 Good evening. Welcome to the seventh Comron Jam annual lecture at SOAS, which is organized by the Centre for Iranian Studies. The lecture series started back in 2012 with the first four devoted to Persian literature. After that, we decided to switch course and start addressing Persian history, for the simple reason that another sponsor, Ehsan Yarshater, a lecture series also started by Centre for Iranian Studies, took up Persian literature, delivering biannual lectures. And we thought this is a good opportunity to diversify and foray into Persian history, a topic which is of close and intimate interest to scholars of Iranian Studies here at SOAS and also more broadly speaking. For those of you who attend some of our seminars and conferences, Iranian Studies at SOAS has a long history, but we are especially proud of the fact that back in 2010, eight years and a bit, we set up the Centre for Iranian Studies under the rubric of the London Middle East Institute in order to galvanize expertise and scholarly interest at SOAS on the subject of Iranian Studies broadly defined. And I say broadly defined because Iranian Studies at SOAS spans not only languages and culture of the country, but also areas of humanities and social sciences, including economics, development, regional and international relations, law, etc., etc. So for those of you who are interested in Iran, who care for Iran, and I think it's fair to assume that this probably applies to everybody here, which is why you're here. This is a special moment for us in our annual cycle of offerings to focus on a very interesting topic and one that has been little studied. And I know you're here to listen to our eminent speaker, Professor Turaj Atobaki, or Turaj as I know him, and it's a great pleasure for us to be able to host him. He was here actually literally two months ago at the beginning of December as part of another conference we had on the role of Iranian intellectuals in Iranian history. So he's no stranger to SOAS, and it gives me special pleasure to be able to host him tonight to talk to us about social history of Iran's oil sector and give us a perspective of history from below. And this will be over two evenings, as you know, the programs you have, I'm sure, collected. I give you a summary of his CV, which is very impressive. He's written a lot of books. He appears in various media. He commentates on Iran's not only history, but also current affairs. He's a speaker of Turkish, Russian, Persian, of course, and English. I'm kidding. He's going to be speaking in English, of course, for about an hour or so, and there'll be an opportunity to put questions to him and pick his brain in regards to questions that we may have at the end. We aim to finish by seven because normally there's another group here waiting to come in. I'm not going to give you a long introduction to him and his CV because he's rather well known, and also you will find this here. Iraj, very briefly, is a renowned scholar of Iranian studies and particularly of Iran's social history. He graduated in theoretical physics and then diversified into history. So you can see he comes from a very, very background, and he's written several books which I won't read through. You have the list there, and he has been at the Institute of Social History, International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, and he has also supervised a group of PhD students on topics relating to Iran's economic and social history, especially in the first half of the 20th century, a period that requires a lot of scholarly attention. Torej has also coordinated the research project on the social history of the Hundred Years of Labor in the Iranian oil industry which was funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. What he is going to address for us here tonight therefore draws from many, many years of his intensive and intimate study of the archives. And when I say that, I know that he has had access and he has studied archives in the old Soviet Union and Turkey and various other places. So we have before us an eminent social historian of Iran, somebody who presents to us one of the best traditions of Iranian studies, and it's a great pleasure to have him here tonight. Just before handing over to Torej, I want to say something about the Khamran Jam annual lectures. In 2011, so as was awarded a generous gift by the Faridun Jam charitable trust to promote Iranian studies. And the funds which exceeded 2 million pounds as endowment have been utilized carefully for this purpose. And as a result of that, partially at least, we have the pleasure of offering around 50,000 pounds annually scholarships to further studies at BA level, at master's level, and also PhD students every year in the last five or six years. Maybe some of you are already scholarship holders or are studying BA person or master's Iranian studies. So that is thanks to the generosity of the Faridun Jam trust. Another part of the same fund has enabled us to hold these annual lectures. So the generosity of the Jam trust has, I have to acknowledge and we're very pleased that thanks to that generosity we are able to have Torej tonight. In the last few years, when we started with Persian literature, we had the pleasure of hosting Professor Kami Haqq, who initiated the series. Then we had Professor Dick Davis, and we had Leili Anwar, and we had Michael Barry, some of them in the same lecture theatres, and it's a fitting venue because it's also named after another Persian benefactor, David Khalili, David Nasser Khalili. So we know it as KLT, and this is really Iran Room. There's another Iran Room upstairs, which is called DLT, and that's Jam lecture theatre, where we would have the lecture tomorrow night. Incidentally, the lecture tomorrow night starts at seven, not at five thirty, like tonight, and there'd be a reception prior to that from six o'clock. Details are here. So without further ado, please join me in welcoming Torej to the podium, and join me in showing appreciation for his presence. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Very good evening. It's a very great honor for me to be the lecturer at the Comrade Jam annual lecture series, and I'm very, very grateful to my very dear friend, Professor Hakimi on inviting me, and very very grateful to awarded hospitality of Miss Huskings. My lecture today and tomorrow is on Social History of Oil Industry for the period of seventy-five years, and this is when the oil was discovered in Masjid Soleiman in 1908, and I'm covering the period up to the 1978 Iranian Revolution, the seventy years. So the pre-adization, what I do in presenting my talk is different from a political historian. You know, I'm a social historian, I'm a labor historian, so my pre-adization is different. So there are certain episodes in this history which some people find it very, very interesting, but those who are engaged with politics, but for me is irrelevant as a social historian. So bear in mind that this evening I'm covering the discovery of the oil, and I bring it to the Second World War, and then tomorrow I cover Second World War to the Iranian Revolution. So let me to start with an introduction, say that the long 20th century has been often called a century of oil, an ample and reliable supply of oil, and its by-product contributed to the remarkable growth in the world economy. Although this contribution was not always even, oil and gas still contribute to more than fifty-five percent of total global energy, and although the expanding consumption has caused irreversible damage to the planetary ecology, nevertheless both still are considered as the most valuable and widely merchandise commodities in global economy. The yet-waring fact is that despite widespread assessment that the new source of renewable energy such as wind, solar, and hydroelectricity are eminently due to replace fossil fuels are reliance on the earth curse may go on for longer than what had been anticipated. While the scale and importance of petroleum and its derivatives, its economy's strategic implications are still are all incontestable, nevertheless the great complexity of its extraction and processing that rely on labor and expertise of men and women working across the numerous sector of this industry often overlooked. In the United Kingdom of the total 300 plus employment supported the UK upstream oil and gas industry, the core of offshore workers reached 22,000. In Iran of 150,000 employment in the Iranian oil industry, the core of the industry working class is about 110,000 today. The oil industry in Iran has been formed within the network of several interwind formative relations that have undergone major changes over the course of 20th century. Labor relations in Iran, especially in the key industrial sector, have been crafted by a series of changing relations between the national state and a major colonial entity like Anglo-Persian, Anglo-Iranian, BP or the later on, I mean, concession comes in between or between the national state and the local and national labor force employed in the industry or between the oil company and its employees. So we have got a different layers of relations. These relations at different historical conjuncture have affected both labor and labor relations in substantially diverse ways and levels. One of the history of oil in Iran is mainly dominated by political history refashioned through Eurocentric structuralist functionalist theory of modernity which represents top-down view of state-society relations. The study I carried, the study I carried out at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam together with my PhD students drew a reciprocal impact of modernization and social change in both regional and global context, but from below. Not top-down, but bottom-up. The project I researched and coordinated a span of 100 years commencing with a discovery of oil in the southwest Iran in 1908, which opened a new chapter in Iranian labor history. I did it together with four PhD students. I look forward to the publication of their research thesis soon. Each of them covered a certain period of a long 100 years. My own research, different from them, which hopefully will be ready soon for publication, covers not only labor history, but it goes beyond labor and embraces culture at its broadest definition. So let's go now to, after this rather long introduction, let's go now to the core of my talk. Let's see how the oil was discovered. At the turn of the 19th century, the discovery and control of reliable and secure major deposit of oil was one of the main challenges of British enterprise worldwide. In prior Russia, at that time owned the Baku oil field, which at that time was the second largest known oil deposit in the world after the United States. This ownership equally gave Russia control over the emerging and expanding new energy markets. The British competitor were keen to change the situation by discovering and mining new oil field around the world. In May 19, Orval, William Darcy, an Australian entrepreneur, supported by the British legation in Tehran, succeeded in gaining a concession from the Qajar King, which gave monopoly right to search for, obtain, explore, develop, render, suitable for trade, carry away and sell natural gas, petroleum, asphalt, and ozocrite, throughout the whole extent of the Persian Empire, with the exception of the five northern provinces for no longer than 60 years. Seven years later, in the early hours of a spring day, May 26, 1908, following months of exploration and excavation in the southwest of Persia, one of the wells in the foothill of Zagros Mountain, not very far from the ruins of Soleiman, the partian, finally struck the oil. After its success in discovering oil deposits, the immediate task facing Anglo-Persian oil company, as it was known then, was the considerable challenge to transporting oil from the wellhead to the market. Include oil refined for. To maximize profitability, the company decided to refine the oil within Iran, where the proximity of the Persian Gulf offered the Anglo-Persian oil company easy access to international market. Along the coastline, Abadan islands in the northwestern corner of the Persian Gulf, on the other side of the waterway, Shatul Arab, or as it was later named, Arvan Drut, offered final encourages for shipping tankers. It seems Abadan is a very likely place, an ideal location for building the refinery. The construction of Abadan refinery began in October 1909. Two months later, in the January of 1910, an ambitious project was launched to construct some 220 kilometers of pipeline to transport the oil from the field of Masjid Soleiman to Abadan. A massive construction effort took place subsequently, opening up a new chapter in Iranian labor history. Road were built, along with pipeline, and all the refinery, shipping, dock, and the entire company towns, and with its absolute monopoly of oil mining, production, marketing, the Anglo-Persian oil company undertook a grand labor recruitment campaign in the region. Its workers were drawn primarily from the tribal, pasteurist, and village-based laboring poor, those the first generation of those who joined the oil industry. This new workforce was subjected to advanced industrial labor relation and labor discipline. In due course, it led to the formation of the first cluster of the working class in the Iranian oil industry. As the new workforce was recruited for the expanding oil industry, rapid industrialization and demographic change occurred too. The old time affected virtually all social relations, social organization, and government administrative structure at the local and national level. At the beginning, it seems the construction, the conscription of labor would not be a burden for the oil company. Easy, very easy. But however, soon turned out the recruitment of labor was by no means as easy as the company had anticipated. In a region, you're living in a region where human needs were few and cheap to satisfy. It was not so simple to persuade young men, women were excluded during these periods, it was very difficult to persuade young men to exchange their traditional mode of life for industrial milieu with radically different work pattern and new kind of labor discipline. I like this picture very much. Is that here? This one? Especially this I love him. A typical back theory. And don't forget here. I come later to this. So let's start I mean talking about recruitment. Production had to be carried out in a region where the Persian central government could not assert its sheer authority. And that was a tricky business. The company realized quickly that in order to proceed, it needed the blessing of the chief of local tribes, especially the Bahtiaris, whose corporation was essential to guard the company against possible attack by the pastoral nomads and peasants accusing the oil company of stealing and seizing their land. The consecration of the tribal cheese was also vital for supplying the work force the work force the company badly needed. The first group of the Bahtiaris who joined the emerging oil industry at the wheelhead or protecting the company's property as guards were the coming for the lowest rank in the tropes. They call it amalle in a Bahtiari tribe. I mean don't mix it with what we use as the amalle today. In the Bahtiari they're known as amalle or amal konande. I've written in extend the reason of the background the same amalle in one of my work. The status amalle, plural amallejat, applied to the individual nomads who provided the logistic requirements of the tribe. The tribe laboring for the amalle who had no heard, no had owned the small flags of few ships and boats and then when they joined the oil industry formed the main bulk of unskilled labor for the oil industry these amalle. I mean if you go to the Bahtiari tribe structure I mean they're part of the group I mean called amalle and they're under amalle they are divided to different sections I mean to fanci to brecci and the rest but they call it in Bahtiari as amalle. They were laboring poor in Bahtiari they joined them in the oil industry but that was unskilled labor. How about the skilled labor? For example when you go to carpentry, machinery, painting these all done by the Isfahanis. Isfahanis skilled workers they came to Abadan and to Masjid Suleyman. The Indian workforce compromised the main trunk of the skilled labor in oil industry. The early cluster of the Indian migrant workforce who joined the prisoner industry were transferred directly from the Rangoon refinery in Burma to the coordination of the Rangoon oil company. Rangoon oil company was established in the late 19th century was almost 20 years older than the Iranian oil industry so they had them in the establishment of the British. So the first time they went to the Rangoon and they recruited some skilled labor from the Rangoon oil industry and they took it to Abadan. In Persia workers originating from Burma were categorized as Rangooni distinguishing them from the other Indian migrants because Rangoonis these were Muslims not Hindus these are Muslims. So the Rangoonis in Abadan they were the community the former community they had their own mosque that was segregated from the other Indian mosque the Sunni and Shiite mosque of Indian and they call it a mosque that still is still standing in Abadan. It's called Rangooni mosque so this is a reference to a substantial population of Rangoonis in Abadan. So with the foundation of Abadan refinery in 1909 a number of Indian migrant workers steadily increased. These are the numbers of 1910 to 1950 comparing Iranian and Indian European but the number of the Indian labor steadily increased. Part of these figures you can see here I took it from the BP archive at the Warwick University and partly from Delhi and Mumbai National Archive. So you see that the Indian employment is changing in the from 1910 to 1950. So recruitment for the migrant labor from India continued and even increased significantly but that was despite the problem of desertion by workers in pursuit of better job or the restriction of the immigration act which remained enforced during the first world war. I mean for those of you who are interested in to study migration this is very very interesting chapter. The British Raj has got its own immigration act is 600 pages every detail there and that was a problem for the Angola Persian Oil Company to take easily labor from India to Abadan to Masjid Suleyman. So they had a negotiation between there was a conflict between British Raj and London and Abadan of course. So by the end of the war first world war the Indian migrants at work in Persian oil industry where the soul they're coming from all across India. Chitagonian workers worked in harbor, engineering and naval transport while the Punjabi Sikhs chiefly employed as driver technicians and security agents. Migrants from Madras presidency occupied the clerical functions. Gazas from Punjab working as a do these or wash, washerman is very interesting. Do these or wash your men done by the Gazas from Punjab and go on as well as cook and service. You know for those of you who are Abadani and I interviewed Abadani still remember in the Haffar these were still I mean these were still I mean you could see these these blocks in Haffar this was done by the these are the the the the the the Gazas from Punjab washing the labor's clouds they call it Baylor suit in Abadan. So that was the story of Indian migrants in Iran. Okay If I have a glass of water. In the formative years of the Iranian oil industry there were numerous reports about individual workers who simply deserted the site after only a few days of work. I mean who cares I mean this is I don't like here I mean life in in time is much better than here good good climate why why should I work here under the direct sun I'm not crazy so they deserted site after a few days of work without even giving a prior notice. To overcome this problem the company adapted some special regulation for wage for example one of these was wage payment instead of making a daily payment they decided to give forth nightly payment and in rupees in Indian rupees not in Persian-Iranian riyals at that time was rupees. This was the first measure implemented by the old company to ensure the continuity of work these are the payday and these are the monies you're standing for the labor's back here you're standing there. So now another point was the working day long working day and modern time measurement were along the method of labor discipline introduced by the oil company. In the oil industry the daily production period was divided in two shifts where each shift consisted of a 12 hours working period. Given the absence of watches and clocks the only way to make the workers conscious of time discipline in the workplace was a horn or klaxon that was usually mounted on a top of a towers. Twice a day the horn was sounded to indicate a start and finish of the working day. This whole known in oil industry as Phaedus they call it Phaedus. Why Phaedus? I think it's coming from the term phagotist the bosson player. The Phaedus halted at six o'clock in the morning and six o'clock in the evening. In 1929 the workers of Abadan refinery launched strong to improve their working condition and pay. Among the demands was the reduction of the working day to seven hours in the summer and eight hours in winter. Now you've got the working day you've got the money wages what you're going to do with money. So for the majority of those labor coming from their pastoral life the wages of itself could do little to keep them in service unless opportunity provided for purchasing with the wages those commodities and comforts not obtainable in a nomadic life. It was not enough to give money way of spending the money had also to be provided. In local market or bazaar where the workers could spend their wages buying food, clothes, utensils, tobacco, ornaments among other things were set up. The first such market was established in Masjid Soleiman. The migrant from Shuhtar were the leading vendors in this market in this bazaar. Now changing Abadan and Masjid Soleiman is coming. Masjid Soleiman is coming as an old as a company town and Abadan is extending. Prior to the discovery of oil Abadan was an agrarian island with a scattered population of Arab tribes who had settles in several villages. Masjid Soleiman was a newly founded oil company town built around oilfield that straddled the migratory routes and spring posture of the Bakhtiari nomads. Migration to Masjid Soleiman either to seek employment in the oil industry or to provide services to the its employee push the new cities frontiers outwards. An oil field town originally accommodating a mere 523 employees in 1910. It grew up lips and bones into a company town with a population of 17,000 around 1920. That was Masjid Soleiman. The population of Abadan grew to an even greater extent in 1917. We had 5000 residents in Abadan and this 5000 in 1917 was included the oil company employees, local population, shopkeepers, petty traders. By the end of the war inward migration to Abadan of people seeking work in the oil industry and providing services to the oil workers caused Abadan to grow beyond all expectations. By the mid 1920 the population of Abadan islands had reached 50 to 60,000. Let me now open a new chapter in this talk. First World War. What First World War did to this industry? The First World War ended to somehow ironically labeled long piece of 19th century. The war single the breakdown of international system that had built around high finance and the culmination of industrialization of warfare after an era of intensifying capitalist competition and new technological development. On the eve of the war the global shift from coil to oil that was 1913, Joe Ehrman started before, but the British started in 1913. The shift from the coil to oil resulted in exponential growth of the demand of the petroleum products. The extraction and refining of the significant and affordable supply of petroleum was the underlying prerequisite of the global shift and the Persian oil industry and its main industry run by the Anglo-Persian oil company with the British government which was main shareholder since 1911 became the very, very important former supply of this new energy in the world and in the world beyond the Persian Gulf. Persian oil not only became an economic resources of fundamental importance to the British interest worldwide but it also turned to become a strategically military asset. During the war the Persian oil industry expanded greatly and succeeded in becoming one of the main oil producer in the world markets. Yet there were major drawbacks and hurdle as well during the war. First of all obviously there was a security issues. Here you have got a problem. The here was this doesn't work. It's finished. Now if you just look at there I mean all by then is close to the Ottoman empire. So at the beginning of the war the Ottoman and German tried to sabotage the oil industry and they did. In 1915 they blew out the pipeline there. So you've heard about the German activities in a southern Iran during the first world war. So that was one really a major problem facing the oil industry. Another problem at the war time was the scarcity of the labor because who's coming to work next to the front? So desertion was a common practice. Not only skilled workers but on a skilled workers too. I've written on that using the archive of DLE. You know we had this Indian prisoners made their labor for the British Empire during the first world war. Some of them I mean they were forced to come to work even in the oil industry. The criminals. So that was really an issue in the first world war. And we had them in this fight as I told you. The German they wanted to sabotage and the Iranian were the British were very very very careful about them and what to do. But when they reached Basrae in the first year of the war that was really made everything easy for the oil industry. But the Turks and the Germans moved to other parts of Iran to Balochistan and Sistan. And something not done and I'm happy to find it out about this in Turkish archive that the Turks they did some I found it in the military archive in Ankara that the Turks they managed the Ottomans they managed them to blew up the British installation in the Hark Island. They had a secret service called Taşkilat-e-Mahsuse and the Taşkilat-e-Mahsuse did this. Anyhow this is the war time. When the war finished that was another problem. The outcome of the war was a drastic as the war itself. Let me to recall that what Habsbaum called the first world war and it's after the age of catastrophe and he argues that its destructiveness was caused by similarity to unconcealed competitive capitalism which has no ultimate aim except limitless accumulation acquisition and global expansion. The conflict engulfed the general public as a conscript workers and the canon father and ultimately made them pay for the cost of the carnage. But at the same time this is very important not only for Britain after the first world war but also for Iran. But at the same time and ironically the first world war the various scope of the war brought with it the expansion of public sphere and inadvertently opened up a new venue for greater political participation by the working class and common people. Those of you familiar with the history of the working class in this country you'll remember what happened to the working class in this country United Kingdom and Britain right after the world war. The radicalism of the labour movement in 1920s in this country and the other side of the sea in the country that I'm coming from the Netherlands. We had the first major labour mass labour movement there. It's important historical political shift overlapped with the global structural development in cooperation capitalism incorporate capitalism. Forcing the state and large corporations like Anglo prison oil company to view labour and labour relation in a new perspective all together. In this new configuration industrial working class could not longer be seen as a merely anonymous producer of surplus value but increasingly as a human human capital and ultimately as a political citizen whose vote and political and who's a vote and action was could could affect those and policies. This was a shift you can see both in United Kingdom in Britain and in Iran. When the first world war finished in Iran came to an end Iran was still entangled in post-constitutional revolution perplexity. The political atmosphere of the post-war one Iran was characterized by the wave of anti-colonial nationalism reformism radical regional movement and an area of new social movement that included collective action among wage and craft waters. You know this is the beginning of the labour very intensive labour movement in Iran right after the first world war and that was definitely can be said about the embryonic industrial workers in the giant oil industry. In December 19 two nights coming to the action in December 1920 some 3000 Indian workers of Abadan oil refinery stages struck. Their demands included an increase in wage reduction of daily working hours additional pay for overtime improvement of sanitary conditions and an end to vilification and molestation of workers by staff members. They were soon joined by the Iranian workers which forced their refinery authorities to accept some of their demands not all including accommodation medical service leisure amenities and others all forgotten. It was therefore to be expected that this workers discontent would flare up again soon and it did. It did 18 months later we had a second mass strike in Abadan again initiated by the Indian workers. In May 1922 the Indian workers broke out which was soon joined by the Iranian workers. There was a report very interesting report about this strike written by George Thompson an employee employee of Anglo-Persian oil company in 1922 and he recalls that the strike was well organized protest by the skilled artisans involving about 2000 Indians. The immediate reaction of the oil company to the strike was different from the first time in the case of the Iranian workers the company Anglo-Persian oil company called on the local authorities to arrest all Iranians and then as far as the Indian were concerned the Anglo-Persian oil company decided to repatriate to send them back home. 2000s, the workers were forced to this repatriation. The strike leaders refused to board the ship unless all the strikers could leave Persia at once and the oil company reluctantly conceded their demand. In doing so the company lost a large part of its skilled workforce needy to be said that the majority of these Indian who were repatriated were Indian siege. That was a turning point for the oil industry Anglo-Persian oil company because there was a source of radicalism coming to India so they were quite I mean careful conscious about what's going on and don't forget we are in 1920s after the war and we had the Russian Revolution this is this is something happening in northern Iran and this labor movement global labor movement all over the world so but to do so they said let's reduce the number of the Indian workers and if we go for the Iranian worker they might be easy so and that was in fact I mean part of the Darcy project. When the Darcy signed this agreement with the Iranian government at that time one of the conditions was that the company had to employ Iranian workers gradually and replace the Indian or the non-Iranian by the Iranian but that was overlooked before and during the war. Now after these two consecutive strikes we've got another story the story is to what they called Iranianization or Persianization. At that time Iran and Persian I mean was I mean used I mean not Persian as far as but Iranian. Persianization or Iranianization of the the world workers so they tried to mean to go for that and this is the same time when you look at the Iranian history this is the same time that we have the coup d'etat of 1921 one of Reza Khan so there is a new page in Iranian history and he comes Reza Khan comes with Persian territorial states nationalism and the emergence of a new political society during the war so we have got the political society this is a man of order he is laying on these territorial states or territorial nationalism so on the other hand we have got the labor movement too in the oil industry so we should take all these the dimension all these criteria into account. When in 1920s Reza Shah Pahlavi rose to power his new rule promoted territorial state nationalism to glorify the authoritarian modernization program and the new state building project according to Anglo-Persian oil company when Reza Khan visited the oil industry in Abadan in 1924 he was still Reza Khan he was not Reza Shah when Reza Khan visited the oil industry in Abadan in 1924 as prime minister he was deeply disappointed when he did not see a single Persian employee in Abadan refinery he was very much disappointed and on return his administration put pressure on oil company improve working and living condition in the oil industry and accelerate urbanization by training indigenous workers and replacing Indians by Iranians on the second visit that is very important on the second visit that is four years later Reza Shah now is a Reza Shah visited Abadan in 1928 and he was crowned as a Reza Shah and he declined to visit the oil installation despite the oil company's highly preparation to welcome him he said I'm disappointed you didn't fulfill your promises last time I was here still there's no Persian Iranian labor here so that was put pressure on oil company all these elements I said I don't want to just go to this essentialist view to put it on one one one corner the the pressure from the Iranian government but we had the other factors finally pushed on the Iranian although Persian oiling this anglo-person oil company to go with this training schemes the Indian mentor supposed to be coach and training Iranian workers but that was not the whole story if I don't tell you about what was happening in among the workers in the oil industry itself how was their reaction to this policy of training it's very interesting the urbanization of labor in Iranian oil industry was not solely solely from the top there was a very solid dissatisfaction amongst the Iranian workers that they believe that the oil company is practicing discrimination when it comes to new labor recruitment and when it comes to promoting the existing labor the most the very most explicit example of this prevailing discontent was during the course of 1929 strike on May 1st 1929 that was international labor day about 9 000 Iranian workers at Abadan oil refinery launched a mass strike their demand included an increase in a wage by 15 percent recognition of the workers union and May Day as illegitimate holiday reduction of working day to seven hours in summer and eight hours in winter and complete this is important and complete equality between Indian and Iranian workers you don't see here anti-Indian sentiment they said equality this is workers demand no regard I mean when I come to the reaction of the state and the Tehran is different voice but the Abadan is the ones equality is important so the strike was initiated mainly by the Iranian workers and the Indian workers did not participate this time they didn't participate in fact I mean there is a report I found it very interesting when the company's security guards were there protected the guard the company's security that protected a rangooni workers who wanted to break the pickets line and go to work so now it's changing okay the Anglo-Persian oil company claimed that the strike of May 1929 was nothing but a Bolshevik plot to form an intense labor trouble in the oil industry and ultimately ablaze southern Persia that is their word however what but I mean I there's no trace in the Russian archive in the Soviet archive I went through all coming turn archive of this period there's no trace that the commenter knew about this there was somebody who studied at Kutfe before and then to Abadan and he was Yusef Eftekhari and Yusef Eftekhari was there but Yusef Eftekhari didn't have any connection with Comintern at that time the link was broken and something else I found it very interesting you might those of you you know we're familiar with the Iranian left histories very interesting that it was after the strike when the strike finished the Comintern Moscow Comintern decided to send somebody to Abadan to give a detailed report of the report of the strike because for them was wow we didn't expect that and you know whom they sent that just guess Mikhail Yan Sultanzadeh Sultanzadeh was there I found the passport of the Sultanzadeh in Comintern archive Yugoslavian passport he traveled there and he wrote very interesting report about this strike okay so that was that but in Tehran I mean there was a different I mean the press in Tehran was very supportive of the strike and accused the oil company of downplaying the true cause of the labor discontent the oil company was accused of practicing racial discrimination and there were complaints that its Indian employee rule over Iranians and don't forget at that stage in the very beginning of the strike Teh Mutash also supported the strikes and the governor of Abadan in a shabna may or nocturnal hand out distributing through these period reread the following our crowned father government and court officials the Iranian workers are glorious and noble sons of Daryosh who had to suffer under the tutelage of British and particularly their Indian clerks and middlemen sacrificing everything for the interest of the Anglo-Persian oil company this was one of the leaflet distributed by the some some some some structures then we had of course I mean the new agreement of 1933 signed between the Iranian government and Anglo-Persian oil company which put an end to the Darcy concession of 1901 and emphasis is the earlier demand that the oil company should be should recruit artisans technicians commercial staff from among Iranians in the opinion of the Persian press very very different from what we heard after the war second world war during the second world war in Iranian parliament accusing Taqiz are there of signing this agreement what we heard at that time at the Persian press was that they they welcomed the cancellation of the Darcy concession and they said this is a political emancipation and a new page to Persian honor not only did it return to national wealth to country but also ended the linty era of favoritism towards Indian employees so that was the war and that was labor activism in this period let's go now to to Abu Dhabi itself the city this is a map I found it in from in in British archive in in 1926 and I added something myself those things that you see here I added myself in the early of the operation the Anglo-Persian oil company offered temporary housing exclusively to its European stuff two years later in 1912 when the construction of the refinery was sufficient sufficiently near completion to allow a trial run to be made the oil companies European employees were accommodated in a brick villas and bungalows supported by gardens surrounded by gardens these houses were built at the north western side of refinery and called brain brain bungalows uh before that was a brain was a sheikh has a residence was also there on the opposite side of the refinery to the southeast and north of the old village a new neighbor who was constructed for Indian clerks and artisans and they were called the uh that was a buffer zone uh between refinery and the bazaar during the early days this new neighborhood was called coulis lane or sikh lane or indian lane and where we had these parallel long uh relevant houses in nisan hoods there for the indian and each bridge was divided by the wall to accommodate several employees or families the families was hardly a lot to join the indian workers at that time uh iranian uh were uh mostly lived in the sun baked mud houses in old village around the sheikh bazaar uh loosely lashed by the stick of bamboo's roof by palm leaves and things like that that was that was how the iranian lived at that time the iranian labor the new labors were two new labors was later added to abadan in early 60s and in ahmadabad lane and bovardi or uh indian quarter or as call it quarter of india and indian quarter was uh meant for the indian semi-skilled workers and security agents and they were calling to me far better than the accommodation provided for the iranians abadan really was a what they call it to me usually i mean there are i mean some some discussion among the the city planner and city history of the city planning that they talk about the colonial entities of these cities and they call it a dual society when the society when the dual city when the city is divided between the colonial and non-colonial in my opinion that's not we have another category i call it triple society triple city abadan is a triple we have got the british indian iranian so this is this this triple entity of abadan is quite interesting we have got this the the british unfortunately i think this is this is this is you you you have a brain brain the brain bungalows here and then you have a refinery here you have this uh indian indian and kuli lane sick lane here and then the rest are the the iranian but later on the indian quarter was also added here but was mainly the iranian here so the the the abadan is a triple city that is my opinion was especially divided according to social stratification principle imposed by the british colonialism a highly stratified racial hierarchy existed which the old company the old company's british employees broke with them chiefly from india and this is something are covered in another work that there was a conflict but there's a two generation of statement at that time you could see emerging new statements in britain in london and the old man coming from the rutch and they have got conflict even the minister of foreign affairs in this country was divided between the old diplomats and the new diplomats and gradually you see the finger of the labor party in everywhere don't forget we are talking about 1920s of the labor radicalism so this is something that you see that that everything was divided it's still i mean the the oil company was dominated by the british roge administration so this is this is what the city was divided okay crossing the very rigid racial partition was possible for example when there was a high ranking indians or later iranians they the the the the attended official ceremonies congregation worship services with european community it was possible to cross the segregation border it was possible however mixing across racial border was specifically discouraged and segregation was held up up to the best as the best alternative let me to give you a very very for me interesting story on how this segregation practiced in the anglo-persion archive anglo-persion oil companies archive i found the documents from 1926 a memorandum signed by mr armstrong he was the old company's executive in abodan and according to the memorandum when some indian clerks working at the old company approached mr armstrong in abodan to get permission to use the library that the oil company had in abodan in bray can we use your library the library of the company the mr armstrong reaction was very very interesting he was reluctant to give the permission because he said that i'm worried if i give the permission if the permission is granted then our european stuff would not be in ease to use this library anymore so the advice of mr armstrong is that why not use our used old book and have your own library indian library okay the indians said okay fine we do that so they get them in some old and used book and they had their own indian library okay but this is not the end of the story because in colonial culture racial segregation had a domino effect and some years later the iranian they approached the indians and said can we use your library not some of them not can read english and persian so they said i mean can we use your library and the indian reaction was that oh no you can use our used and old books and you have your own library so this is how this this this you know this colonialism uh colonial culture is that's got a domino effect so this is that uh this is let me to bring this uh uh talk to this end by giving this uh a story and um to just summarize let's me to say that what i did in this talk is um um to follow the old industry labor history from below and to see that how am i how labor became worker from 1908 to 1940 and labor discipline was imposed was practiced but my studies of the formation of the working class in iranian oil industry i let me to say that i distinguish whole layer of analysis is very unconventional compared to the old what we call it old labor my approach is a new labor in my new labor i distinguish four layer of analysis those of structure way of life disposition and collective action in my reading it was through this process that am i became career labor became worker and when we reach the second world war that i will cover tomorrow and finish it for the before the revolution let me to just see that an eye witness account of what was happening if before the second world before this is done by elvin satan who served as a staff of the labor administration of the anglo-persion oil company and later he was a press attache in british mission in tehran and he says that the war the second world war was a source of big relief for the anglo-persion oil company for eight years prior to the occupation british management and stuff had been rigged by the painful necessity of considering persian susceptibilities of paying lip service to the national rival dimly observed in the rest of the country many fundamental change has taken place persian numerals now shared proud of place with english on the back of cars and the gate of bungalows first and second the stuff had become senior and junior grade third class remained third class the letter bp on the petrol prompt it turned out stood not for british petroleum as everybody's how everyone touts but for benzene parts the petrol of persia thank you