> The Qajars were not clients of the colonial powers until towards until the tail end of 19th century
I disagree and in fact for a lot of what the colonial powers did there are in fact very little references. Most of it are trickles of information decades sometimes centuries later. They wrote their own history books after all. The embargo famine in the 20th century got published from the archives so late that its barely a footnote worth mentioning.
The British had a huge impact on the establishment of the modern Saudi kingdom as well as salafi islamism in the 18th century.
> And here I thought our modern world was strange. Can you imagine if they had our gadgets back then? The Russians would get demoralized and make a beeline to go defend Moscow and Iran would still have Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.
That is really a quite interesting point. Although it is worth noting that it was the Ukrainians(I'm including Donbass and LPR militias in there) and the Chechens that were fighting out tiktok wars. The Russian army itself was only recorded by military reporters, and always covered their faces. It seems like when they join the war theatre they are in fact stripped of personal electronic gadgets for obvious SIGINT reasons.
One of the militia headquarters that was struck in western Ukraine was struck because western mercenaries were fiddling with their mobile phones[1].
My point being that while your comment is well received, I'm not sure it works on actual professional armies.
My point: The fiascos that lead to the loss of large chunks of Iran in the Caucus were not instigated by the British and Qajars were not clients of anyone at that time. We don't really require documentation to understand this. When, however, the British and Russian embassies (post defeat) de-facto setup a shadow government in Tehran, yes, at that point, the Qajars were basically an animated corpse and had lost all prestige internally. Which is why opportunistic (elite) traitors in Iran began to pick one of the two powers as patrons. The really embarrassing part about it all for me is that apparently the Brits didn't feel Iran was worth actually colonizing! :)
The Russians were using the pretext of local unrest to come and "liberate" the caucus. But I think there was a possibly British military expert that very poorly "advised" the Qajar shah.
What is really interesting, specially since ^ above should sound very familiar with the latest Russian liberation effort, is the thought that occurred after posting my OP. Qajar Iran was (if you squint) kinda like the Austro-Hungarian empire. Iran is, technically due to multi-ethnicity, an empire, though it sounds funny :)
So the thought was that these empires actually did serve some positive purpose. There are places in the world were we have quilts of mini countries. For example, when the Caucus were part of Persian or Russian empire (or USSR) you didn't have Armenians and Azerbaijanis and Georgians having fights over borders. And whenever the empire goes bye bye (just w/ Austro-Hungarian empire) those constituent states go at it with each other.
(Btw, to be perfectly clear, by above (and OP "Oh well") I most certainly do not mean that I do not understand or support the independent and successful existence of Armenia, or Georgia! Just analyzing, that's all and no offense is meant. I wouldn't want my country to be part of an empire either.)
I disagree and in fact for a lot of what the colonial powers did there are in fact very little references. Most of it are trickles of information decades sometimes centuries later. They wrote their own history books after all. The embargo famine in the 20th century got published from the archives so late that its barely a footnote worth mentioning.
The British had a huge impact on the establishment of the modern Saudi kingdom as well as salafi islamism in the 18th century.
> And here I thought our modern world was strange. Can you imagine if they had our gadgets back then? The Russians would get demoralized and make a beeline to go defend Moscow and Iran would still have Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.
That is really a quite interesting point. Although it is worth noting that it was the Ukrainians(I'm including Donbass and LPR militias in there) and the Chechens that were fighting out tiktok wars. The Russian army itself was only recorded by military reporters, and always covered their faces. It seems like when they join the war theatre they are in fact stripped of personal electronic gadgets for obvious SIGINT reasons.
One of the militia headquarters that was struck in western Ukraine was struck because western mercenaries were fiddling with their mobile phones[1].
My point being that while your comment is well received, I'm not sure it works on actual professional armies.
[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/03/19/british-vo...