John Elton (d. 1751) was an English sea captain, shipbuilder and merchant best known for inventing Elton's quadrant and serving the shah of Iran, Nader Shah.
John Elton (d. 1751) was an English sea captain, shipbuilder and merchant best known for inventing Elton's quadrant and serving the shah of Iran, Nader Shah.
John Elton was the inventor of Elton's quadrant who patented his design in 1728 [1] and published details of the instrument in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1732. [2] He was sent by the Russian government in 1735 to assist in the Orenburg expedition in the rank of a sea captain. During this mission he was sent to explore Lake Aral, but was hindered by the Tartars from reaching the lake. He then employed himself in surveying the south-eastern frontier of Russia, particularly part of the basins of the Kama, Volga, and Jaik.
Returning to Saint Petersburg in January 1738, he took umbrage at not obtaining promotion and quit the Russian service. In the same year he proposed to some of the British factors at St. Petersburg to carry on a trade through Russia into Iran and central Asia by way of the Caspian Sea. Associating himself with Mungo Graeme, a young Scot, he obtained credit for a small cargo of goods suitable for Khiva and Bokhara. They left Moscow on 19 March 1738-9, and, proceeding down the Volga from Nijni Novgorod to Astrakhan, embarked on the Caspian for Karagansk. At Karagansk they received such unpromising accounts of the state of the steppe that they resolved to continue their voyage to Rasht in Iran.
Elton was successful in finding a good market and in obtaining a decree from the shah granting them liberty to trade throughout Iran, and extraordinary privileges. He persuaded the Russia Company to take up his scheme, and in 1741 an Act of Parliament sanctioning the trade was passed. In 1742 two ships were built on the Caspian, and Elton was placed in command of the first completed. These vessels carried the English flag, which, however, Anthony Jenkinson claimed to have first displayed on the Caspian about 1558. The apprehensions of the Russian court were, however, excited by the intelligence that Elton was building ships on the Caspian, after the European fashion, for the Iranian sovereign, Nader Shah.
On receipt of the intelligence the Russia Company despatched Jonas Hanway to make inquiry concerning Elton's proceedings. Hanway arrived at Rasht on 3 December 1743 and found Elton earnestly pressing forward the construction of Iranian vessels. The Russian court, indignant at Elton's action, refused to countenance the Caspian trade and ruined the expectations of the Russia Company. [3] In the meanwhile Elton had constructed a ship of twenty guns for Nader Shah, of which he was placed in command. He was appointed admiral of the Caspian, and received orders to oblige all Russian vessels on those waters to salute his flag. During his service to Nader, he also twice transported supplies to Baku, and surveyed the southern coast of Dagestan as a preparation for another episode in his Dagestan campaign. [4]
The Russia Company, in October 1744, vainly ordered him to return to England, Elton replying by the transmission of a decree from Nader Shah, dated 19 November 1745, forbidding him to quit Iran. Offers of a pension from the Russia Company and a post in the navy from the British government were equally ineffectual. Disregarding the injury which he was inflicting on the Russia Company, he maintained that a British subject may with loyalty take service with any foreign potentate on friendly terms with Britain, and that he was under no obligations to Russia. On the death of Nader in 1747 he narrowly escaped assassination, but found protection from several of the Iranian princes. Finally, however, in April 1751, he espoused the cause of Mohammad Hasan Khan Qajar, and was besieged in his house at Gilan by the rival faction. He was subsequently taken prisoner by the governor of Gilan, Hajj Jamal Fumani, for his unwillingness to protect Rasht against the advancing Qajars. [4] He was later shot dead. [4] A great part of Elton's diary during his first expedition to Iran in 1739 is printed in Jonas Hanway's Historical Account of the British Trade over the Caspian Sea (1754). Lake Elton in south-eastern Russia is probably named after him. [3]
Gilan province is one of the 31 provinces of Iran, in the northwest of the country. Its capital is the city of Rasht. The province lies along the Caspian Sea, in Iran's Region 3, west of the province of Mazandaran, east of the province of Ardabil, and north of the provinces of Zanjan and Qazvin. It borders Azerbaijan in the north.
Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar, also known by his regnal name of Agha Mohammad Shah, was the founder of the Qajar dynasty of Iran, ruling from 1789 to 1797 as Shah. Originally a chieftain of the Quwanlu branch of the Qajar tribe, Agha Mohammad Khan was enthroned as the king of Iran in 1789, but was not officially crowned until March 1796, having deposed Lotf Ali Khan of the Zand dynasty in 1794.
Rasht is a city in the Central District of Rasht County, Gilan province, Iran, serving as capital of the province, the county, and the district. The city is also known as the "City of Rain" and, with a population of 679,995 in 2016, is the most populous city of northern Iran.
The Treaty of Gulistan was a peace treaty concluded between the Russian Empire and Qajar Iran on 24 October 1813 in the village of Gulistan as a result of the first full-scale Russo-Persian War. The peace negotiations were precipitated by the successful storming of Lankaran by General Pyotr Kotlyarevsky on 1 January 1813. It was the first of a series of treaties signed between Qajar Iran and Imperial Russia that forced Persia to cede the territories that formerly were part of Iran.
The Battle of Krtsanisi was fought between the army of Qajar Iran (Persia) and the Georgian armies of the Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti and Kingdom of Imereti at the place of Krtsanisi near Tbilisi, Georgia, from September 8 to September 11, 1795, as part of Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar's war in response to King Heraclius II of Georgia’s alliance with the Russian Empire. The battle resulted in the decisive defeat of the Georgians, capture, and complete destruction of their capital Tbilisi, as well as the temporary absorption of eastern Georgia into the Iranian empire.
Tahmasp II was the penultimate Safavid shah of Iran, ruling from 1722 to 1732.
The Russo-Persian Wars or Russo-Iranian Wars were a series of conflicts between 1651 and 1828, concerning Persia and the Russian Empire. Russia and Persia fought these wars over disputed governance of territories and countries in the Caucasus. The main territories disputed were Aran, Georgia and Armenia, as well as much of Dagestan – generally referred to as Transcaucasia – and considered part of the Safavid Iran prior to the Russo-Persian Wars. Over the course of the five Russo-Persian Wars, the governance of these regions transferred between the two empires. Between the Second and Third Russo-Persian Wars, there was an interbellum period in which a number of treaties were drawn up between the Russian and the Persian Empires, as well as between both parties and the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman interest in these territories further complicated the wars, with both sides forming alliances with the Ottoman Empire at different points throughout the wars. Following the Treaty of Turkmenchay, which concluded the Fifth Russo-Persian War, Persia ceded much of its Transcaucasian territory to the Russian Empire.
Relations between the Grand Duchy of Moscow and the Persian Empire (Iran) officially commenced in 1521, with the Safavids in power. Past and present contact between Russia and Iran have long been complicatedly multi-faceted; often wavering between collaboration and rivalry. The two nations have a long history of geographic, economic, and socio-political interaction. Mutual relations have often been turbulent, and dormant at other times.
The Russo-Persian War of 1722–1723, known in Russian historiography as the Persian campaign of Peter the Great, was a war between the Russian Empire and Safavid Iran, triggered by the tsar's attempt to expand Russian influence in the Caspian and Caucasus regions and to prevent its rival, the Ottoman Empire, from territorial gains in the region at the expense of declining Safavid Iran.
The Talysh Khanate or Talish Khanate was an Iranian khanate of Talysh origin that was established in Afsharid Persia and existed from the middle of the 18th century till the beginning of the 19th century, located in the south-west coast of the Caspian Sea.
Fuman is a city in the Central District of Fuman County in Iran's northwestern Gilan province, serving as capital of both the county and the district.
Gīlān is an Iranian province at the southwestern coast of the Caspian Sea. This articles discusses its history.
Peter the Great's capture of Rasht, occurred between December 1722 and late March 1723 amidst the successful spree of campaigns of Peter the Great during the Russo-Persian War (1722-1723). The capture of Rasht brought the Caspian Sea town alongside the rest of Gilan into Russian possession for a decade, until the Treaty of Resht of 1732, when they would be returned.
The Withdrawal through Andalal by the Persian army under Nader Shah took place after he broke off the siege of the last Lezgian fortress in order to return to Derbent for winter quarters. His withdrawal came under heavy raids by the Lezgians. However, there is no mention of any pitched battle around Andalal, or anywhere else during the withdrawal, in any of the primary or secondary material in the established historiography of Nader's Campaigns.
Hedayat-Allah Khan was a Gilaki prince, who was the semi-independent ruler of Gilan from 1753 to 1786.
Vasileios Vatatzes, was a Greek figure who flourished in the 18th century. He is best remembered as a scholar, merchant, traveler, pioneer explorer and diplomat. At a young age, he settled in Moscow, from where he travelled to Iran on several occasions. He eventually became acquainted with Nader-Qoli Beg and spent considerable time close to him. Vatatzes wrote a biography in Greek about Nader Shah, known as the Persika, an important work which provides information about Iran in the 1720s, 1730s and 1740s. He also wrote a travel account, the Periegetikon, and drew a map. According to Evangelos Venetis, Vatatzes was "an admirer of Persian civilization and of Nader Shah's rule" and an "important author for Iranian history and Hellenic-Iranian studies". However, his works "have been largely ignored by modern scholarship".
Iran sustained maritime forces during Afsharid dynasty that were revived in 1734 by Nader Shah, with peak of its activity lasting more than a decade until Division of the Afsharid Empire. It operated in the Caspian Sea, where it was considered a threat by the Russian Empire. Headquartered in Bushehr, the southern flotilla maintained presence in the Persian Gulf as well as the Sea of Oman, effectively pushing against maritime Arabian empires in Sultanate of Muscat and Imamate of Oman, Pirates based in coasts that were later called Trucial, and also local rebels and mutineers. The Afsharid navy also ordered several vessels from both the British and Dutch East India Company.
The 4th Region or the Northern Fleet is the flotilla of the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy in the Caspian Sea.
The Guarded Domains of Iran, commonly referred to as Afsharid Iran or the Afsharid Empire, was an Iranian empire established by the Turkoman Afshar tribe in Iran's north-eastern province of Khorasan, establishing the Afsharid dynasty that would rule over Iran during the mid-eighteenth century. The dynasty's founder, Nader Shah, was a successful military commander who deposed the last member of the Safavid dynasty in 1736, and proclaimed himself Shah.
Daryabegi was a naval title of Iran, which literally translates as "sea lord" in English. It was in use from the 18th century until the first quarter of the 20th century when it was abandoned. It thenceforth became an Iranian surname.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Carlyle, Edward Irving (1901). "Elton, John (d.1751)". In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography (1st supplement). London: Smith, Elder & Co.