Twentieth Century Iran

This book presents a cultural history of modern Iran through the perspective of the city. Addressing the relationship between history, poetry and politics in Iran, the author demonstrates that the question of knowledge is crucial to an understanding of the political and existential dimensions of life in Iran today.

In a challenging and authoritative analysis of the role of Iranian women in the political process, Parvin Paidar considers the ways they have been affected by the evolutionary and revolutionary transformations of twentieth-century Iran. In so doing, she demonstrates how political reorganisation has of necessity redefined the position of women, and that, contrary to the view of conventional scholarship, gender issues are fundamental to the political process in contemporary Iran. The implications of the study bear on the broader issues of women in the Middle East and the developing countries generally.

Political upheaval has marked Iran's history throughout the twentieth century. Wars, revolutions, coups and the impact of modernism have shaped Iran's historiography, as they have the country's history. Originally based on oral and written sources, which underpinned traditional genealogical and dynastic history, Iran's historiography was transformed in the early 20th century with the development of a 'new' school of presenting history. Here emphasis shifted from the anecdotal story-telling genre to social, political, economic, cultural and religious history-writing. A new understanding of the nation state and the importance of identity and foreign relations in defining Iran's place in the modern world all served to transform the perspective of Iranian historiography. Touraj Atabaki here brings together a range of rich contributions from international scholars who cover the leading themes of the historiography of 20th-century Iran, including constitutional reform and revolution, literature and architecture, identity, women and gender, nationalism, modernism, Orientalism, Marxism and Islamism.

Stephen C. Poulson investigates cycles of social protest in Iran from 1890 to the present era. This work covers the following social movements: the 1890-92 Tobacco Movement; the 1906-09 Constitutional Revolution; two post-World War II movements, the Tudeh (Masses) and the National Front; the 1963 Qom Protest; and the 1978-79 Iranian Revolution. Poulson shows how various Iranian political actors have framed their dissent, drawing on both regional and Western-influenced modes of protest to achieve their ends.

Since the middle of the nineteenth century, Iranian intellectuals have been preoccupied by issues of political and social reform, Iran's relation with the modern West, and autocracy, or arbitrary rule. Drawing from a close reading of a broad array of primary sources, this book offers a thematic account of the Iranian intelligentsia from the Constitutional movement of 1905 to the post-1979 revolution. Ali Gheissari shows how in Iran, as in many other countries, intellectuals have been the prime mediators between the forces of tradition and modernity and have contributed significantly to the formation of the modern Iranian self image. His analysis of intellectuals' response to a number of fundamental questions, such as nationalism, identity, and the relation between Islam and modern politics, sheds new light on the factors that led to the Iranian Revolution—the twentieth century's first major departure from Western political ideals—and helps explain the complexities surrounding the reception of Western ideologies in the Middle East.