ABSTRACT
Virtually all of the conceptual apparatus elaborated in chapter one has been brought into play in part two of this study and all of it has been found useful. Dependent development and world-system considerations provided the keys to the articulation of modes of production in the Iranian social formation. Chapter four analyzed the degree of stasis and change in the nineteenth century as the three modes of production that combined in the period from 1500 to 1800—the peasant crop-sharing, pastoral nomadic, and petty-commodity craft modes—were preserved but undermined under the Western impact and internal logic of development Alongside them meanwhile emerged a small new capitalist mode of production with particular features, including the dominance of foreign capital and the partial formation of the Iranian working class outside the country as migrant labor in adjacent Russia. The world-system also impinged on this process of class formation and dependency, making the Qajar social formation dependent on two world core powers—Britain and (in this context at least) Russia— whose rivalry blocked the hegemonic situation of colonialism found elsewhere, as in India, and limited development within the dependent context When the world-system shifted radically after 1917 a whole new situation was created in Iran and Reza Khan's coup was made possible partly as a result of this (see the concept of stalemate below).
