Mikiya Koyagi - Redirecting Movement in the Indo-Iranian Borderlands and Beyond

This talk conceptualizes the Indo-Iranian borderlands not as a periphery between empires but as a space where multiple routes of circulation merged, linking Iran to India, India to the Soviet Union, and interior lands to the Persian Gulf and beyond. It does so by examining how the formation of the Pahlavi state redirected the movement of goods, people, and ideas in the Indo-Iranian borderlands and its surrounding areas with the border town of Dozdab (present-day Zahedan) as the emerging infrastructural nodal point. The rise of Dozdab in the interwar period restructured transport networks in the region as it came to compete with more established centers of trade such as Bandar Abbas and Bushehr, which faced the deterioration of road infrastructure to interior urban centers. While valuing Dozdab as an important generator of revenues, the new state sought to regulate the flow of various items, from sugar and tea to opium and revolutionary leaflets.
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