Impact of the Ethnic-Tribal System on the Insecurities in Persian Gulf Ports during the First Half of the 20th Century

At the beginning of the 20th century, in spite of the royal proclamation of the Iranian Constitutional Decree by Mozaffar ad-Din Shah on 5 August 1906, unrests and uprisings still continued all over the country. In such conditions, due to its geographical distance from the center of power, the South of Iran suffered from chaotic and disorganized conditions. The khans of the tribes and ethnic groups acted independently and autocratically because of the central government’s lack of attention, and in the middle of this chaos people were treated with cruelty and despotism. Following a descriptive-analytic method and relying on library sources and documents, this study aimed to explore the effects of the ethnic and tribal system dominating the ports and islands of the Persian Gulf in the first half of the 20th century on the conditions of these regions and explain the outcomes of the policies of Reza Shah Pahlavi there. According to the findings of the study, the absence of the ruling power in the southern regions of the Persian Gulf during the last years of the Qajar government had resulted in a lot of unrest and despotic and willful acts on the part of tribes. After the beginning of the First World War and the violation of Iran’s neutral position by the involved countries, the situation was extremely worsened. The economic recess in the ports and islands and the blockage of trade routes, on the one hand, and the conflicts among the tribes and ethnic groups and the suppression of their rights caused people’s escape to other regions, particularly to the southern coasts of the Persian Gulf. This process continued during the reign of Reza Shah and the exercise of power by the central government and, as a result, the population of these regions decreased on a daily basis.