ISAW Professor Dan Potts Co-Authored New Book Qeshm: The History of a Persian Gulf Island
Located in the Straits of Hormuz, the island of Qeshm has had a tumultuous history. Qeshm: The History of a Persian Gulf Island is the first serious, book-length study of the island's history.
This is the second book on which Dan Potts and Willem Floor have collaborated. Floor, one of the world's leading scholars on Iran's economic history since 1500, has written a series of books on different aspects of the Persian Gulf. Dan travelled to Qeshm in 2004 at the invitation of the island's environmental protection department and visited historical and archaeological sites all over the island. Several years ago the two collaborated on a book on the island of Khark, in the northern Persian Gulf, and recently Floor invited Dan to join him in writing this history of Qeshm from the earliest times to the 20th century.
From the fourteenth century onward, the island was an important dependency of the Kingdom of Hormuz, often providing drinking water to Hormuz. The island remained critical as a source of water and foodstuffs for the Portuguese, beginning in the early-sixteenth century. Throughout the seventeenth century, Qeshm remained a bone of contention between Portugal, the Dutch and the English East India Companies. Later, it was a coveted tile in the mosaic of Persian Gulf domination aspired to by the Soltans of Oman, despite the pretensions of the Qajar court. The natural resources of Qeshm include salt, the purest in the Persian Gulf, naphtha, and firewood. From Nader Shah's naval ambitions to the commercial competition of the early-twentieth century, Qeshm features in innumerable mini-crises, both local and international. In 1935 the British abandoned their coaling station on the island at the insistence of Reza Shah.
Qeshm's history stands in stark contrast to the popular image of this staid, somewhat sleepy island. This book, brilliantly researched by two of the foremost scholars of Iranian history, is essential reading for anyone interested in a region whose strategic, political, economic and financial importance continues to grow.