Against All Odds

Attempts at diplomatic outreach encouraged France’s connection to Persia in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The descriptions of the French embassy to Persia between 1706 and 1708 reveal the challenges that the ambassador, Pierre-Victor Michel, faced navigating Persian political factions and dealing with a French rival, a woman named Marie Petit. Michel’s memoirs outline his efforts to find common tools of negotiation between France and Persia. For Michel, the Safavid government paralleled French monarchy, and he was able to find shared notions upon which he and his Persian hosts managed to draft a treaty concerning commercial and religious affairs.

Persia

Translations of Persian texts, fairy tales, and paintings reveal how French writers reinvented Persia to suit their own notions. French translations in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were often more like adaptations with many fabricated elements rather than strict translations. Works by André du Ryer and François Pétis de la Croix, for example, could suggest a civil, polite, and courteous yet magical Persia. Charles Le Brun’s painting “The Queens of Persia at the Feet of Alexander” presented Persia as a complement to the ideal princely virtues that Louis XIV wished to project. The painting and tales established Persia as a match for French polite conduct, refinement, and royal behavior.

Epilogue

With the publication of Montesquieu’s Persian Letters in 1721, Persians transform from objects of curiosity—as witnessed in the reception of Mohammad Reza Beg in 1715—to objects of critical reflection. The experience of Montesquieu’s two fictional foreigners in France draws from the descriptions of the Beg’s encounter. Moreover, Montesquieu compares France and Persia based upon similarities, such as monarchy and luxury, that the two countries had been known to share. The Persian-French relationship that culminates in the Letters presents a model for France’s relationship to other Asian countries. France imagined foreign countries according to the current context and the French response to Asian countries could not be reproduced by other European nations.

Images of Mohammad Reza Beg

Engravings of Mohammad Reza Beg were struck for his visit to France in 1715. Many of the images highlighted his foreign clothing and habits such as smoking and bathing, which in most cases were recognizable curiosities and already had stimulated trends in French fashion and culture. In France, consumers bought and consumed goods, such as coffee and expensive fabrics, that had been considered exotic but, by the time of the Beg’s visit in 1715, had been adapted as their own. The prints functioned to highlight his foreign tastes, but at the same time, they tempered his exoticness to make him accessible to the French and more like themselves.

Introduction to the Mirror

During the seventeenth century, French missionaries, travelers, diplomats, and writers raised comparisons between France and Persia that established Persia as a suitable mirror for France. The two countries were connected through diplomatic contacts, images, material objects, and texts, which together laid the basis for an imagined relationship. Frenchmen created an image of Persia that matched their own tastes and political circumstances and evolved over the course of the century. Inspired by new trajectories in global history, the case study of France and Persia challenges traditional ideas of Orientalism by uncovering the variety of European responses to Asia in the early modern period.

The Persian Embassy to France in 1715

The diplomatic visits from Ottoman, Muscovite, Siamese, and Moroccan ambassadors were handled differently than the frequent diplomatic visits from European countries. The “Oriental” visits produced many ceremonial challenges but also generated tremendous curiosity in the East, which Louis XIV used to his advantage. The crown took special care to turn the audiences with Oriental ambassadors into spectacular events to promote the Bourbon monarchy but had to be careful to adhere to French protocol and ensure that the diplomatic exchanges enhanced the image of French grandeur. The last magnificent display of Louis XIV’s reign, the visit of Mohammad Reza Beg in 1715, reveals the difficulties the French court encountered when dealing with foreign embassies. Louis XIV’s introducteur des ambassadors, the Baron de Breteuil, proved a culturally sensitive host, but he could not prevent conflict over French protocol that arose out of conceptions in common between France and Persia.

Missionaries, Travelers, and the Case of Jean Chardin

Missionaries and travelers presented the earliest representations of Persia. Missionaries imagined the Safavid Shiite state as open to conversion to Christianity and an ally against the Sunni Ottomans. Through Catholic writings, Frenchmen absorbed literature that portrayed Persia as tolerant and friendly to Europeans. French contacts with Persia increased under the patronage of Louis XIV’s finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Some of these travelers drew connections between the two monarchies. One of the most famous French travelers to Persia, Jean Chardin, depicted the Persian royal court as a model of comparison for the French. He not only described Persia to Frenchmen but also used it as a means to instruct and reflect upon French political and social institutions.

The Absolutist Mirror

The visit of Mohammad Reza Beg in 1715 raised connections between the Safavid and Bourbon crowns. After the death of Louis XIV, Persia took on a different meaning under the new French government, which distanced itself from depictions that could suggest Louis XIV as a despot. French literature broached the tensions inherent in the image of Persia as a civil yet despotic empire. Finally, the collapse of the Safavid Empire made positive associations with France harder to draw. Enlightenment authors, such as Montesquieu and Voltaire, discussed the breakdown of the Safavid Empire and the warning it suggested to the French monarchy.

Images of the Persian Visit

Engravings of Mohammad Reza Beg’s grand audience at Versailles showcased the connections between France and Persia. The images highlighted the Beg’s diplomatic gifts, which represented the luxurious goods that symbolized both the French and Persian crowns. The engravings further linked the Safavid and Bourbon crowns through the inclusion of symbols of royal power, such as the throne and the sword. Yet these representations also suggested Louis XIV’s semblance to an Oriental despot. The painting “Louis XIV Receives the Ambassador Mehemet Reza-Bey” shows how after the death of Louis XIV the crown distanced itself from these negative connotations raised by an association with Persia.