Bio: Yann Richard

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Abstract

European Eyes on Persian Lives in late Qajar Iran

Despite early encounters between Persia and Europe, individual friendship and personal relations between Iranians and Western people were scarce until the beginning of the 20th century. Some of the best records of personal ties, in the books of Gobineau, Feuvrier, and Browne show with some variety the distance preventing to enter the private life of their Iranian friends: religious shi¹ite regulations for purity, the place of women and the duality between interiority and exteriority in Persian culture could explain this distance. The unpublished personal diaries of Georges Ducrocq and Hélène Hoppenot, respectively a French diplomat and the wife of the French minister in Iran in the years 1919-1921, will show some slight change of attitude. Further, despite a real interest and sympathy, they show a rather low familiarity with Iranian society of Western sources for contemporary history. Apart from some upper class individuals who could speak fluently French or English and had travelled in Europe, some major motivations and factors of public action, like family ties, religious convictions, personal interests and career strategiesS might fall away from foreign eyes.