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“A Roaring Farce”: The State Department, Sinclair Oil, and Iranian Economic Sovereignty in the Early 1920s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2024

Christopher R. W. Dietrich
Christopher R. W. Dietrich*
Affiliation:
History Department, Fordham University, New York, NY, USA
*
Email: [email protected]
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Extract

On May 17, 1924, Mohammad Mosaddeq stood up in the Majlis to complain about the government's inaction regarding a new oil concession for Iran's northern provinces. He could hardly have predicted the future course of his public life or how intertwined it would be with international questions about national sovereignty and natural resources. But he did know how he felt right then. The concession proposed for the Sinclair Oil Company was “of vital importance to the country and should no longer be delayed,” he said. “We should not come here only to take tea!”

Type
Roundtable: Mossadeq's Ouster at 70 – Legacies and Memories
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 56 , Issue 2 , May 2024 , pp. 261 - 269
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 “Translations from the Persian Press of Tehran,” attachment to Kornfeld to Hughes, 17 May 1924, Records of the Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Persia, 1910–1929, reel 27 (hereafter RDS-Persia-27).

2 Garavini, Giuliano, The Rise and Fall of OPEC in the Twentieth Century (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2019), 87CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Brew, Gregory, Petroleum and Progress in Iran: Oil, Development and the Cold War (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 21–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Gotlieb, “The Present Political Situation in Persia,” 2 December 1923, RDS-Persia-29.

4 Philip to Kellogg, 28 July 1926, RDS-Persia-27.

5 The Office of the Economic Adviser was established in 1920, replacing the Office of the Foreign Trade Adviser, itself established in 1916 to replace the Bureau of Trade Relations with the Office of the Foreign Trade Adviser and Office of the Adviser on Commercial Treaties.

6 Lansing to AmEmbassy London, 20 August 1919, and Isaiah Bowman to Lansing, 21 August 1919, both in the Robert Lansing Papers, box 45, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

7 Shuster, W. Morgan, The Strangling of Persia: A Story of the European Diplomacy and Oriental Intrigue That Resulted in the Denationalization of Twelve Million Mohammedans; A Personal Narrative (New York: Century, 1912), 75–77Google Scholar.

8 Consul General, “Anglo-Persian Oil Company,” 17 March 1921, RDS-Persia-28; Hughes to AmLegation Tehran, 23 March 1921, RDS-Persia-28; Dearing to Caldwell, 9 April 1921, RDS-Persia-28; Wright, “Memorandum of Conversation,” 7 May 1921, Herbert Hoover Subject Collection, box 15, Hoover Institute, Stanford University (hereafter HHSC-15).

9 Merle-Smith to Khan, 12 August 1920, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1920, vol. 3, 353 (hereafter FRUS-1920-3); Secretary of State to Caldwell, 17 November 1920, FRUS-1920-3, 355; Oarr to Skinner, 24 November 1920, RDS-Persia-28.

10 Memorandum by Millspaugh, 17 December 1920, FRUS-1920-3, 356–57.

11 Undersecretary of State to Sadler, 17 September 1920, RDS-Persia-28; Merle-Smith to Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, 22 November 1920, RDS-Persia-28; Fletcher to Hoover, 14 April 1921, RDS-Persia-28; Dearing to Manning, 14 April 1921, RDS-Persia-28.

12 Hughes to AmEmbassy London, 22 September 1921, RDS-Persia-28; Office of the Foreign Trade Adviser, Memorandum, 10 October 1921, RDS-Persia-28; Handwritten note, ACM, 12 October 1921, RDS-Persia-28; Draft, Hughes to Geddes, 15 October 1921, RDS-Persia-28.

13 Engert to Hughes, 28 November 1921, RDS-Persia-28.

14 Hogan, Michael J., “Informal Entente: Public Policy and Private Management in Anglo-American Petroleum Affairs, 1918–1924,” Business History Review 48, no. 2 (1974): 197CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Millspaugh, Memorandum, 8 December 1921, RDS-Persia-28.

16 Millspaugh, Memorandum, 16 December 1921, RDS-Persia-28.

17 Contract copy, 6 February 1922, RDS-Persia-28; Bedford to Hughes, 21 February 1922, RDS-Persia-28.

18 Dearing to Wellman, 2 March 1922, RDS-Persia-28; Dearing to Harvey, 3 March 1922, RDS-Persia-28.

19 Dearing to Hughes, 22 December 1921, RDS-Persia-28.

20 Translation, “To the British and American Governments,” 12 February 1922, RDS-Persia-28.

21 Alai to the Secretary of State, 21 February 1924, FRUS-1924-2, 541.

22 Dearing and Millspaugh, handwritten notes, n.d. (14 March 1922), RDS-Persia-28.

23 Handwritten note, Requa to Hoover, 26 May 1921, HHSC-14; Roosevelt to the Minister for Persia, n.d. (July 1921), RDS-Persia-28; Harvey to Hughes, 23 August 1921, RDS-Persia-28; Dearing to Sinclair Oil, 2 September 1921, RDS-Persia-28.

24 Memorandum to Dearing and Fletcher, 19 December 1921, RDS-Persia-28.

25 Millspaugh to Dearing, 3 January 1922, RDS-Persia-28; Millspaugh to Dearing and Fletcher, 24 February 1922, RDS-Persia-28; Handwritten note on Millspaugh to Dearing and Fletcher, 24 February 1922, RDS-Persia-28.

26 Harrison to Sinclair Oil, 31 August 1922, RDS-Persia-29.

27 Office of the Solicitor, “The Khoshtaria Concessions in Persia,” 25 August 1922, RDS-Persia-29 (emphasis added).

28 Dulles to Phillips and Harrison, 14 August 1922, RDS-Persia-29. For a different interpretation, see Hogan's “Informal Entente.”

29 Phillips to Hughes, 18 August 1922, RDS-Persia-29.

30 Dulles to Hughes, 18 August 1922, RDS-Persia-29. It is hard to overstate Moore's influence in legal circles. It is even possible that his textbook, Digest of International Law, sat on the same shelf as Dulles's grandfather's popular manual, Practice of Diplomacy. See: Dulles, Allen Welsh, “Power of the President over Foreign Affairs,” Michigan Law Review 14, no. 6 (1915–1916): 470, 472, 475–78Google Scholar.

31 Phillips to Hughes, 18 August 1922, RDS-Persia-29.

32 Department of State to AmLegation Teheran, 30 March 1923, RDS-Persia-29; Secretary of State to Kornfeld, 8 November 1923, FRUS-1923-2, 718.

33 Kornfeld to Hughes, 27 October 1922, RDS-Persia-29; Kornfeld to Millspaugh, 13 June 1923, RDS-Persia-29.

34 Kornfeld to Hughes, 26 May 1923, RDS-Persia-29.

35 Allen Dulles, undated handwritten note (10 July 1923), RDS-Persia-29.

36 Veatch to Federal Trade Commission, 3 November 1922, RDS-Persia-29.

37 Dulles to Hughes, 5 November 1923, RDS-Persia-29. Interesting aside: Dulles's earliest historical memory on record is as a British critic. “England ought to be content if she owned the mines where gold is, but no, she wants to have the land to [sic],” he wrote of the Boer War in 1902 at the age of eight. “She is all the time picking into little countries.” See Dulles, Allen Welsh, The Boer War: A History (3rd edition, for private circulation, Washington, DC, 1902), 3, 21Google Scholar.

38 Dulles, “Memorandum of Conversation,” 24 January 1924, RDS-Persia-29.

39 Devault, “Effect of American Oil Scandal,” 2 February 1924, RDS-Persia-29.

40 “Archie Roosevelt's Story,” “G. D. Wahlberg's Story,” and Editorial Cartoon, all in National Petroleum News, 30 January 1924, 27–30.

41 Hughes to Kornfeld, 7 February 1924, RDS-Persia-29.

42 Dulles to Hughes, 13 February 1924, RDS-Persia-29.

43 Gotlieb, “North Persian Oil Concession and Railroad Project,” 26 February 1923, RDS-Persia-29.

44 Imbrie, “Status of American Enterprizes [sic] in Persia,” 11 June 1924, RDS-Persia-29.

45 Zirinsky, Michael, “Blood, Power, and Hypocrisy: The Murder of Robert Imbrie and American Relations with Pahlavi Iran, 1924,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 18, no. 3 (1986): 275–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 Murray to Hughes, 19 September 1924, FRUS-1924-2, 549.

47 Translations, attachment to Kornfeld to Hughes, 19 April 1924, RDS-Persia-27.

48 Enclosure, “Press Comment,” attachment to Murray to Hughes, 18 October 1924, RDS-Persia-29.

49 Murray to Hughes, 16 December 1924, RDS-Persia-29.

50 Soper to Murray, 24 October 1924, RDS-Persia-29.

51 Allen Dulles, Memorandum of Conversation, 7 October 1924, RDS-Persia-27.

52 Millspaugh, Arthur C., “The Persian-British Oil Dispute,” Foreign Affairs 11 (1932): 522–23Google Scholar.

53 Ibid., 523.

54 Engert to Dulles, 21 November 1922, RDS-Persia-29.