When Naser al-Din Shah, who ruled Iran from 1848 to 1896, claimed the title Shadow of God on Earth, his authority rested on premodern conceptions of sacred kingship. By 1941, when Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi came to power, his claim to authority as the Shah of Iran was infused with the language of modern nationalism. In short, between roughly 1870 and 1940, Iran's traditional monarchy was forged into a modern nation-state. In Nationalizing Iran, Afshin Marashi explores the changes that made possible this transformation of Iran into a social abstraction in which notions of state, society, and culture converged. He follows Naser al-Din Shah on a tour of Europe in 1873 that led to his importing a new public image of monarchy-an image based on the European late imperial model-relying heavily on the use of public ceremonies, rituals, and festivals to promote loyalty to the monarch. Meanwhile, Iranian intellectuals were reimagining ethnic history to reconcile “authentic” Iranian culture with the demands of modernity. From the reform of public education to the symbolism surrounding grand public ceremonies in honor of long-dead poets, Marashi shows how the state invented and promoted key features of the common culture binding state and society. The ideological thrust of that century would become the source of dramatic contestation in the late twentieth century. Marashi's study of the formative era of Iranian nationalism will be valuable to scholars and students of history, sociology, political science, and anthropology, as well as journalists, policy makers, and other close observers of contemporary Iran.

This work deals with the oil crises of the 1950s, precipitated by Iran's decision to nationalise the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The roots of the revolt against British imperialism are explored here, along with the long-term consequences of instability in the Middle East.

Reza Zia-Ebrahimi revisits the work of Fath?ali Akhundzadeh and Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani, two Qajar-era intellectuals who founded modern Iranian nationalism. In their efforts to make sense of a difficult historical situation, these thinkers advanced an appealing ideology Zia-Ebrahimi calls "dislocative nationalism," in which pre-Islamic Iran is cast as a golden age, Islam is reinterpreted as an alien religion, and Arabs become implacable others. Dislodging Iran from its empirical reality and tying it to Europe and the Aryan race, this ideology remains the most politically potent form of identity in Iran. Akhundzadeh and Kermani's nationalist reading of Iranian history has been drilled into the minds of Iranians since its adoption by the Pahlavi state in the early twentieth century. Spread through mass schooling, historical narratives, and official statements of support, their ideological perspective has come to define Iranian culture and domestic and foreign policy. Zia-Ebrahimi follows the development of dislocative nationalism through a range of cultural and historical materials, and he captures its incorporation of European ideas about Iranian history, the Aryan race, and a primordial nation. His work emphasizes the agency of Iranian intellectuals in translating European ideas for Iranian audiences, impressing Western conceptions of race onto Iranian identity.

In the aftermath of the seventh-century Islamic conquest of Iran, Zoroastrians departed for India. Known as the Parsis, they slowly lost contact with their ancestral land until the nineteenth century, when steam-powered sea travel, the increased circulation of Zoroastrian-themed books, and the philanthropic efforts of Parsi benefactors sparked a new era of interaction between the two groups. Tracing the cultural and intellectual exchange between Iranian nationalists and the Parsi community during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Exile and the Nation shows how this interchange led to the collective reimagining of Parsi and Iranian national identity—and the influence of antiquity on modern Iranian nationalism, which previously rested solely on European forms of thought. Iranian nationalism, Afshin Marashi argues, was also the byproduct of the complex history resulting from the demise of the early modern Persianate cultural system, as well as one of the many cultural heterodoxies produced within the Indian Ocean world. Crossing the boundaries of numerous fields of study, this book reframes Iranian nationalism within the context of the connected, transnational, and global history of the modern era.

While recent books have explored Arab and Turkish nationalism, the nuances of Iran have received scant book-length study—until now. Capturing the significant changes in approach that have shaped this specialization, Rethinking Iranian Nationalism and Modernity shares innovative research and charts new areas of analysis from an array of scholars in the field. Delving into a wide range of theoretical and conceptual perspectives, the essays—all previously unpublished—encompass social history, literary theory, postcolonial studies, and comparative analysis to address such topics as: Ethnicity in the Islamic Republic of Iran Political Islam and religious nationalism The evolution of U.S.-Iranian relations before and after the Cold War Comparing Islamic and secular nationalism(s) in Egypt and Iran The German counterrevolution and its influence on Iranian political alliances The effects of Israel’s image as a Euro-American space Sufism Geocultural concepts in Azar’s Atashkadeh Interdisciplinary in essence, the essays also draw from sociology, gender studies, and art and architecture. Posing compelling questions while challenging the conventional historiographical traditions, the authors (many of whom represent a new generation of Iranian studies scholars) give voice to a research approach that embraces the modern era’s complexity while emphasizing Iranian nationalism’s contested, multifaceted, and continuously transformative possibilities.

Illuminates the influence of the US in internal Iranian politics long before the 1953 coup by examining recently declassified CIA and US State Department documents.

In the early 1950s, frail septuagenarian prime minister of Iran, Doctor Mohammad Mosaddeq, shook the world - challenging Britain by nationalizing Iran's British-run oil industries. In August 1953 he was overthrown. Revisiting these events with astonishing new evidence, this book challenges the conventionally-held theory of foul play by the CIA.