The Persian Mirror

The Persian Mirror explores France's preoccupation with Persia in the seventeenth century. Long before Montesquieu's Persian Letters, French intellectuals, diplomats and even ordinary Parisians were fascinated by Persia and eagerly consumed travel accounts, fairy tales, and the spectacle of the Persian ambassador's visit to Paris and Versailles in 1715. Using diplomatic sources, fiction and printed and painted images, The Persian Mirror describes how the French came to see themselves in Safavid Persia. In doing so, it revises our notions of orientalism and the exotic and suggests that early modern Europeans had more nuanced responses to Asia than previously imagined.

Susan Mokhberi is an Assistant Professor of History at Rutgers-Camden University. She received her PhD from UCLA in 2010 in early modern European history and is the author of "Finding Common Ground Between Europe and Asia: Understanding Conflict during the Persian Embassy to France in 1715" in the Journal of Early Modern History 2012. Her classes cover the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Louis XIV's France, and connections between Europe and the World.

Introduction to the Mirror Chapter 1: Missionaries, Travelers, and the Case of Jean Chardin Chapter 2: Persia: A Courtly East in the French Imaginaire Chapter 3: Against all Odds: The Diplomatic Mission of Pierre-Victor Michel to Persia, 1706-1708 Chapter 4: The Persian Embassy to France in 1715: Conflict and Understanding Chapter 5: Images of Mohammad Reza Beg: Fashioning the Ambassador Chapter 6: Images of the Persian Visit: Connections between the Safavid and Bourbon Crowns Chapter 7: The Absolutist Mirror Conclusion Bibliography