The Ambivalence of Urban Modernity and Marginality: The Making of Abadan Under the Anglo-Persian/Iranian Oil Company

The discovery of oil in Masjed Soleyman, Iran, in 1908 prompted the foundation of the British-owned Anglo Persian Oil Company (APOC), and the construction of a massive refinery in Abadan in the southwest. It also sparked astonishing industrial and urban development in the region. Within a span of fifty years following the discovery of oil, Abadan developed from a small tribal village to one of Iran’s major modern industrial cities. This study examines how the rapid modern transformation of Abadan under the management and control of APOC influenced the everyday lived experiences of the local population. As a typical colonial company town of the era, Abadan’s patterns of industrialization, urbanization, and modernization became archetypes for other oil cities in Iran and the Middle East. Shaped by dependence on a single commodity, the architecture and urban planning of Abadan reveals hierarchies of economic, social, and political domination. Using the oral histories of Iranians familiar with the period and the area, this research argues that early twentieth-century company towns in Iran such as Abadan served as rhetorical instruments, which foreign-owned companies and their hired architects and planners used to impose specific visions of modernity upon subaltern or indigenous populations.