| | | List of figures | | |
| | | Introduction by Roxane Farmanfarmaian | | 1 |
| | | Prologue: the dream of empire by Peter W. Avery | | 13 |
| Pt. I | | War | | 19 |
| 1 | | Between Scylla and Charybdis: policy-making under conditions of constraint in early Qajar Persia by Manoutchehr M. Eskandari-Qajar | | 21 |
| 2 | | Building a new army: military reform in Qajar Iran by Stephanie Cronin | | 47 |
| 3 | | The Turko-Persian War of 1821-1823: winning the war but losing the peace by Graham Williamson | | 88 |
| 4 | | Social networks and border conflicts: the First Herat War 1838-1841 by Vanessa Martin | | 110 |
| Pt. II | | Peace | | 123 |
| 5 | | The consolidation of Irans frontier on the Persian Gulf in the nineteenth century by Lawrence G. Potter | | 125 |
| 6 | | Narrowing the frontier: mid-nineteenth century efforts to delimit and map the Perso-Ottoman border by Richard Schofield | | 149 |
| 7 | | Crime, security, and insecurity: socio-political conditions or Iran, 1875-1924 by Mansoureh Ettehadieh | | 174 |
| 8 | | Merchants without borders: trade, travel and a revolution in late Qajar Iran (the memoirs of Hajj Mohammad-Taqi Jourabchi, 1907-1911) by Ali Gheissari | | 183 |
| 9 | | The politics of concession: reassessing the interlinkage of Persias finances, British intrigue and Qajar negotiation by Roxane Farmanfarmaian | | 213 |
| | | Index | | 229 |