Overview

Completed in 1938, the Trans-Iranian Railway connected Tehran to Iran's two major bodies of water: the Caspian Sea in the north and the Persian Gulf in the south. Iran's first national railway, it produced and disrupted various kinds of movement-voluntary and forced, intended and unintended, on different scales and in different directions-among Iranian diplomats, tribesmen, migrant laborers, technocrats, railway workers, tourists and pilgrims, as well as European imperial officials alike. Iran in Motion tells the hitherto unexplored stories of these individuals as they experienced new levels of mobility. Drawing on newspapers, industry publications, travelogues, and memoirs, as well as American, British, Danish, and Iranian archival materials, Mikiya Koyagi traces contested imaginations and practices of mobility from the conception of a trans-Iranian railway project during the nineteenth-century global transport revolution to its early years of operation on the eve of Iran's oil nationalization movement in the 1950s. Weaving together various individual experiences, this book considers how the infrastructural megaproject reoriented the flows of people and goods. In so doing, the railway project simultaneously brought the provinces closer to Tehran and pulled them away from it, thereby constantly reshaping local, national, and transnational experiences of space among mobile individuals.

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9781503613133

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Reviews

Amid the recent transnational turn in Middle East Studies, Iran in Motion is a subtle treatment of the unintended consequences of the Trans-Iranian Railway project. Mikiya Koyagi reveals the centrifugal forces unleashed by a project that was designed to bind a nation together. -- Nile Green * University of California, Los Angeles * With fresh insights drawn from a wealth of new archival materials, Mikiya Koyagi transports us through the various stations that dotted Iran's path to modernity. Much more than a narrative of the railway project, Iran in Motion reveals a deep understanding of the mobility networks that connected and divided Middle Eastern communities. A groundbreaking book. -- Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet * University of Pennsylvania * Iran in Motion exemplifies the gains of approaching modern Iran not through the lens of methodological statism but with a feel for state and non-state actors alike. The Trans-Iranian Railway, Mikiya Koyagi shows, made Iran both more fragmented and more homogeneous. A fascinating read. -- Cyrus Schayegh, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies * Geneva *

Iran in Motion exemplifies the gains of approaching modern Iran not through the lens of methodological statism but with a feel for state and non-state actors alike. The Trans-Iranian Railway, Mikiya Koyagi shows, made Iran both more fragmented and more homogeneous. A fascinating read. -- Cyrus Schayegh, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies * Geneva * With fresh insights drawn from a wealth of new archival materials, Mikiya Koyagi transports us through the various stations that dotted Iran's path to modernity. Much more than a narrative of the railway project, Iran in Motion reveals a deep understanding of the mobility networks that connected and divided Middle Eastern communities. A groundbreaking book. -- Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet * University of Pennsylvania * Amid the recent transnational turn in Middle East Studies, Iran in Motion is a subtle treatment of the unintended consequences of the Trans-Iranian Railway project. Mikiya Koyagi reveals the centrifugal forces unleashed by a project that was designed to bind a nation together. -- Nile Green * University of California, Los Angeles *

Amid the recent transnational turn in Middle East Studies, Iran in Motion is a subtle treatment of the unintended consequences of the Trans-Iranian Railway project. Mikiya Koyagi reveals the centrifugal forces unleashed by a project that was designed to bind a nation together. -- Nile Green * University of California, Los Angeles * Iran in Motion exemplifies the gains of approaching modern Iran not through the lens of methodological statism but with a feel for state and non-state actors alike. The Trans-Iranian Railway, Mikiya Koyagi shows, made Iran both more fragmented and more homogeneous. A fascinating read. -- Cyrus Schayegh, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies * Geneva * With fresh insights drawn from a wealth of new archival materials, Mikiya Koyagi transports us through the various stations that dotted Iran's path to modernity. Much more than a narrative of the railway project, Iran in Motion reveals a deep understanding of the mobility networks that connected and divided Middle Eastern communities. A groundbreaking book. -- Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet * University of Pennsylvania *

Author Information

Mikiya Koyagi is Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

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