2026-06-25 –, Room 302 (Seats 48)
The Allied occupation of Iran (1941–1946) imposed one of the twentieth century’s most abrupt and total border closures, severing pre-war global supply chains for essential commodities and turning a sovereign transit state into a wartime logistical corridor. Rather than offsetting this enforced external disconnection through institutional openness or market flexibility, Iranian governments deliberately layered a second, internal closure: sweeping, non-transparent state monopolies over sugar, tea, grain, and other staples, coupled with opaque rationing. Archival price series document the result: sugar prices rose 2,300 %, tea 2,666 %, and artificial famines erupted in a country untouched by combat.
This double closure—external borders sealed by foreign armies, internal economic borders sealed by domestic policy—lies at the heart of the conference theme “Closed Borders and Global Connections” and prompts the central research question:
How does the deliberate imposition of a closed domestic economy through unaccountable state monopolies, when physical borders are already forcibly closed, transform externally induced scarcity into accelerated societal collapse?
Drawing on five years of multi-archival research (Iranian National Archives, British and U.S. diplomatic records, quantitative price and revenue datasets), this paper advances the “Closed Borders–Closed Economy Paradox”: the simultaneous closure of both frontier types institutionalises rent-seeking, erodes public trust, and converts manageable supply shocks into self-reinforcing crises of governance and subsistence. The Iranian case provides a historically grounded, theoretically generalisable framework for understanding resilience and failure in sanctioned, blockaded, or pandemic-isolated economies across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
closed borders, closed economy, state monopoly, occupied Iran, rent-seeking, artificial famine, institutional trust, global supply chains
Marziye Mansoury is a Ph.D. Candidate in History at Alzahra University, specializing in the social and economic history of contemporary Iran. Her doctoral research, "Management of the Economic Crisis in Iran Between 1941-1961," examines economic policymaking during the Allied occupation and early Pahlavi era, employing archival documents, oral histories, and economic analysis to explore state-society relations amid global disruptions.
Her scholarly work focuses on global commodity crises, wartime economies, and the socio-economic impacts of foreign intervention in 20th-century Iran. She has published peer-reviewed articles in prominent journals such as the Journal of Historical Researches and Socio-Economic History Studies, analyzing state monopoly policies and their role in exacerbating shortages and fostering rent-seeking during World War II.
In addition to her research, Mansoury serves as Managing Editor of the Peer-Reviewed Academic Journal of Economic History Studies and Executive Director of the International Relations Committee at the Iranian History Association, where she fosters global academic collaborations. Her work bridges Iranian economic history with broader global patterns, offering insights into crisis management in neutral nations during conflicts.