Modern Iran since 1797

Reform and Revolution

Ali Ansari

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429680847
• Edition: 3
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Central Asian History
• Index: History

Modern Iran since 1797 offers a comprehensive analysis of political, social and economic developments in Iran since the end of the eighteenth century. Spanning two centuries, the book provides historical context for Iran's international relationships and its internal struggle to reconcile itself and its traditions with the modern world.

The book presents an overview of this crucial period in Iran's history, its emergence from the political turmoil of the eighteenth century through to its initial encounter with the industrial powers of Europe and its attempts to navigate the turbulent waters of European imperialism. It assesses the impact of European ideas on the triumph and tragedy of the Constitutional Revolution, which established the political template for the country going forward and against which all other political developments have been measured. This new edition has been updated to incorporate new scholarship and research to make a rounded assessment of recent developments and bring the text fully up to date. A substantive new prequel has also been added, covering the long nineteenth century from 1797 through to 1921, including a fuller and more detailed treatment both of the Constitutional Revolution and the events and ideology that underpinned it.

Written in a clear, engaging style and highlighting Iran as a state and society grappling with the realities of the modern age, Modern Iran since 1797 remains the perfect guide for all those studying the history of modern Iran.

1 Introduction

All ranks in Persia are brought up to admire show and parade; and they are more likely to act from the dictates of imagination and vanity, than of reason and judgment. The character was well drawn by Muhammad Nubbee Khan, the late ambassador to India. ‘If you wish my countrymen to understand you, speak to their eyes, not their ears’.

(Sir John Malcolm, Sketches of Persia, 1827)

Few countries have proved so persistently incomprehensible to Western analyses as Iran. Seemingly determined to obstruct and frustrate understanding, Iran has come to occupy a particular position in the Western world view,¹ which in many ways mirrors Iran’s multifaceted attitude to the West. At once fascinated and enamoured by the exotic luxuries and sophisticated manners of the civilised Persians (the ‘Frenchmen of the East’, as Curzon described them), they are also regarded as strangely resistant to the onward march of ‘modernity’, and prone to a destructive fanaticism which belies rational comprehension. Such interpretations are not new and are a reflection of the West’s encounter with Iran in the nineteenth century, which coincided not only with the political ascendancy of the West, but with the development of the discipline of history. Indeed, the study of history, as we know it today, is a product of modern Western society, and many of the first histories written reflected the aspirations, prejudices and demands of a Western readership. Indeed, many of the primary documents were products of Western bureaucracies and consulates. When Iranians encountered their ‘history’ therefore, it tended to be mediated through the pens of Western historians, while their own, largely oral traditions were dismissed as fable and at best as literary artefacts, skilfully written, but of little historical value.²

This tendency has been increasingly challenged in the twentieth century, in part as a result of the changing nature and importance of the Iranian state, but more importantly, because of the growth in education and the determination of ‘Iranians’ to write their own history. Ironically, the moment of real historical growth in the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution coincided with the deepest failure of understanding. Just as some Iranian historians were seeking to explain the Islamic Revolution in terms of the Iranian historical experience in the twentieth century, some foreign scholars and commentators (including émigrés) were determined to wrench the political upheaval of 1979 away from its historical roots and towards a comparative framework which sought to resituate Iran within a distinctly ‘Islamic’ setting. To some extent the West successfully re-appropriated Iranian history, and the narrative which dominates the Western perception of Iran is that of the early revolution, almost as if little happened beforehand, or indeed subsequently. Whether ‘History’ had stood still or not in the East, the West seemed determined to bring it to a standstill.³

The reality is, however, one of dynamic change rooted in Iran’s determination to successfully confront and harness the challenge of modernisation and ‘modernity’. This change was all the more traumatic because of the innate and profound conservatism of a society that proved at first highly resistant to the change that was being imposed. Yet after decades of apparent stupor, as the Qajar era came to a close with the triumphant rupture of the Constitutional Revolution, Iran embarked on a period of radical modernisation, understood as the appropriation, absorption and application of Western achievements to an Iranian environment. This apparently wholesale process of imitation provoked uncertainty and reaction, which began to challenge the particular conception of modernity imposed most vigorously by Reza Shah. A window of political opportunity, prior to the coup d’état which overthrew Dr Mosaddeq, witnessed the bitter debates and often violent contest over the development and identity of an Iranian state, which was then succeeded by another period of sustained autocracy. By the end of this period, even Western definitions of modernisation were beginning to be redefined. The most dramatic change, of course, occurred during the Islamic Revolution of 1979, when Iran appeared on the face of it at least, to definitively break with its Western patrons.

This book seeks to chart Iran’s engagement with the challenge posed by the West and Western modernity, from the foundations of the Qajar state in 1797 to the ongoing contest in pursuit of an ‘Islamic Democracy’ in contemporary Iran, and to situate current developments within their proper historical framework, a narrative frame of reference that is frequently cited and referred to by Iranians. A pivotal moment in the history of modern Iran, as will be detailed later, was the Constitutional Revolution of 1905–11, even if many of its ideas were not realised until the advent of Reza Khan and the subsequent establishment of his dynasty. This crucial period in the history of the country established the political template against which much else is measured. But the Constitutional Revolution did not emerge from a vacuum but was itself rooted in the encounter with European ‘modernity’ which confronted Iranian statesmen from the early years of the nineteenth century. Military power was swiftly followed by economic penetration and intellectual engagement on a scale that would profoundly affect the development of the country. Yet by anchoring our understanding of modern Iran in the broader context of two centuries of development we are better able to judge the degrees of continuity and change that have affected the country and see the Pahlavi period as an acceleration of a trend that was established decades before their emergence: as much a consequence as a cause of change.

Needless to say, in a country which continues to be politically volatile, history remains contested as rival interpretations of determining events are vigorously debated and refined. The narrative is still being woven. As perspectives change, and new sources emerge, our understanding of modern Iranian history will necessarily be further refined, and even if archives are proving more difficult to access, published sources are on the increase and provide historians with new, and far more accessible avenues for research. (See the Guide to Further Research p. 346.)

Recognising these limitations, there are nevertheless a number of discernible themes and tensions which may be said to inform Iranian history since 1797.⁴

Reform and reaction

This is fundamentally a book about change and the politics of managing that change, as successive governments and political elites sought, and continue to seek, to navigate a stable and sustainable route from a perception of tradition to a particular conception of modernity.⁵ This change has occasionally been sudden, violent and explicitly political, but on other occasions, arguably of greater durability, the transformation has been a gradual (if still comparatively rapid) social and economic one which in the space of a century has fundamentally altered the political landscape of Iran. On occasion, the process of change has been indigenously engendered, but foreign influence has been strong, especially within the framework of ideas. For most of the period covered by this book the management of change has been the responsibility of elites. It was a succession of elites which performed the function, sometimes well, at other times ineffectually, of the ‘revolutionary’ vanguard, bringing new ideas about social organisation, and political and economic development, and adapting them (with varying degrees of efficacy) to Iranian circumstances. Reform, even revolutionary reform, has been imposed on a largely unwilling and conservative society by elites convinced of the truth of their policies. The applicability of borrowed policies and the efficacy of implementation in relation to the social reality confronted often dictated the success of a given policy. At the same time, it would be wrong to suggest that the elites who dictated the pace and direction of change were oblivious to the consequences for society and to social forces they could neither control nor dictate. As will be seen, elites were regularly confounded by the consequences of policies that they initiated, or that had been the result of broader unforeseen trends in the international economy during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Similarly, while elites by and large functioned as the means through which the Western model of development, however that was defined in its specifics, was adapted and transferred to Iran, it has only really been from the 1990s that the process of synthesis has gathered pace and wider society, empowered by education and social media, has played an increasing role in shaping the wider debate. In this sense society was becoming more democratic even if politics was proving resistant to the idea. Meanwhile, the intelligentsia, one of the distinctive social groups of twentieth-century Iran, alternated between a conscientious and almost dutiful critique of the establishment, and a very occasional co-option into the political elite.

These problems, which have been faced by Iranian statesmen since at least the Treaty of Turkmenchai in 1828, and which were brought into sharp focus during the Constitutional Revolution (1906–11), revolve, on one level, around the need for political and economic reform and the nature and form it should take, while, at a deeper level, they have focused on the cultural and intellectual contradictions that require some form of resolution. Just as the growth of the modern state and the international order forced the implementation of well defined and delineated international boundaries, and encouraged the development of rational bureaucratic structures, so too it has rendered obsolete and ineffectual the convenient and essential ambiguity which has allowed the co-existence of contradictory ideas about identity both domestically and internationally to continue.⁶ The rationalisation of ideas has forced Iranian intellectuals to reconsider the ambiguous relationship between ‘Iran’ and ‘Islam’, and, crucially for our purposes, Iran and the West. At times, crude attempts were made to impose cultural homogeneity, to develop a singular ‘idea’ of Iran to the exclusion of all others. But the impracticality of this led gradually and tentatively to the adoption of a more sophisticated, inclusive model, one which sought to redefine relationships to facilitate a pluralistic model in which identities were complementary rather than antagonistic. Indeed, it may be argued that the single most important theme of this book is the continuing contest over the right to define the identity of Iran and its relationship with the outside world.

Ideas over which direction Iran should take in response to the challenge posed by the West emerged in the aftermath of Iran’s defeats at the hands of Tsarist Russia in the early nineteenth century and gradually came to dominate the thinking of Iranian statesmen. By the end of the nineteenth century ideas of nationalism were increasingly prevalent among the political elite, and while there was a broad range of opinion as to what exactly nationalism entailed, and to what extent it was antagonistic to religion (and Islam in particular), there was a broad consensus that reform was an increasingly urgent necessity. Arguments raged among the intellectual and political elite as to the precise nature of national revitalisation and the utility or otherwise of nationalism, be it secular or religious in character. Some rejected such ideas wholesale as a Western invention, others felt it could be usefully adapted to Iran, while still others, such as Kermani, espoused an increasingly chauvinistic secular nationalism, which viewed Islam as an alien religion imposed by force on the Iranian people. Diverse, often contradictory, views emerged which were to develop throughout the twentieth century and while the central raison d’être of national revival united all of them, thereby emphasising a broad nationalist consensus, differences in detail prevented a workable and durable synthesis. The consequence was that it often took a political or economic crisis to bring these disparate groups together to practical political effect. Thus it was that the economic crisis of the late nineteenth century compounded the developing political disenchantment with the Qajar state to unite different factions from a cross-section of society, including the ulema, the intelligentsia, the aristocracy and the bazaaris (an inter-related if ideologically disparate group of individuals), to mobilise themselves against the Qajar state in the Constitutional Revolution of 1906. Its rapid success, while indicative of the weakness of the Qajar state which opposed it and its limited popular impact, must not detract from the profound consequences of the movement, which effectively succeeded in permanently altering the political culture of the country by introducing the lexicon of constitutionalism, frequently ignored but always acknowledged by successive regimes.

The Constitutional Revolution: the pivot of modern Iranian history

Many of the problems implicit in developing and imposing a practical programme for change became very apparent during the Constitutional Revolution and Movement, and were a major cause of the collapse and perceived failure of the movement. The Constitutional Revolution also highlighted a number of characteristics of political movements and social change in Iran. These problems and characteristics were to recur frequently throughout the period covered by this book, and in many ways constitute the central themes and issues. For instance, a critical political problem faced by the leaders of the Constitutional Revolution was the limited level of popular political awareness and the desirability of extending it. The Constitutional Revolution was led and dominated by elites, and while urban groups participated in the final stages particularly through the encouragement of leading members of the Shi’a ulema, its popular appeal, while spontaneous and often decisive, was not profound. Popular grievances were much more immediate and were not a reflection of the liberal democratic values espoused by members of the elite who had access to foreign ideas, or indeed had lived abroad. This meant that, while some members of the political opposition had a clear idea of the sort of constitutional monarchy they wanted, along with an elected parliament, the notion of ‘popular sovereignty’ that they also encouraged was incomprehensible to the majority of Iranians, while more traditionally minded members of the elite thought the concept blasphemous. Furthermore, it should be remembered that popular participation remained an urban phenomenon and, given that in 1906 it is estimated that only 10 per cent of the population lived in cities and towns, the general pool can be seen as somewhat limited. At the same time, it is worth stressing that the Constitutional Movement was in a very real sense a child of the European Enlightenment from which it drew its ideas and vocabulary. These tended to emphasise the ‘republic’, in other words the rule of law, over any concept of ‘democracy’ and implicitly supported the idea of an elite vanguard.

This lack of a popular base, or indeed the mechanism of government, was to severely hinder any chance of immediate practical success for the revolutionaries, who found the social and practical foundations for their political aspirations to be weak. It also allowed their opponents within the state to challenge their authorit...