Antoine Kitabgi Khan (October 2, 1843, ConstantinopleDecember 20, 1902, Livorno) was a Persian general who was director general of customs in Persia from 1881 to 1893 and initiated important concessions during the reigns of Nasseredin shah and his successor Mozaffareddin shah. He was in particular the initiator of the oil concession granted in 1901 to William Knox D'Arcy which gave birth to BP.
Constantinople A Catholic, Antoine Kitabgi was born in 1843 in Constantinople to an Armenian family of Georgian origin.Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, Rambling Recollections, vol. II, MacMillan and Co, Ltd, 1908, p. 329. "The Amin-es-Sultan relied very much on a coadjutor of his—Kitabgi Khan—who was also of Georgian origin. He was a Roman Catholic, and married to an Armenian lady. The European element of the Persian Government was really represented by Kitabgi Khan, for he was well versed in Western matters—being able to draw up a concession and initiate commercial movements. He was the head of the Custom House."Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2005 (), page 312. "One such was Antoine Kitabgi, a well-connected official in the Persian administration who was put in touch with Knox D'Arcy towards the end of 1900 by Sir Henry Drummond-Wolff, former British envoy in Teheran. Despite being a Catholic from an Armenian background, Kitabgi had done well for himself in Persia, rising to become director-general of Persian Customs and a man with fingers in many pies." He was the second child and first son of a sibling group of six. His father, Vincent Kitabgi, was a supplier of gem-embellished water pipes to the sultan. Around the age of 14, Kitabgi was sent to Livorno, Italy, to complete his studies. There he learned Italian and French, which he spoke fluently in addition to Armenian and Turkish. His father being sick and unable to work, he returned to Constantinople in 1861 and was hired at the age of 18 at the Maritime Messenger Agency. In 1866, he was employed and later became a partner in the Armenian Ruben Hocozian cloth and drapery business and three years later founded his own cloth, drapery and carpet business. In 1870, he married Philomene Altounian, an Armenian Catholic woman whose parents came from the New Julfa district of Esfahan in Persia. Three boys, Vincent, Paul and Edward, were born in Constantinople from this union. Kitabgi's business prospered rapidly. He became the official supplier to the Sultan's tailor and began to diversify his business. He began selling arms, obtaining representation from major European firms and the position of arms supplier to the War Ministry. In 1874, in association with the Armenian Serkissian, he created a mechanical sawmill company in Bulgaria, then an Ottoman province.Patrick Kitabgi, Les Tribulations d'un Arménien de Constantinople, Paris, Editions du Bosphore, octobre 2018, 354 p. ()
But in 1876, serious unrest broke out in the Ottoman Empire. For several years, the European provinces of the Balkans had been in rebellion against the Empire. After Herzegovina, it was Bulgaria's turn to revolt in April 1876. As a consequence of these troubles and the bankruptcy of the Ottoman Empire in front of its creditors, Sultan Abdülaziz abdicated on May 30, 1876. His successor and nephew, Mourad V, was interned for insanity three months later. He was replaced by his brother Abdülhamid II, who, through the bloody repression of the Bulgarian insurrection of April 1876, led Russia to declare war on Turkey on 24 April 1877 (Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878).
As a result of these events, Kitabgi's business was threatened with bankruptcy: the mechanical sawmill company was burnt down and looted by Bulgarian rebels in 1876; the brutal changes of sultans and governments caused him to lose its position as a client of the sultan's tailor and as an arms supplier to the War Ministry. The war slowed down trade. In October 1877, he was forced to leave for Europe to negotiate his debts with his German, Belgian and French suppliers and creditors.
Paris and the railway concession in Persia In Paris, he met Persian dignitaries in 1878 who were busy preparing the arrival of Shah Nassereddin in France for the 1878 World's Fair. They were Nazare Aga, Minister Plenipotentiary of Persia in Paris, General Neriman Khan, the Shah's aide-de-camp, and Mirza Hosein Khan Moshir od-Dowleh, the Shah's Prime Minister. These dignitaries convinced him to request a railway concession from the Shah to build a line from Rasht to Tehran. Associated with the banker Antoine Alléon, former director of the Ottoman Imperial Bank in Constantinople and recently retired in Normandy in Caen, Kitabgi obtained the railway concession from the Shah in December 1878.Davoudi L., « Divine Spark: The Prelude to the Tobacco Régie of 1890 », Iranian Studies, vol. 47, no 4, 2014, p. 505-518Leonardo Davoudi, Petroleum and the British Empire: From the D'Arcy Concession to the First World War, PhD Thesis, St. Antony's College, University of Oxford, 2017 With Alléon, he then undertook to form a syndicate of French bankers and financiers composed, among others, of Armand Donon, chairman of the Société des Dépôts et Comptes Courants, and Paul Eugène Bontoux, chairman of the Union générale. In July 1879, Kitabgi joined General Neriman Khan in Vienna, who had been appointed the previous year Minister Plenipotentiary of Persia in Austria. Assisted by the General, Kitabgi prepared his departure for Persia and in August 1879 he left Europe with his family and the Austrian engineer Scherzer and his two assistants.George Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question, Elibron Classics, 2012, vol. i, p. 616 He arrived in Tehran two months later. The engineers began surveying the railway line, but the project met with opposition from the Russians and the British and, under pressure from both powers, the Shah cancelled the concession in March 1880.Firuz Kazemzadeh, Russia and Britain in Persia : Imperial Ambitions in Qajar Iran, New York, I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd,2013 (), pp. 158-160
Tehran and the directorship of Persian customs Kitabgi decided to stay in Tehran and, after difficult negotiations concerning his salary, he accepted in 1881 the post of Director General of Persian Customs. His chief at the time was Agha Mohammed Ibrahim« AMĪN-AL-SOLṬĀN, ĀQĀ EBRĀHĪM » [archive], in Encyclopedia Iranica who bore the title of Amin al-Soltan and who, although not officially a minister, played an important role at the court of the Shah and controlled, among other things, the finances of the state. On Agha Ibrahim's death in July 1883, it was his son Mirza Ali Asghar Khan, Emin ul-Mulk,« ATĀBAK-E AʿẒAM, AMĪN-AL-SOLṬĀN » [archive], in Encyclopedia Iranica who took over his father's title, Amin al-Soltan, and the latter's functions, thus becoming the new ruler of Kitabgi.
The position of Director General of Customs was of particular importance, since taxes on imports and exports were a major source of revenues of the Persian state. In 1881, the year Kitabgi took office, net customs revenue for the treasury was 550,000 tomans (about 5,500,000 Fr at the time). In 1882 these revenues rose to 730,000 tomans, then 780,000 tomans in 1883 and 825,000 tomans in 1884. The evolution is slower afterwards. When Kitabgi left his position as Director General of Customs in 1893, the net income was 911,650 tomans.
These good results earned Kitabgi the Order of the Lion and the Sun and in 1887 he obtained the lease of the customs of the province of Tehran. It was also in that year that, although he did not hold any military office, he received from the Shah the rank of honorary general and the title of Khan in recognition of his services. It was Amin al-Soltan who, in the presence of Kitabgi, asked the Shah to reward him in these terms: "Majesty, here is Mr. Kitabgi, a faithful servant of the Empire, who by his great knowledge and his high administrative qualities has been able to organize the customs so well and so wisely that not only have the revenues increased considerably, but that a perfect order reigns everywhere... I cannot recommend enough to Your Majesty's high magnanimity that you ennoble him by granting him the title of Khan. »
1889 Reuter concession for the creation of a state bank and the exploitation of mines In 1872, Baron Paul Julius Reuter, a British citizen, had obtained the Reuter Concession from Nasseredin shah which granted him not only an absolute monopoly for seventy years on the construction of railway and tramway lines, but also for twenty-five years, the exclusive exploitation of all mines of non-precious metals and minerals, the monopoly of state forests, exclusivity in the construction of irrigation systems, a priority option on the creation of a national bank and on all future enterprises related to public works of any kind including roads and telegraph.George Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question, vol. 1, Elibron Classics, 2012, p. 480-483
This concession, which astonished the financial world and was not supported by the British government, raised strong protests from the Russians and from the Persian people who did not accept this foreign interference. This led the Shah to cancel the concession under false pretexts (as he later did for the Alléon concession). Reuter, who had paid large sums of money to obtain the concession and start work on a railway line from Rasht to Tehran, was not compensated and kept seeking redress from the Persian government.
In December 1888, George Reuter, the baron's second son, arrived in Tehran with his father's secretary, Frenchman Édouard Cotte, who had negotiated the 1872 concession with the baron. The two men again requested a concession for a bank, mines, and railroad.George Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question, vol. 1, Elibron Classics, 2012, p. 475-480 Faced with difficulties encountered during the negotiations, Cotte, who had known Kitabgi in Paris in 1878 (at that time Kitabgi was trying to associate Reuter with the Alléon railroad concession), turned to Kitabgi for help. The latter convinced Reuter and Cotte to limit their request to the bank and the mines, knowing that adding the railways would inevitably raise Russian opposition. Kitabgi rewrote the deed of concession and persuaded Amin al-Soltan to grant the bank and mines concession, arguing that the bank would be a great asset for the country and that it would compensate Baron Julius Reuter for the five million francs he had spent in 1872 at a loss, thereby protecting the Persian government from future claims.
The royal firman awarding the concession to Reuter was signed on 30 January 1889. The bank took the name Imperial Bank and was granted the privilege of issuing bank bills. It remained a state bank until 1925 and rendered great services to Persia.« GREAT BRITAIN iii. British influence in Persia in the 19th century » [archive], in Encyclopedia Iranica
Tobacco Régie of 1886 and Talbot Tobacco Régie Concession of 1890 Tobacco Régie of 1886 In July 1886, Kitabgi was part of the suite that accompanied the Shah on his trip to Mazanderan. During this trip, Amin al-Soltan informed him of his intention to establish a tobacco Régie in Persia. Kitabgi drafted a project, approved by Amin al-Soltan, and presented it on August 30 in private audience to Nasseredin shah who congratulated him and asked him to write the firman. In its broad outline, the firman stipulated that retail tobacco merchants, divided into two categories (urban and rural) and three classes (tambacou, pipe tobacco and cigarette tobacco), must henceforth have a special authorization from the administration, pay a patent and pay a tax proportional to their turnover. Controls would take place and in case of infringement - non-payment of the patent or tax - fines would be applied.