Abstract :
As British efforts to secure the approaches to India intensified in the closing years of the
nineteenth century, expert knowledge of the states bordering the subcontinent became an increasingly soughtafter
commodity. Particularly high demand existed for individuals possessing first-hand experience of Qajar
Persia, a state viewed by many policymakers as a vulnerable anteroom on the glacis of the Raj. Britain’s two
foremost Persian experts during this period were George Nathaniel Curzon and Edward Granville Browne.
While Curzon epitomized the traditional gentleman amateur, Browne embodied the emerging professional
scholar. Drawing on both their private papers and publications, this article analyses the relationship between
these two men as well as surveys their respective views of British policy toward Iran from the late 1880s until
the end of the First World War. Ultimately it contends that Curzon’s knowledge of Persia proved deficient in
significant ways and that Anglo-Iranian relations, at least in the aftermath of the Great War, might well
have been placed on a better footing had Browne’s more nuanced understanding of the country and its
inhabitants prevailed within the foreign policymaking establishment.
