Enterprise and Society Advance Access originally published online on July 10, 2008
Enterprise and Society 2008 9(4):670-723; doi:10.1093/es/khn055
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Synthetics for the Shah: DuPont and the Challenges to Multinationals in 1970s Iran
REGINA LEE BLASZCZYK is a visiting scholar in the Department of the History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2008, she received the Harold F. Williamson Prize for mid-career achievement in teaching and research in business history from the Business History Conference. Her recent publications include "Designing Synthetics, Promoting Brands: Dorothy Liebes, DuPont Fibres and Post-war American Interiors," in Journal of Design History 21, no. 1 (March 2008): 75–99; the edited volume, Producing Fashion: Commerce, Culture and Consumers (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008); and American Consumer Society, 1865–2005: From Hearth to HDTV (Wheeling, Ill., Harlan Davidson, 2009)
Contact information: Reggie.Blaszczyk{at}gmail.com; Website: http://www.imaginingconsumers.com
In the 1960s and 1970s, the largest U.S. chemical firm, E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, established an international presence in synthetic fibers by building plants to make nylon, polyester, and acrylic in Latin America and Europe. DuPont managers also looked to the Middle East, specifically to Iran, which was fast industrializing under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The Shah's pro-Western stance and his country's rich oil fields made Iran appealing to a petrochemical giant like DuPont, which used petroleum feed stocks to make fibers and other products. In the 1970s, DuPont partnered with the Behshahr Industrial Group, a conglomerate run by the Ledjavardi clan, one of Iran's leading families, to build a high-tech fiber facility that would help modernize the Iranian textile industry. The story of this short-lived joint venture, a victim of the Islamic Revolution, demonstrates the challenges to multinationals operating in imperial Iran, and shows how the daily experience of dealing with cultural differences often masked larger political and economic troubles.
I thank Andrew Godley and Relli Schechter for inviting me to present an early version of this paper to Middle Eastern scholars in Montecatini, Italy; Mira Wilkins and the reviewers for Enterprise & Society for their insightful comments; and Ruth Schwartz Cowan for providing me with access to the University of Pennsylvania's wonderful resources. For primary sources, I am indebted to Lynn Catanese, Marge McNinch, Ben Blake, and Jon Williams at the Hagley Museum and Library; Elsa Atson, Ashley Augustyniak, and Rasheedah Cremer at the Chemical Heritage Foundation; and Bertha F. Wilson at the World Bank Group Archives. Costume and textile historian Phyllis Dillon shared her expertise on Iran, developed while doing fieldwork there in the early 1970s. Finally, I thank Habib Ladjevardi, the founding director of the Harvard Iranian Oral History Project, who graciously put me in touch with his uncle, Akbar Ladjevardian, and DuPont retirees who contributed their expertise in countless ways.