سرمايهداري تجاري و عملكرد آن در سال هاي پس از جنگ جهاني اول

The Mercantile Bourgeoisie and Its Functioning in the Years 3 After the World War I

Merchants, who were reputable people in the social hierarchy of Iran, paid much attention to charity work among the poor. Their material wealth vested in them a huge political and social power, which they used, among other things, in activities for the common good of the society, for example, helping to establish new style schools with modern curriculum. A number of most distinguished merchants had ties with the new Iranian intelligentsia and had become acquainted with the modern way of doing business. Nevertheless, the majority of the merchants still operated through the traditional business networks which worked via a large number of trading houses. Of the characteristics of commerce in the years immediately after the end of the World War I, was the widespread use of brokerage on Iranian merchants part on behalf of foreign commercial firms, a grave shortage of cash, and state monopolization of trade in he Soviet Russia which led to bankruptcy of a number of the Iranian merchants. Tax evasion and widespread smuggling of goods into Iran were two other characteristics of this era which flourished in the war time and widely continued afterwards. The merchants also got involved in establishing new commercial institutions, investing in the modem industries, land holding and obtaining state concessions.