1. For an analysis of labor activism during this period see: Floor, Willem, Labour and Industry in Iran (Washington: Mega Publishers, 2009), 31–39Google Scholar; and Ladjevardi, Habib, Labor Unions and Autocracy in Iran (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1985), 1–8Google Scholar.

2. Abrahamian, Ervand, Iran between Two Revolutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), 129Google Scholar.

3. Bayat, Kaveh, “With or Without Workers in Reza Shah's Iran: Abadan May 1929,” in The State and the subaltern: Society and Politics in Turkey and Iran, ed. Atabaki, Touraj (London: I. B Tauris, 2007), 111Google Scholar.

4. Bayat, “With or Without Workers,” 121–22.

5. Generally speaking, the history of Iranian industries during the period under study has remained relatively understudied. This holds true for the textile industry, too, which was one of the most significant manufacturing activities in the country. Apart from the works dealing with local histories the following are the most useful works on the subject: Wulff, H. E., The Traditional Crafts of Persia (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1966)Google Scholar. Here Wulff investigates in detail the technologies used, and the technological innovations, as well as shifts experienced in the textile industry with its various branches, along with other industries; Floor, Willem, The Persian Textile Industry in Historical Perspective 1500–1925 (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1999)Google Scholar. This work is the most comprehensive study written in English about Iranian textile industries. After giving detailed information about the raw materials used for and different branches of the textile industry and its production centers, Floor embarks on providing a historical account of the industry; Floor, Willem, Traditional Crafts in Qajar Iran, 1800–1925 (California: Mazda Publishers, 2003)Google Scholar. In this work, Floor covers industries other than the textile such as ceramics, glass making, and metal working; Floor, Labour and Industry. In this work, after making a sketch of the history of traditional crafts in Iran, Floor investigates the history of Iranian industries, particularly of factory production; Issawi, Charles, The Economic History of Iran: 1800–1914 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1971)Google Scholar. In this collection of primary sources and other studies, Issawi makes available in English an important set of material written not only in English but also in Russian and Persian; Zahedi, Mohandes Ali, Sanaayi-e Iran bad az Jang, (Rangin, Esfand, 1323)Google Scholar. Zahedi provides information about the state and the history of Iranian factories after the Second World War. However, since almost all of these factories were established during Reza Shah's time, this is basically a work on the factories of the industrial leap-forward of 1930s and of 1920s to a lesser extent; Ardakani, Hosayn Mahbubi, Tarikh-e Moassasat-e Jadid dar Iran Vol.3, ed. Isfahanian, Karim and Qajariyeh, Jahanghir (Tehran: Tehran University Publications, 1368/1988)Google Scholar. In the third and the last volume of his encyclopedic, work Ardakani investigates new institutions in Iran from telegraph to telephone and from transportation to large-scale industrial establishment. As far as textile industry is concerned he gives rather detailed information on the establishments, the capital, looms, as well as spindles of the factories, erected during the period under study and later. Sadeghi, Zahra, Sayasatha-ye Sanati-ye Duran-e Reza Shah, 1304–1320 (Tehran: Khojasteh Press, 2009)Google Scholar. This is a work on the laws and the decrees related to industries and industrialization during Reza Shah's reign covering a wide range of areas from railway construction to mines and factories.

6. Floor, Traditional Crafts, 16.

7. Floor, Traditional Crafts, 16.

8. Bharier, Economic Development, 13.

9. Quoted by Floor, “The Merchants (tujjar) in Qajar Iran,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft 126 (1976): 131Google Scholar.

10. A tightly woven cotton fabric of fast color, which was once quite a popular fabric.

11. Issawi, Economic History of Iran, 280–81.

12. For an overview of Iranian industries during the period under study see: Floor, Labour and Industry in Iran (Washington: Mega Publishers, 2009)Google Scholar; Zahedi, Mohandes Ali, Sanaaye’-e Iran b'adaz Jang (Tehran: 1947)Google Scholar; Ardakani, Hosayn Mahbubi, Tarikh-e Moassasat-e Jadiddar Iran, vol. 3, ed. Isfahanian, Karim and Qajariyeh, Jahanghir (Tehran: Tehran University Publications, 1988)Google Scholar.

13. Sadeghi, Zahra, Sayasatha-ye San'ati-ye Duran-e Reza Shah, 1304–1320 (Tehran: Khojasteh Press, 2009), 60Google Scholar. Of these, 211 were laws while the number of decrees was 934.

14. The law did not apply to many small-scale capital goods such as sewing and knitting machines, printing and engraving machines, etc. Bharier, Julian, Economic Development in Iran: 1900–1970 (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), 176Google Scholar, which, as Floor rightly observes, shows state's biased attitude towards large-scale industries. Floor, Labour and Industry in Iran, 124.

15. Ardakani, Tarikh-e Moassasat, 95.

16. Ardakani, Tarikh-e Moassasat, 93–94.

17. Floor, Willem, “The Guilds in Iran: An Overview from the Earliest Beginnings Till 1972,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft 125 (1975): 99–116. Here 109Google Scholar.

18. International Labour Office (ILO), RL 48/1/1. “Creation of a Labour Office-Persia.”

19. October 18, 1933. ILO, RL 48/1/1. “To the Iranian Foreign Ministry.”

20. May 21, 1934. ILO, RL 48/1/1. “To Mr. Jamalzadeh, Member of ILO.” Similar remarks were made by Agha SeyedYaqub, deputy to the Fourth Majles, more than a decade ago in 1922. During the discussions on the necessity of a law regulating the relations between the employer and the employed he remarked: ^[20]“as to the issue of employer and employed to which the Honourable Solayman Mirza pointed out I say that we do not yet have workers (kargar) in Iran and everybody is an employer (karfarma). If, with God's will, one day our trade and agriculture improve and factories are established then we will have to deal with the issue of employer and employed. For now we do not have workers, employers, railways.” Mozakarat-e Majles, January 10, 1922.

21. Mahmudi, Jalil and Sa'idi, Naser, Shuq-e Yak Khiz-e Boland (Tehran: Qatreh, 2002), 44Google Scholar. Floor argues, on the other hand, that according to the information provided by Abdullayev only 6,700 workers were engaged in “modern industry.” Floor, Labour and Industry in Iran, 116.

22. Floor, Labourand Industry, 115–16.

23. Bharier, Economic Development, 34.

24. Bharier, Economic Development, 35. For the year 1906, no statistics are provided, which is due to the absence of information since industrial workers existed in Iran in early twentieth century.

25. For a discussion on old and new labor histories see: van der Linden, Marcel, “Labour History: the Old, the New and the Global,” African Studies, 66: 2–3, August–December 2007CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26. van der Linden, Marcel, “Labour History: the Old, the New and the Global,” African Studies 66: 2–3 (2007): 169Google Scholar (Emphasis is original).

27. Chakrabarty, Dipesh, Rethinking Working Class History in Bengal 1890–1940 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 6Google Scholar.

28. Scott, James C., Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985), 43Google Scholar.

29. For three studies, on Iran, Egypt, and Turkey respectively, which stress the importance of the discursive making of the working class in the Middle East see: Atabaki, Touraj, “From Amaleh (Labour) to Kargar (Worker): recruitment, Work Discipline and Making of the Working Class in the Persian/Iranian Oil Industry,” International Labour and Working Class History 84 (Fall, 2013)Google Scholar; and Lockman, Zachary, “Imagining the Working Class: Culture, Nationalism, and Class Formation in Egypt, 1899–1914,” Poetics Today 15, not. 2 (1994): 157–90Google Scholar; Yigit Akin “The Dynamics of Working-Class Politics in Early Republican Turkey: Language, Identity, and Experience.” Atabaki aptly summarizes this “material” formation narrative of what he calls “the teleological Marxists” as follows: “the typical argument goes as follows: following the rise and expansion of the capitalist relations in Western Europe, embodied in colossal development of heavy industries and mass production commodities, the rising European powers were poised to expand the realm of their power—not only to add new markets, but also to acquire raw materials desperately needed for their industries.” The result of these processes set the standard for a new division of labor, worldwide. From the mid-nineteenth century Iran joined this global capitalist relationship, and by the end of the century, with the introduction of capitalist development in Iran and its integration into world markets, the labor force was created as a new working class. However, the consolidation of working class consciousness was only materialized by unionist and political movements, which the Iranian workers organized in early twentieth-century. By that time, the making of the Iranian working class had already been accomplished for all intents and purposes.” Atabaki, “From Amaleh,” 21.

30. Thompson, E. P., “Eighteen Century English Society: Class Struggle without Class?” Social History 3:2 (1978): 150Google Scholar. Quoted in Wood, Ellen Meiksins, Democracy Against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 80CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Italics are original.

31. Lockman, “Imagining the Working Class,” 158.

32. For a detailed study on petitions as a source in general for social history see: “Petitions in Social History,” International Review of Social History 46 (2001)Google Scholar. As far as the Middle East is concerned, the following are some of the work written about or based on petitions: Schneider, Irene, The Petitioning System in Iran: State, Society and Power Relations in the Late 19th Century (Wiesbaden: HarrassowitzVerlag, 2006)Google Scholar. Focusing on nineteenth century petitions from Iran, Schneider deals in this study with petitions sent between 1883 and 1886 to The Council for the Investigation of Grievances (Majles-e Tahqiq-e Mazalem), founded in 1882. As Schneider also points out, some of these petitions had previously been published in Fedirun Ademiyet and Homa Natek, eds. Efkar-e Ejiemai va Seyasi-ve Eqtesadi darAsar-e Montesher Nashodeh-e Duran-e Qajar (Essen: NimaVerlag, Essen, (n.d). Mansoureh Ettehadieh Nezam-Mafi also has an article which focuses on The Council for the Investigation of Grievances: Nezam-Mafi, Mansoureh Ettehadieh, “The Council for the Investigation of Grievances: A Case Study of Nineteenth Century Iranian Social History,” International Society for Iranian Studies 22:1 (1989): 51–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the Constitutional Period I have come across two articles both in Persian: Tatari, Ali, “Bar rasi-ye Jayghah-e Arizehdar Pajuhashha-ye Asnadi,” Payam Baharestan 2:4 (2009): 465–76Google Scholar; Shohani, Siavash, “Ghozari bar Arayez-e Eanat,” Payeme Baharestan 2:3 (2009): 315–29Google Scholar. While Tatari analyses petitions in terms of their place in conventional documentations categories, Shohani investigates demands, financial and otherwise, as a specific type of petition; in “From Amaleh (Labour) to Kargar (Worker): recruitment, Work Discipline and Making of the Working Class in the Persian/Iranian Oil Industry,” Atabaki also uses petitions especially to discuss workers’ self-perception. A few works can be listed for Ottoman/Turkish historiography, too. EyalGinio, “Coping with the State's Agents “from Below”: Petitions, Legal Appeal, and the Sultan's Justice in ottoman Legal Practice,” in Popular Protest and Political Participation in the Ottoman Empire: Studies in Honor of Suraiya Faroqhi, ed. EleniGara, ErdemKabadayi, M., and Neumann, Christoph K. (Istanbul: Istanbul Bilgi University Press, 2011), 41–56Google Scholar. Here Gara deals with petitions from late seventeenth until late eighteenth centuries in the Ottoman Empire to show how local people used petitions to maneuver between local rulers and the Ottoman Sultan; M. ErdemKabadayi, “Working for the State in a Factory in Istanbul: The Role of Factory Workers’ Ethno-Religious and Gender Characteristics in State-Subject Interaction in the Late Ottoman Empire,” Ph.D Dissertation, Munich University, 2008. Here Kabadayi uses petitions sent by workers and their families to Feshane Factory in Istanbul, a nineteenth century state-owned textile factory in the Ottoman Empire; Kabadayi, “Petitioning as Political Action: Petitioning Practices of Workers in Ottoman Factories,” in Popular Protest and Political Participation, 57–74. Largely based on his dissertation, Akabadayi deals in this work with petitions as political action and argues that they should also be taken as forms of labor action along with strikes, etc.; Gorkem Akgoz, “Many Voices of a Turkish State Factory: Working at Bakirkoy Cloth Factory, 1932–1950” (Ph.D dissertation, Amsterdam University, 2012). Based on petitions sent again to the factory management Akgoz also focuses on the workers of this particular factory this time from early Republican Turkey; Akin, Yigit, “Reconsidering State, Party and Society in Early Republican Turkey: Politics of Petitioning,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 39 (2007): 435–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In this article by using petitions sent to the Republican Turkish Party by people from various social groups, Akin discusses state-society relations in Turkey and powerfully challenges the established view of a dictating state against a passive and recipient society. Unlike the petitions used in the present article, however, these works rely not on the original petitions, which either did not survive or did not even enter the inventory for only their summaries prepared by professional or semi-professional scribes were recorded. As for the Egyptian case: Cole, Juan Ricardo, Colonialism and Revolution in the Middle East: Social and Cultural Origins of Egypt's ‘Urabi Movement (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993)Google Scholar, which deals, especially in chapter 2, with this movement of late nineteenth century based on petitions; Chalcraft also employs petitions in “Engaging the State,” to show how during the nineteenth century Egyptian peasants engaged with the Ottoman rulers.

33. Van Voss, Lex Heerma, “Introduction,” International Review of Social History 46, Supplement 9 Petitions in Social History (2001): 1–10Google Scholar, here 1. Petitions are among the least exploited sources of Middle Eastern scholarship. Although there are some studies about petitions they have not duly been used as sources  on information on Middle Eastern, and particularly Iranian, history writing. The most detailed work on nineteenth century petitions from Iran is the following: Schneider, Irene, The Petitioning System in Iran: State, Society and Power Relations in the Late 19th Century (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006)Google Scholar. Here Schneider focuses on the petitions sent between 1883 and 1886 to The Council for the Investigation of Grievances (Majles-e Tahqiq-e Mazalem) founded in 1882. As Schneider also points out some of these petitions had previously published in Fedirun Ademiyet and Homa Natek, ed. Efkar-e Ejiemai ve Seyasi-ve Eqtesadi dar Asar-e Montesher Nashodeh-e Duran-e Qajar (Essen: Nima Verlag, Essen, (n.d). Mansoureh Ettehadieh Nezam-Mafi also has an article which focuses on The Council for the Investigation of Grievances: Nezam-Mafi, Mansoureh Ettehadieh, “The Council for the Investigation of Grievances: A Case Study of Nineteenth Century Iranian Social History,” International Society for Iranian Studies 22:1 (1989): 51–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the Constitutional Period I have come across two articles both in Persian: Tatari, Ali, “Bar rasi-ye Jayghah-e Arizeh dar Pajuhashha-ye Asnadi,” Payam Baharestan 2:4 (2009): 465–76Google Scholar; Shohani, Siavash, “Ghozari bar Arayez-e Eanat,” Payeme Baharestan 2:3 (2009): 315–29Google Scholar. While Tatari analyses petitions in terms of their place in conventional documentations categories Shohani investigates demands, financial and otherwise, as a specific type of petitions.

34. Sohrabi, Revolution and Constitutionalism, 297.

35. ibid. Schneider gives 1864 as the date of the establishment of these boxes both in Tehran and in the provinces. The Petitioning System, 35.

36. Ettehadieh Nezam-Mafi, “The Council,” 52.

37. dore4-k25-j12-p2 pashmrisi, November 25, 1921.

38. dore7-k90-j12.3-khorasan-sistan p101-150, May 20, 1929.

39. dore6-k70-j35-shahroud p1-61, Shahroud, March 4, 1927.

40. Bayat, Asef, “Does Class ever Opt out of the Nation? Nationalist Modernization and Labour in Iran,” in Identity Politics in Central Asia and the Muslim World: Nationalism, Ethnicity and Labour in the Twentieth Century, eds. van Schendel, Willem and Zürcher, Eric J. (London: I. B. Tauris, 2001), 199Google Scholar.

41. Atabaki, “From Amaleh,” 24.

42. dore4-k25-j12-p2.’Pashmrisi’ Library, Museum and Document Center of Iran Parliament.

43. d4-k25-j12-p14, March 4,1923, Library, Museum and Document Center of Iran Parliament.

44. d4-k25-j12-p14, March 4, 1923, Library, Museum and Document Center of Iran Parliament.

45. d6-k8-j7, August 12, 1926, Library, Museum and Document Center of Iran Parliament.

46. d8-k1168-j6, March 3, 1932, Library, Museum and Document Center of Iran Parliament.

47. d10-k107-j16, June 26, 1936, Library, Museum and Document Center of Iran Parliament.

48. Consequently, the factory was saved by army orders. Floor, Labour and Industry, 132.

49. ibid.

50. Chalcraft “Engaging the State,” 304.

51. When, in mid-1930s, the issue once again came to the fore, an investigation was made about textile manufactures in Isfahan. It was stated in the subsequent report that the conditions in textile factories were extremely unfavorable, full of garbage, and under dust, and their air was putrid. According to the report, the workplaces were constructed in such a way that they had neither air nor light. 00000001, July 20, 1936, National Library and Archive of Iran. In a medical inspection undertaken in April 1936 on 628 workers, an array of medical problems from malaria (forty-one workers), to syphilis (seventy-five workers), rheumatism (forty-two workers), various injuries (seventy-two workers), etc. were discovered. It appears that modern factories were relatively better in this aspect. Of the 557 workers of the Vatan Factory, only seventeen were found to be in bad health. But the sanitary conditions in Rahimzadeh factory, another large-scale establishment with 340 workers in 1940, was reported to be unsatisfactory. 00000001, September 2, 1936, National Library and Archive of Iran.

52. Female and child labor remain an unexplored dimension of Iranian labor history, particularly of the textile industry. Apparently women were an integral part of industrial labor in Iran from quite early on. For example, a total of three hundred female workers were employed in a wool spinning factory in Mazandaran, apparently established by Tehran municipality for the destitute women. d4-k25-j12, September 3, 1921, Library, Museum and Document Center of Iran Parliament. Again in early 1920s, the issues of employment of female and child labor in unfavorable conditions at carpet industry in Kerman was raised by the recently created International Labour Office (ILO), of which Iran was an early member, and its first Director, Albert Thomas. d4-k55-j26.2, October 15, 1921, Library, Museum and Document Center of Iran Parliament.

53. Bharier, Economic Development, 178.

54. 00000001, 1938, National Library and Archive of Iran.

55. 38000387, February 6, 1940, National Library and Archive of Iran.

56. Bharier, Economic Development, 5. 1 kran was equivalent to about 4.5 pence in British currency in 1900.

57. Bharier, Economic Development, 178. The average wages in some countries were as follows: 63 pence in Britain; 23 pence in India; and 14 pence in Japan. ibid., 178.

58. Abrahamian, Ervand, Iran between Two Revolutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), 129Google Scholar.

59. Seton-Watson, Hugh, The Pattern of the Communist Revolution (London: Methuen and Co., 1960), 104–10Google Scholar.

60. FarhangQasemi, Sandikalism dar Iran (Paris: Bonyad-e Musaddeq, 1985), 172Google Scholar. For an account of the strike see: Floor, Labour and Industry, 75–78; FarhangQasemi, Sandikalismdar Iran (Paris: Bonyad-e Musaddeq, 1985), 171–76Google Scholar; JalilMahmudi and NaserSa'idi, Shuq-e Yak Khiz-e Boland, 44 (Tehran: Qatreh, 2002), 215–21Google Scholar.

61. 00000001, June 11, 1931, Library and Archive of Iran.

62. Floor, Labour and Industry, 75.

63. ibid.

64. ibid. 76.

65. Paykar, October 1, 1931.

66. Floor, Labour and Industry, 78.

67. Paykar, 1 October 1931.

68. ibid.

69. 00000001, June 11, 1931, National Library and Archive of Iran.

70. 00000001, September 5, 1931, National Library and Archive of Iran.

71. Nahzat, 12 March 1932.

72. ibid.

73. Bayat, “With or Without Workers,” 119.

74. Blaine, Marcia Schmidt, “The Power of Petitions: Women and the New Hampshire Provincial Government, 1695–1700,” International Review of Social History 46, Supplement 9 Petitions in Social History (2001)Google Scholar, ed. Lex Heerma Van Voss, 57–78. Here 37.

75. Hobsbawm, Eric, “Peasants and Politics,” Journal of Peasant Studies 1 (1973): 12Google Scholar.

76. Tilly, Charles, From Mobilization to Revolution (Reading: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1978), 7Google Scholar.

77. Chalcraft “Engaging the State,” 304.