Edward G. Browne and the Iranian Constitutional Struggle: From Academic Orientalism to Political Activism

Abstract

According to the few available cursory biographical accounts of Edward Granville Browne (1862–1926), a prominent Cambridge Orientalist who was to become the leading British authority on Iran in the years immediately preceding WWI, his initial interest in Iran was a byproduct of the affection he developed for Ottoman Turkey in his youth. In his own words, “It was the Turkish war with Russia in 1877–8 that first attracted my attention to the East.” Having developed an “admiration” for Turkey at the age of sixteen, in the process of learning Turkish Browne was to discover “that for further progress … some knowledge of Arabic and Persian was requisite.” Thus began what was to become his lifelong fascination with the Persian language and Iran.