keywords

• Russian-Persian relations
• Russian-Iranian relations
• economic history
• history of Russian entrepreneurship
• Anzali-Tehran Road Society
• Russian-Iranian cross-border
• Caspian region
• Southern frontier
• port construction
• Caspian shipping
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Acknowledgments

The study is supported by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation No. 24-28-00648 “Development of the economic infrastructure of the Russian-Iranian cross-border (second half of the 19th – early 20th century)” (https://rscf.ru/project/24- 28-00648/).

References

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