Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- List of illustrations
- List of tables
- List of figures
- Chronology
- Glossary
- A political who's who of modern Iran
- Preface
- Map 1 Iran and the Middle East
- Map 2 Iranian provinces
- Introduction
- 1 “Royal despots”: state and society under the Qajars
- 2 Reform, revolution, and the Great War
- 3 The iron fist of Reza Shah
- 4 The nationalist interregnum
- 5 Muhammad Reza Shah's White Revolution
- 6 The Islamic Republic
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Further reading
- Index
Preface
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- List of illustrations
- List of tables
- List of figures
- Chronology
- Glossary
- A political who's who of modern Iran
- Preface
- Map 1 Iran and the Middle East
- Map 2 Iranian provinces
- Introduction
- 1 “Royal despots”: state and society under the Qajars
- 2 Reform, revolution, and the Great War
- 3 The iron fist of Reza Shah
- 4 The nationalist interregnum
- 5 Muhammad Reza Shah's White Revolution
- 6 The Islamic Republic
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Further reading
- Index
Summary
We view the past, and achieve our understanding of the past, only through the eyes of the present.
E. H. CarrThis book is an introduction written primarily for general readers perplexed by the sound and fury of modern Iran. It tries to explain why Iran is often in the news; why it often conjures up images of “Alice in Wonderland”; why it has experienced two major revolutions in one century – one of them in our own lifetime; and, most important of all, why it is now an Islamic Republic. The book subscribes to E. H. Carr's premise that we historians inevitably perceive the past through our own times and attempt to explain how and why the past has led to the present. This premise can have an obvious pitfall – as Carr himself would have readily admitted. If, by the time this book is published, the regime and even the whole state has disappeared into the “dustbin of history” because of a major external onslaught, then the whole trajectory of the book will appear to have been misconceived. Despite this danger, I take the calculated risk and work on the premise that if no ten-ton gorilla barges on to the scene, the Islamic Republic will continue into the foreseeable future. Of course, in the long run all states die.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A History of Modern Iran , pp. xxvii - xxviiiPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008