اسارت و تبعيد سليمان ميرزا نمايشي از سياست لجام گسيخته بريتانيا در ايران

The Captivity and Exile ofSoleiman Mirza A Show ofBritain 5 Dispersed Policy in Iran

The First World War, which started out ofthe hegemonic aspirations of the worldʹs superpowers, presented the newly established constitutionalist regime with a serious threat. Since Iran had a strong role in the plans and plots of both the triple allies and the triple entente, the imposition of war on Iran seemed inevitable and its neutrality practically annulled. On the other hand, Iranian freedom fighters thought of the Great War as an opportunity for putting an end to Russian and British dominance on Iran. Therefore they migrated to Kermanshah, establishing a parallel government in Iran. One of main leaders of this movement, who for a while was the commander of the migrants, was Soleiman Mirza Eskandari, a Qajar prince and the head of the Democratic Party. The positions he publically took against the British made him a target of British hatred. After the fall of the national government, therefore, the British arrested Soleiman, put him on trial and sent him into exile. A search into previous research on this topic shows that this issue has not had a significant role in recent historical investigations. This paper thus attempts to present the exile and the arrest of Soleiman Mirza as an example of British meddling in Iranian affairs during the First World War, based on primary sources and published documents.