James M. Gustafson is Associate Professor of History and Chair of the International Studies program at Indiana State University, USA. He is the author of Kirman and the Qajar Empire (2015) and serves on the executive board of the Association for Iranian Studies and is a senior editor for the Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of Asian Commercial History.

The Lion and the Sun demonstrates how environmental history can offer new insights on numerous historiographical debates about Iranian politics, economy, society, and culture. James Gustafson’s stories of Iran’s rural, pastoral, and urban communities masterfully reveal the complex relationships between people and non-human elements of their environment. A must read.

• List of FiguresPrefaceAcknowledgementsNote on TransliterationPart One: Environmental Crises in Early Modern Iran.1. Nature and History in Iran.The Guarded Domains.Geography and History.Does Nature Exist?On the Plateau.Connecting the 18th and 19th Centuries.2. Iran’s Little Ice Age Crisis.Climate Change and the Fall of the Safavid Empire.Going with the Grain.Warfare and Fragmentation.Images of Decline.Part Two: Assembling Empire.3. Farms and Villages.An Empire of Grain.The Time and Space of Agriculture.Working the Land.Patrimonialism and Gender.Shares of the Harvest4. Pastures.Non-Human Animals.Pastoralists and Pastoralism.The Thin Veneer.Seeing Like a Shah.On the Frontier.5. Cities: Concentrated Nature.Hierarchies of Place.The Politics of Urban Space.Inscribing Empire in the City.Urban Endowments and Rural Landscapes.Part Three: Confluence.6. Ecologies of Disaster: Earthquakes, Famine, and Disease.Unsteady Ground.When Provisioning Fails.Unhealthy Climes.Mastering Nature.7. New Geographies of the Late 19th Century.Collapsing Time and Space.The Mirror of the Lands.All the Farmers Have Become Hajjis.Concessions as a Model of Reform.8. The End of Empire.Revolution.Nature and the Nation.War, Famine, and the Coup.Conclusion.Bibliography.Notes.

James M. Gustafson is Associate Professor of History and Chair of the International Studies program at Indiana State University, USA. He is the author of Kirman and the Qajar Empire (2015) and serves on the executive board of the Association for Iranian Studies and is a senior editor for the Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of Asian Commercial History.

The Lion and the Sun demonstrates how environmental history can offer new insights on numerous historiographical debates about Iranian politics, economy, society, and culture. James Gustafson’s stories of Iran’s rural, pastoral, and urban communities masterfully reveal the complex relationships between people and non-human elements of their environment. A must read.

• List of FiguresPrefaceAcknowledgementsNote on TransliterationPart One: Environmental Crises in Early Modern Iran.1. Nature and History in Iran.The Guarded Domains.Geography and History.Does Nature Exist?On the Plateau.Connecting the 18th and 19th Centuries.2. Iran’s Little Ice Age Crisis.Climate Change and the Fall of the Safavid Empire.Going with the Grain.Warfare and Fragmentation.Images of Decline.Part Two: Assembling Empire.3. Farms and Villages.An Empire of Grain.The Time and Space of Agriculture.Working the Land.Patrimonialism and Gender.Shares of the Harvest4. Pastures.Non-Human Animals.Pastoralists and Pastoralism.The Thin Veneer.Seeing Like a Shah.On the Frontier.5. Cities: Concentrated Nature.Hierarchies of Place.The Politics of Urban Space.Inscribing Empire in the City.Urban Endowments and Rural Landscapes.Part Three: Confluence.6. Ecologies of Disaster: Earthquakes, Famine, and Disease.Unsteady Ground.When Provisioning Fails.Unhealthy Climes.Mastering Nature.7. New Geographies of the Late 19th Century.Collapsing Time and Space.The Mirror of the Lands.All the Farmers Have Become Hajjis.Concessions as a Model of Reform.8. The End of Empire.Revolution.Nature and the Nation.War, Famine, and the Coup.Conclusion.Bibliography.Notes.