Abstract
For 25 years, the shah’s agenda was to modernize and Westernize Iran. The country was transformed: income per person rose fivefold, and on average cities tripled in size. Almost half the population became urbanized, and 25 times more students graduated from high school than before World War I. Iran transformed from being a poor country like its eastern neighbor Pakistan to being a relatively more affluent developing country like its western neighbor Turkey or the Balkan nations. Iran also became a significant regional power, with a large and modern military. Paradoxically, the shah’s success at enriching and empowering Iran offended many Iranians’ nationalist pride since it depended not only upon Iran’s own power, but also upon assistance and close association with the West, and the United States.
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Notes
Shahrough Akhavi, Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran: Clergy-State Relations in the Pahlavi Period (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1980), pp. 76–90, speculates the shah’s aim was in part to secure clerical nonobjection Iran’s entry into the Baghdad Pact later in 1955; if so, he was successful.
Ebtehaj’s career is sympathetically portrayed in Frances Bostock and Geoffrey Jones, Planning and Power in Iran: Ebtehaj and Economic Development under the Shah (London: Cass, 1989).
Mark Gasriowski, U.S. Foreign Policy and the Shah: Building a Client State in Iran (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 112.
Julian Bharier, Economic Development in Iran 1900–1970 (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 158 and 165. This, the basic reference for the period, is the source for most of this paragraph.
Paraphrases of Arsanjani’s words in 1962, as reported in Ali Ansari, Modern Iran Since 1921: The Pahlavis and After (London: Longman, 2003), p. 154.
To understand how the shah and modernizing liberals saw the White Revolution as a progressive force against feudal reaction see Ali Ansari, “The Myth of the White Revolution: Mohammad Reza Shah, ‘Modernization,’ and the Consolidation of Power,” Middle Eastern Studies, 37: 3 (July 2001), pp. 1–24.
It is easy to exaggerate the U.S. role in encouraging the reforms; the most extreme such case is James Bill, The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), pp. 131–182.
An account of the period is in Bagher Agheli, Rouzshomar-e Tarikh-e Iran (Tehran: Nashr Goftar, 1991), volume 2, which is a day-by-day description of events in Iran from 1953 to 1978 (volume 1 covers 1906–1953).
An account of this period hostile to the shah is in Parvin Amini, “A Single-Party State in Iran, 1975–78: The Rastakhiz Party—The Final Attempt by the Shah to Consolidate his Political Base,” Middle Eastern Studies, 38:1 (January 2002), pp. 147–159 (the title of the article does not well describe its contents).
Khomeini’s activities during this period are chronicled in Sayyed Hamid Ruhani, Bar Rasi va Tahliyati az Nehzat-e Imam Khomeini, volume 1 (Tehran: Sherkat-e Afsat, n.d., which includes many documents from the time). See also Baler Moin, Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah (London: I.B. Tauris, 1999), pp. 74–130.
Ervand Abrahamian, Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 124. The fictious Memoirs of Count Dogorouki claims to be the account by a Russian diplomat about his role in creating Baha’ism. The Khomeini quote is from the translation by the Iranian official broadcasting service, at http://www.irib.it/worldservice/imam/speech/l3.htm.
Ruhollah Khomeini, “The Granting of Capitulatory Rights to the United States,” October 27, 1964, as translated in Hamid Algar, trans. and ed., Islam and Revolution: Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1981), pp. 181–182.
This account, and the data (derived from BP), are based on Ronald Ferrier, “The Iranian Oil Industry,” in Peter Avery, Gavin Hambly, and Charles Melville eds., The Cambridge History of Iran, Volume 7: From Nadir Shah to the Islamic Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 639–701.
The full complexities of these deals, as well as the changes in the agreement with the consortium, are spelled out in Jahangir Amuzegar, Iran: An Economic Profile (Washington, DC: The Middle East Institute, 1977), pp. 55–59.
Keith McLachlan, The Neglected Garden: The Politics and Ecology of Agriculture in Iran (London: I.B. Tauris, 1988), citing the 1948/1949 U.S.-commissioned Overseas Consultants, Inc. report. McLachlan’s Chapter 5, pp. 64–104 is the basis for this account of Iranian agriculture pre-reform.
The description of the reform and its impact draws on McLachlan, The Neglected Garden, pp. 105–152, and Afsaneh Najmabadi, Land Reform and Social Change in Iran (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1987), pp. 50–168.
A more positive picture of the reform is presented in Ann Lambton, The Persian Land Reform 1962–1966 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969).
A more negative picture is presented in Eric Hooglund, Land and Revolution in Iran, 1960–1980 (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1982), which also has an excellent account of the structure of social relations in the countryside before and after reform.
Much useful detail is provided in Baqr Momani, Maseley-e Arzi va fang-e Tabegati dar Iran (Tehran: Entesharat-e Payvand, 1359 [1980/1981]), despite all the Marxist language.
The internal workings of government economic policy in the 1960s is described in Alinaghi Alikhani (Gholam Reza Afkhani, ed.), Siyasat va Siyasatgiri-ye Egtesadi Dar Iran 1340–1350 (Ideology, Political and Process in Iran’s Economic Development 1960–1970: An Interview with Alinaghi Alikhani) (Bethesda, MD: Foundation for Iranian Studies, 2001 [part of the interesting series from The Oral History Archives of the Foundation for Iranian Studies]).
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Current Economic Position and Prospects of Iran, Report SA-23a (restricted), May 13, 1971, Vol. 1, p. 13.
International Labour Office, Employment and Income Policies for Iran (Geneva: International Labour Office, 1973), p. 31.
Robert Graham, Iran: The Illusion of Power (revised edition), (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980), pp. 47–48, who also cites other examples.
This account of women’s situation relies on Parvin Paidar, Women and the Political Process in Twentieth-Century Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 147–167. She states on p. 157, “The Pahlavi legislation lagged far behind the progress that individual women made in social and economic fields.”
These data, from Iranian government household surveys, are cited in Mohamad Pesaran, “Economic Development and Revolutionary Upheavals in Iran,” in Iran: A Revolution in Tarmoil, Afshar, ed. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985), p. 30.
The raw data are in Mohamad Pesaran, “Income Distribution in Iran,” in Jane Jacqz, ed., Iran: Past, Present, and Future (New York: Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, 1976), pp. 267–286.
Jalal al-Ahmad (R. Campbell, trans.), Occidentosis: A Plague from the West (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1984).
The best study of al-Ahmad’s relation to Third Worldist thought specifically Fannon is Amir Nikpey, Pouvoir et religion en Iran contemporain (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001), pp. 86–92.
Mehrzad Boroujerdi, Iranian Intellectuals and the West: The Tormented Triumph of Nativism (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996), p. 68.
Negin Nabavi, Intellectuals and the State in Iran: Politics, Discourse, and the Dilemma of Authenticity (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2003), pp. 28–64.
For a general survey of Iran’s foreign policy after 1953 with particular emphasis on its relations with Middle Eastern countries, see Abdolreza Hoshang Mandavi, Siyasat-e Kharaji-ye Iran dar Duran-e Pahlavi 1300–1357 [1921/22–1978/79] (Tehran: Nashr-e Alborz, 1374 [1995/96]), pp. 395–503 covers the period 1972/1973–1978/1979.
The phrase is from the masterful study by Faisal bin Salman al-Saud, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Power Politics in Transition (London: I.B. Tauris, 2003), p. 129.
This paragraph relies on the excellent account in Keith McLachlan, “Economic Development 1921–79,” in Peter Avery, Gavin Hambly, and Charles Melville, eds., The Cambridge History of Iran, Volume 7, pp. 627–637.
and Robert Graham, Iran: The Illusion of Power, revised edition (London: Croom Helm, 1978), pp. 77–127.
Najmabadi, Land Reform and Social Change, pp. 169–191. Grace Goodell, The Elementary Structures of Political Life: Rural Development in Pahlavi Iran (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), is a fascinating account of how these corporations appeared to the residents.
Farhad Kazemi, Poverty and Revolution in Iran: The Migrant Poor, Urban Marginality and Politics (New York: New York University Press, 1980), p. 14. Kazemi presents the results of his surveys of migrants, discussing inter alia their economic situation and political involvement.
The best account of changes in nomadic life in the 1960s and 1970s is Lois Beck, The Qashqa’i of Iran (New Haven: Yale University Press,1986) as well as her account of life with the Qashqa’i in 1970/1971, Nomad: A Year in the Life of a Qashqa’i Tribesman in Iran (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).
See also Richard Tapper, Frontier Nomads of Iran: A Political and Social History of the Shahsevan (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press,1997)
and Jacob Black Michaud’s highly political anti-shah Sheep and Land: The Economics of Power in a Tribal Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) about the Lurs.
The best single book about nomadism in Iran—which shows its continuing importance (e.g., how the first census of nomads in 1987 found 1.2 million people) is Richard Tapper and Jon Thompson, eds., The Nomadic Peoples of Iran (London: Azimuth Editions, 2002), which has many stunning color photographs from the 1980s by Nasrollah Kasraian.
David Menashri, Education and the Making of Modern Iran (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), pp. 191 and 216–219 (by comparison, 3,000 students were studying at foreign universities in 1956). University entrance problems are discussed on pp. 205–209.
Graham, Illusion of Power, p. 150 and pp. 144–151 describe SAVAK as generally incompetent. An interesting account of SAVAK’s structure and activities is provided by a high-ranking intelligence official who defected to the Islamic Revolution, Hossein Ferdust, Zohur va Sequt-e Saltanat Pahlavi: Jeld-e 1, Khatarat-e Arteshbod Sabeq Hossein Ferdust (Tehran: Entesharat-e Etelaat, 1369 [1990/1991]), pp. 379–519.
Ervand Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), pp. 119–120.
On the arms procurements, see also Barry Rubin, Paved with Good Intentions: The American Experience and Iran (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 133–137 and 157–176.
For a detailed account of how the corruption worked in the case of one important general, see Safa’addin Tabarraian, “Serab-e Yek General: Bazshenasi-ye Naqsh-e Arteshbod Tufanian dar Hakemiyat-e Pahlavi-ye Dovom” (“General Toufanian: A Review of his Part in Second Pahlavi’s Rule”), Tarikh-e Mo’aser-e Iran (Iranian Contemporary History), 1:3 (Fall 1997), pp. 119–182. This publication from the Institute for Iranian Contemporary Historical Studies (Moasseh-ye Motala’at-e Tarikh’e Mo’asser-e Iran) in Tehran, has many fine articles on Qajar and Pahlavi history.
Ann Schulz, Buying Security: Iran Under the Monarchy (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989), p. 135.
John Stempl, Inside the Iranian Revolution (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981), p. 74, cites State Department data showing 53,941 Americans in Iran in 1978.
Schulz, Buying Security, p. 152; cf. p. 157 for the military budgets 1948–1977. For a contrasting sympathetic view, see Alvin Cottrell, “Iran’s Armed Forces Under the Pahlavi Dynasty,” in George Lenczowski, ed., Iran Under the Pahlavis (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1978).
For examples of exaggerations about imperial Iran’s economic problems and understatement of its accomplishments, see Kenneth Pollack, The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict between Iran and America (New York: Random House, 2004), pp. 110–114, or James Bill, The Eagle and the Lion, pp. 168–169.
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© 2005 Patrick Clawson and Michael Rubin
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Clawson, P., Rubin, M. (2005). Modernizing Iran, 1953–1978. In: Eternal Iran. The Middle East in Focus. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403977106_6
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