Empire: World History - 118. Iran's First Revolution

Episode Date: January 30, 2024

Throughout the 19th century, Iran was a pawn of the great colonial powers. It failed to industrialise, its economy stagnated, and resentment at foreign interference grew. This came to a head in 1906 with the Constitutional Revolution - a liberal movement that aimed to reform Iran and turn it into a modern nation. But it was not to be, chaos and war ensued. Out of that chaos emerged Reza Shah; a tough, dour, military man who would establish the next Iranian dynasty, the Pahlavis. Join William and Anita as they are joined by Ali Ansari for the first in their four-part series on the Iranian Revolution. For bonus episodes, ad-free listening, reading lists, book discounts, a weekly newsletter, and a chat community. Sign up at https://empirepod.supportingcast.fm/ Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcasts, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. On the 21st of March 1818, the British artist and traveller Sir Robert Kerr Porter saw the Shah enthroned in the Gulisan Palace during the Nauros or New Year ceremony. And he was simply astonished at the grandeur, the magnificence and the ceremony of the Kajar court. He was one blaze of jewels, he wrote later, which literally dazzled the sight on first looking at him. But the details of his dress were these, a lofty tiara of three elevations sat on his head,

which shape appears to have been long peculiar to the crown of the great king. It was entirely composed of thickly set diamonds, pearls, rubies, emeralds, exquisitely disposed as to form a mixture of the most beautiful colours and the brilliant light reflected from its surface. Several black feathers like the heron plume were intermixed with the resplendent egress of this truly imperial diadem, whose bending points were finished with pear-formed pearls of an immense size. The vesture was gold tissue, neatly covered with a similar disposition of jewelry and crossing the shoulders with two strings of pearls, probably the largest in the world. I call this dress a vesture because it's set close to his person from the neck

to the bottom of the waist, showing a shape as noble as his air. Dan, dun, dun! It's such a great quote. It's a good quote, isn't it? It's a good quote. I quite enjoyed reading that. I also quite enjoyed you teaching me very kindly how to say agret. What isn't it Gret? Gret is a turban jewel, which people spent immense sums of money on at this time. So, yes, what do we make of that? I mean, that is quite something, isn't it?

And it sums up the luxury, the splendour, the extravagance of a man called Fathali Shah, who was of the Qadja dynasty. Tell us more about that. So this is the beginning of a four-part series that we're going to take our listeners on, bringing us from the magnificent jeweled beard of fat al-Aishar Kaja, who is in power from 1796 and is the sort of true successor of Nadia Shah, who we last saw having his peacock throne hacked bits after his assassination in the last episode. And this is going to take us right through to the extraordinary story of the Iranian Revolution.

And we're going to end up with another long-bearded gentleman, the Aitohmene. Not as bejeweled and no regret inside. He doesn't do regrets, it's fair to say. But it is, in a sense, one story. It's the story of how over-speedy and uneven modernisation, well, first of all, led to catastrophes as the colonial powers circle like vultures around it. We've dealt with bits of this story in both our Ottoman and Russia. series before. So you have the Russians coming down from the Caucasus with Tolstoy in the army,

biting off chunks of Dagestan and Georgia and Armenia and Azerbaijan, all of which had been in the wider Safavid and an ancient Persian world. And then we see this difficult tale of modernisation with different colonial powers, always acting in their own interests, always trying to seize Persian assets and Persian territory, leaving the people of Persia with deep feeling of distrust of the outside world. And in this story, bizarrely, we have two echoing embassy attacks. We have at the beginning of the story, an attack on the Russian embassy in Tehran that leads to the death of a friend of Pushkin. And at the end of the story, the subject of the film Argo, which is, I think what many people today will know of the Iranian Revolution, the famous story of the American hostages after the

Iranian Revolution in 1979. I mean, the reason that this is so important here and now to understand the roots of a country and a politics that is at the moment dictating so much of what the world is like and what the world is doing. And is only likely to get more so in the months to come, I fear. Well, I mean, just open a newspaper, just, you know, put on a news bulletin at the moment. And you will always have these phrases which are flying around, you know, Iranian-backed Hezbollah, Iranian-back Houthis. So, you know, it's important to understand. Iranian missile strikes on Pakistan. Yeah. Well, you know, that question. It's often a question that I get asked at dinner party. Why are they like that? Why are they like that? From now on, I'm just going to say, listen to empire, because that's what we're going to go into. So, you know, the Iranian revolution, it does to a psyche of a country, how it happens, how quickly it happens, the reverberations that we feel right into this day that are having such profound effects on geopolitics. That is why this is almost a mini-series, if you like, and we think it's very important. So, I mean, look, if this sounds good to you, members of the Empire Club are able to listen

to this whole series right here, right now. And for those of you who listen on Apple Podcasts, but are not members, we have also got some good news for you, don't we, William? We do. Well, good listeners, today we have launched our membership club through Apple Podcasts. So now you'll be able to sign up in just a few clicks through your Empire podcast feed. This is all very exciting. Yes, it is. That's why I said, I gave you the exciting bit to do it. As well as getting access to our whole four-part series on the Iranian Revolution right now,

you can remind everybody of the other benefits of joining the Empire Podcast Club. Look, there are many, many benefits to joining the Empire Club because we release bonus episodes every fortnight, every single fortnight in which we discuss more history. We answer more of your questions. You can listen to the podcast, add free, you can get discounts on books. I mean, who doesn't want that? We know you are buying them. We see them leap up in the charts.

And if they are in our podcast, you could get a discount. You can receive a weekly newsletter. and there is so much more. Those of you lovely people who are already signed up as our members, firstly, thank you. But secondly, this launch will have no impact upon your subscription. Yes. So, I mean, all it is really, it's a very, very simple thing.

We are extending this to our Apple family. It lies in the core, the core of our philosophy. Apple family, core. It is the core of our philosophy. Thank you very much. Apple core, he didn't get that either. Anyway, on to today's story. Shall we establish some very important context of today's story?

because the focus of our first episode is going to be on Iran at the start of the 20th century. Iran's little-known first revolution, the rise of Reza Pahlavi. But to begin with, we are going to go back to the end of the last week's episode, the death of Nathar Shah. I really enjoyed that episode. So can you remind us? Oh, and also, I should say, let's clarify one thing, because some people have been getting on Twitter about this. Shah is the Iranian Persian title that means king of Iran. Okay, so just so when we say Shah, that's what we mean. So just to clarify.

And another thing that, again, we've been saying this throughout the series, but it's probably worth saying because it does come up, certainly on Twitter every day, the words Iran and the words Persia, we use interchangeably. Yeah, and we have discussed this earlier on in the series. And certainly all my Persian friends go from one to the other, both in English and in Farsi, without really noticing. So anyway, onwards. So we left Nadeeshire murdered in his bed, with his chief concubine Chuky secreting the Kohinor, which he then hands over to Ahmed Shah Abduly.

And chaos breaks out first in the camp, then in the wider Persian Empire, as the different members of the army struggle for supremacy. And the person who comes out on top is a bit of a surprise, not least because he's a eunuch. And this is Ahmohamed Shah. And he has been captured as a boy and castrated. And he spends quite a lot of his adult life, then taking a peculiarly bloody revenge on those who removed his manhood. And when he finally captures the head of the house of Afshar, Nadir Shah's successor, he wants to extract from him the coenol, which he thinks he has. In fact, he hasn't got it. And so all this hideous torture that Mirza Shah Rook bears is all in vain. He's, anyway, tied to a chair, his head is shaved, a crown of thick paste is built up

on his bald pate. Then in a ghoulish coronation ceremony reminiscent of Game of Thrones, R. Muhammad personally pours a jug of molten lead onto the crown. So it's a very nasty piece of work, but that isn't the end of the nastiness of Ah, Muhammad Shah, because when he then captures the southern Persian town of Kerman, which had revolted against him, he orders that the women and children should be given over to his soldiers as slaves and that any surviving man should either be blinded or killed. And to make sure that none of his men skip on any of these orders, he commands that the men's eyeballs be brought to him in baskets and poured out on the floor in front of him. Oh God, that is so disgusting. Do you know, I was going to say at the beginning of this, you know,

The description reminded me at least for the first 30 seconds of, you know, Lord Varus from Game of Thrones, you know, the political eunuch who, you know, may have lost some jewels but was obsessed by, you know, power. Exactly. But they do depart because one is just so much worth. The real life one is so much worse. Anyway, do go on. Eyeballs bouncing on the floor. Yeah. So the eyeballs bounce on the floor and Ah, Muhammad Shah only stops counting at 20,000 eyeballs. And stories circulate that as long as 30 years later, travellers in particularly southwest Iran, find so many hundreds of blind beggars stumbling around still as living evidence for this atrocity

that every town in southwest Persia has a sort of army of these blind men still alive 30 years later. It's a terrible, terrible story. It is worth saying that he used this terror as a political tool to restore the authority of the monarchy. The important point to take away from this, this horror story is that his successor, his nephew, Fat Ali Shah, who is the guy who we opened with with that description of the British ambassador coming and seeing this guy

covered in jewels, is obsessed with, in a sense, declaring his manhood as the nephew of the eunuch, he wants to show off. And so he has this spectacular beard, one of the great beards of history. Now, wait, we have to, we have to discuss, because it's an audio medium. This is Zizi Top, meets Santa, meets, I don't know, cold. because it is black, long, luxurious and humongous, isn't it, this beard? And he always wears these fantastically jewelled outfits behind it, so that the painters who paint his pictures and of which there are many, many, including many in London, because he used to send them to all his allies and neighbours.

And there's one even in the India office library, in the British Library, in London, and when you go and work in there or anyone studying this sort of area. He's peering down at you. He's peering down at you. Anyway, the point is that this guy is always trying to prove his manhood, and he famously has more children than anyone else alive from more concubines than anyone else is ever possessed. And at the time, having more children than the King of Persia is a sort of common phrase in Britain.

He's known for this. He has 260 legitimate sons, which is pretty good going by anyone's down. From how many wives? Hang on, the important fact is how many wives do that? because otherwise that's... So 158 legitimate wives, but many more concubines. Okay. And two...

Wow. 260 sons. Gosh. And when he dies in 1834, Lloyd's had brought forth more than 1,000 descendants. That's pretty good going. Yeah. Okay. So, I mean, we've got an idea of this absolutely extraordinary, you know, almost out of a

fairy tale kind of character with, you know, all of these sons and jewels and long beard. Does he represent himself, though, as an heir to the ancient Persians? or is he starting something new afresh? So he very much represents himself in art as modelled on the great Sasanian figures whose stories fill the Shahnameh. And like every person really, he reads the Shahnameh. He names his children after characters of the Shahnameh. And everything is like Ruster, more like Kusra and so on.

But the reality, and this is what's interesting. All right, everything that we've heard about him so far is sort of fairy tale land. Of course, it isn't fairy tale land. This is early to mid-19th century Asia, when colonial powers are ravaging. And he is stuck with the British to his right. And just after his reign is over, just after his death, the British famously go into Afghanistan in the disastrous first Afghan war. But during his reign, poor Fatali Shah is having to fight off the Russians, who with Tolstoy,

as a young recruit, are busy in Dagestan, in the Caucasus, conquering great chunks of territory. I mean, huge chunks. The whole of Azerbaijan, the whole of Armenia, the whole of Georgia are lost to Persian control at this time. And now you said, rather tantalizingly, that this mini-series is bookended by two embassy episodes. This is a good time to talk about the one that involves the Russians. So maybe you'll tell us more about that. Correct. So there are two horribly humiliating treaties that the Russians force the Persians to sign. The first is the Treaty of Gullistan, and that's followed up in 1828 by a treaty called the Treaty of Cherkman Chai. And after this, the Russians send to Tehran a great friend of Pushkin, this young

opera writer, novelist, short story writer, musician, Gribdoyev. And Gribdoyev is this sort of symbol of the new Russia. He's confident, westernized, writes beautiful prose, you know, is a sort of proto-chaikosky in music is a proto Tolstoy in prose. And he is sent off to what should have been an easy posting to the recently tamed Persians who welcome him with a medal. He arrives in Tehran and he's given the order of the star and lion. But of course, the people of Persia are not on the same page. And this again is something that will have echoes through to the future. And they attack the embassy. There's a little kind of subplot involving her in politics. One of the things the Russians have been saying that they're going to do is to protect

the Christians of the East. And this is very much their justification for attacking Armenia and Georgia. They say these poor Christians are being attacked. How many times have we heard that we're here, we're here to save you while we're squashing you. We're here to look after you. Just believe. It's all for your own good. And so using this rhetoric of saving Christians, there are clauses, I think in both the treaties about the Persians having to look after the local Christians. And then something terrible happens. An Armenian eunuch escapes from the harem of the Persian Shah, and at the same time, two enslaved Armenian harry women also escape from the harem of the Shah's son-in-law, and all three seek refuge in the Russian legation, which is their right under the

recently signed Treaty of Turkmen Chai, because all Georgians and Armenians living in Perkins, are permitted to appeal to Russia for their freedom. And what happens, again, in an extraordinary echo of what is to come in 1979, in the American Revolution, that famous siege of the American embassy, which was recently filmed as Argo, a whole generation, I'm sure, will know it through that rather than through the news headlines. In this occasion, in January 1829, it is the Mullers that urge on the mob to attack the Russian legation, they burst in, they kill the two girls, and they kill Gribdoyev and much of the embassy staff. And this leads to further terrible repercussions and the arrival of further Russian regiments and yet more kind of Russian imposition

of power onto the Persians. Yeah, I mean, I have to say all my sympathies with those girls and that young man who were trying to get out of what must have been a horrible situation. And they We've talked about sex slavery. I mean, we talk about horrors, but a lot of the time it's just sexual slavery. Anyway, but what it does show is the start or maybe the crystallization of this distrust of foreigners that exists in Iran, that you know what? You're chipping away at our borders. You're telling us how to live our lives. You're meddling in our affairs.

And then you think you can just come here and live a perfectly normal life, exactly. Exactly. Who the hell are you to do this? So you have this pattern throughout the nine. 19th century of Russia and Britain constantly interfering in Qadjar rule. And poor old Qadha Persia is like a pawn in a chess game with two queens in this game, Russia and the British Army. But can I ask you this?

I mean, you know, there have been arguments and do you think they hold water that somehow both Russia and Britain deliberately prevent modernisation and development in Iran? Because they just can't deal with a more powerful flexing Iran that won't. be a plaything. Well, a generation of historians did write that and now a new generation of historians, which our guest today is a member, are pushing back on quite a lot of this narrative and giving Iran far more agency. And indeed, there are suggestions that the Persians themselves did not want railways built across their territory because it would have allowed an even speedier conquest of their land. And this is going to go on. Again, in the future episode, we're going to deal with

the famous alleged coup done by the CIA with Mossadegh. But again, a new generation of historians are saying, actually, that's a lot more of an Iranian thing than we've previously imagined it to be. And so what's fascinating is that there are these sort of tropes and these events which keep repeating themselves like great cycles in the history of Iran. And we're going to come across many of these echoes in the next four episodes. Well, do you know what? It's a really good time to introduce our guest to you who's going to be guiding us through these episodes, all the way through to the Iranian Revolution. His name is Ali Ansari, Professor of Modern History. It's an Andrews. He is the expert in Britain on Iranian history, author of the very recently published

book, very simply called Iran. Ali, very warm welcome to empire. Now, we would like to begin this story in 1890. And something called the tobacco concession. I mean, when we talk about tobacco concession, it sounds like it's a fag and mag shop. But this is something, it's a treaty. It's an agreement. Tell us a little bit more about this because it seems to highlight this unequal relationship we've just been talking about between Britain and Iran. It is. It's another of these, the Iranian see it is yet another moment when they're being pushed into a corner to give what they think is rightfully theirs to some foreign power. Thank you for inviting me on. I mean, it's, so basically one of the things you have to appreciate is that Iranian intellectuals

throughout the 19th century start to try and figure out how they can cope with this challenge. and they look at the two rivals there. They start, they dilly dally with the French a little bit, but that doesn't really pick up. And so they've got the Russians and the British to look at. The British are much more effective, actually, throughout the 19th century, really basically selling, in a sense, soft power the notion of how you reorganise your state. And one of the things I've worked on is really this way in which Iran translates itself from an imperial state to a national state.

And it's quite interesting. And they borrow very heavily from the British model to do this. And one of the aspects of this, of course, is that you get a huge amount of sort of anglophilia among the elite in Iran, and they decide that, you know, what we need to do is we need to learn and find out ways in which we can sort of bring the British in to help us modernise. And one of the ways they try and do this is basically through economic engagement. Because they basically say the Shah isn't going to change politically. What we need to do is find economic ways to catalyze change. And there are a series of concessions that are awarded. I think pretty badly awarded, I have to say,

I mean, they are rather naively awarded by Iranian leaders. And when we say concessions, I mean, for most people, this means like a trade treaty, a trade agreement. Yes, well, it's more than that. It's basically the rights to exploit various resources. And there's one very notorious one, the Reuters concession in 1872, which is eventually cancelled and actually even retracted by the British. I mean, one of the things you have to understand also in the dynamic here is there's often a friction between British entrepreneurs and businessmen and the British state.

There's always a bit of tension there because the British are always very anxious. just not to alienate the Russians in Iran as well and not to provoke the Russians into doing things. So they're quite careful. And the entrepreneurs are just after their biggest bang for their buck. Yes. And actually the tobacco concession is one of the worst. What happens is you get the British entrepreneur comes in and the idea is he'll get a monopoly on the selling of tobacco in Iran.

And of course, this affects the income of many of the merchants. And it's, you know, the Russians are against it. Many actually people in the British establishment think it's a slightly awkward agreement. And Edward Brown, the very famous Persianist who's sitting in Cambridge, basically says that the deal is such good value for this chap. Major Talbot is the chap who signed it, that it's basically quite criminal, actually, the way he's pulled it off. And what this does, actually, is it generates the first serious opposition,

not so much to the British, actually, but also to the monarchy. You know, they basically say, you're not defending us in the way that you should. And it's interesting because of the first time what you see as a sort of a unity between elements of the merchant classes, the clergy and intellectuals to oppose something that the Shah wants to do. The Shah is constantly looking for ways to make money and he's constantly trying to find ways to basically sell off assets to make money. Ali, one question I've got straight up is the clergy, because obviously this is something that's going to loom throughout the next few episodes and finally end up with a Islamic revolution with the clergy in charge. What is it with the Shia clergy that makes them a more powerful force than anywhere else? You don't find the clergy stepping in in Delhi or anywhere else in India.

Why is it that in Iran that the clergy are able to organise themselves in this way? Well, there's two things really. One is that they're Shia, so Iran is Shia as opposed to Sunnihan, so the Shia clergy form a fairly sort of distinct group. And two, of course, because Iranians are not native Arab speakers, they need intermediaries to be able to sort of interpret the scriptural texts. So these intermediaries come in. Now, under the Safavids, the clergy were very much servants of the state. I mean, they were part of the state system.

But after the collapse of the Safavids and the failure in the 18th century really of the state to settle itself, even under Nadeh Shah, what you see is the clergy defining themselves as a sort of a distinct institution of civil society, if you will. I mean, they become a distinct body. So when the Rajahs come in at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century, what they actually have is a sort of a contractual arrangement with the clergy. You know, we'll protect you, you legitimize us. It's very much almost like a church-state relationship. And then throughout the 19th century, of course, they developed that.

It is a process. I mean, you don't have Ayatollahs in the 19th century. This is the sort of titular inflation, if you will, that sort of picks up as you go through the 20th century. But also, I'm interested in just talking back to the tobacco concession. First of all, it will be news to many people that tobacco was such an important part of Iranian agriculture and export and wealth, you know. And even still, I think they still export to the Gulf, at least.

So Iranian tobacco is a big deal. But what this also shows, because you have mass protests and people suddenly questioning the wisdom of their leaders, you have the start of a voice that didn't exist before. People are normally so terrified of eyeballs in baskets that they never raised a voice. And yet you have people now taking to the streets or to the Medan and saying, we don't want this. This is ridiculous. You're giving too much to the British.

Well, just to sort of pull back a bit, I mean, the tobacco protest was a boycott rather than a sort of mass protests. Well, didn't they open fire on people? There were some, yeah, but these are very, very modest. I think there's a tendency in Iranian nationalist historography to sort of exaggerate what these events were. Oh, interesting. I mean, you're talking about very, very small. And also, bear in mind, between 18, 91 and 90s, you've got another 15 years when nothing much happens. Okay.

So you have to over-eg the pudding to make it interesting. Okay. Yeah. I mean, basically, the person who does it is Edward Brown. I mean, Edward Brown, in his narrative of the Persian Constitution Revolution, basically signposts the tobacco boycott as the Iranian awakening, the Persian awakening. But the Persian awakening, I have to tell you, it goes back much further. I mean, it's an intellectual process. There are people who travel to Britain. They travel to Britain extensively. They buy into a thoroughly whiggish attitude, a thoroughly wiggish reading of British history, which they adopt to themselves. And of course, what you have to understand is they look to Britain as a sort of a model of a multi-ethnic state.

Why multi-ethnic, because of Scotland and Wales? Scotland, Wales, Ireland and England. And they say it's multi-ethnic. The differences, and this is what I always have to try and emphasise with people, the Iranians are very impressed, Iranian intellectuals are very impressed with British politics. They're the only people in the world who still think the British control anything at all. Oh, they still run the world. Yeah, yeah.

No, no, absolutely. And the reason, by the way, Willie, and this is a very important thing. The British are coming to Iran from India. So they're coming to Iran from one part of the Persianate world, and they come to Iran. They're not coming like the Russians or the French. They're coming from an aspect of the Persianian world. And the British have absorbed themselves, many aspects through the Mogul Empire and others of Persian ideas of government. So they come to Iran and they can engage with it in a way, linguistically, culturally, whatever, that others can't. So it partly explains the intimacy of the relationship. it also explains why Iranians constantly feel let down. Yeah, I love that. I love that. You're saying, look, actually, this is an over-eged protest. It wasn't such a big deal.

But the result of, you know, whatever the protestant boycott was, apart from the Shah's own wife stopping smoking, which was a detail which amused me. I mean, it was significant, Anita. I don't want to say it's not significant. I just think people present it as a sort of like a mass popular movement. And it wasn't. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.

But the result is that you have the concession cancelled, and that incurs a massive debt, doesn't it? And I mean, how problematic is that debt? Is that the start of bigger problems? I think it's the continuation of problems that we put out, because I mean, what happens is, is, of course, you have, you know, the British have hugely influential soft power in Iran through the British Imperial Bank of Persia.

So what you have is the perversity of the situation is that obviously the concession is cancelled, but then they say, well, you know, you've broken this contract. You have to pay your debtors. And basically the debt is sort of drawn, on the British Imperial Bank, who provide him with the money. But the Russians do the same. I mean, it's a wholly perverse situation. And basically, people complain, even Iranians complain. They say the Shah, if he showed a little bit of, as you say, creative thinking, would understand that actually

getting into debt to foreigners isn't a good thing. But he doesn't seem to be capable of thinking this. I mean, he's eventually assassinated for his efforts in 1996. Why is that? What is the assassination all about? Is it at the end of this debt and at the end of these protests, or is it something different? No, it's basically, so the, were intellectuals in Iran, one very famous one is a gentleman known as Jamal ad-Afrani, who's basically Iranian, by the way. I mean, I hope nobody told you who's Afrani. So he takes the sort of the pen name of Afghani to try and hide the fact that he's a Shia, essentially. You know, he protests very, very vehemently against the Shah and he sits in Istanbul

and he sort of rails against him and all this way. And we should make it clear that al-Afghani is one of these people that is beginning to stand up to colonial. mischief making. Yeah, yeah, but also others. But interestingly, by the earlier, if you look at his writings, he has a wonderful article called The Reign of Terror in Persia. Okay. And in that article, he basically says the British have constantly promised us that they will support the development of a constitution, the rule of law, so on and so forth. He says, but whenever we ask for their help, they're not there. Can you imagine the British, not keeping a promise? Well, that's the thing. So he's basically asking for British support. I mean, this is the thing that's important.

Okay, so I mean, you have an assassination of a show. We're talking 1896 for the 1896 for the assassination. And then you have a tightening economic situation, which the people are now beginning to feel. And you have voices like Afghani saying, you know what, Brits aren't all you thought they were. They're not all they're cracked up to be. Tell us how this funnels into what will become known as the constitutional revolution. Well, basically, what you have is, you know, there's economic malaise in Iran. There's obviously a reaction in some ways. I mean, this is the interesting thing with Britain. There's a reaction against these concessions.

They sort of define themselves against that. At the same time, they absorb, as I said, a lot of the ideas about constitutionalism from Britain. So you get the foundation of various institutions in Iran. In 1890, you get the first school of political science. You've also got rampaging inflation, which is always something that sharpens people's thoughts and voices. Oh, yeah. I mean, again, we ought to be careful because, I mean, Iran is not a at this stage. is not what we would call a single market or it's not. I mean, there are various different areas

of the country that operate in different ways. Nonetheless, what happens is, is that the international climate changes. You get the Russo-Japanese war. The Russians are defeated by the Japanese, which is a major shock. Which is this crucial moment that we've dealt with on earlier episodes. Suddenly everyone realizes that these great imperial powers are not invincible. Yeah. So what happens is, is that, you know, the Russians, and then they have their own failed revolution in 1905. Tsar Nicholas obviously curtails that. Many of the Russian, particularly Armenians, by the way, come south, so they start to infiltrate into the Iranian system. And then there's an economic crisis. As always with these sort of revolutions, by the way,

it's like a sort of bread riot that goes wrong. So essentially there's a sort of an economic crisis, people start to protest. And suddenly the momentum takes away. So there's a wonderful account by a British diplomat in Iran at the end of 905, beginning of 96, where he basically says, you know, the country's dying on its feet. We just don't know what to do anymore. Nothing's happening. He then says in passing in this report that there's been some disturbances in the bazaar, but I don't think it's particularly significant. Now within a year, you see the establishment of the first constitution in Iran with the parliament. And interestingly here, and I have to emphasize it, crucial to its success, crucial to its success, are the British, and particularly

the British embassy in Tehran, where the critical moment occurs in July, August, when a number of revolutionaries. And when I say a number of revolutionaries, it's almost every revolutionary of note in Tehran, go to take sanctuary in the British embassy compound in North Tehran in Golhak. And they're able to do this because there's no British minister in Iran. There's a Shahjade affair, another Scott, you'll be pleased to know, even in Grant Duff, who basically allows them all in in really against the wishes of the Foreign Secretary Edward Gray, the new liberal foreign secretary, who thinks this is an act of grotesque interference in internal politics in Iran. But Grant Duff says, you know, they wanted sanctuary and we let them in.

Now, it's worth thinking about this a bit. The population of Tehran at this stage is probably, we can only estimate, it's probably no more than 250,000, okay? So let that sink in. Within a matter of weeks or days of weeks, there are 14,000 people taking sanctuary in the British embassy. I mean, think about it. Where did they put them?

They're all in the gardens. They're all in the gardens. I've stayed there once. Yeah, there's very nice gardens. It's quite entertaining. They say they're very well-ordered. They're very disciplined. They supply themselves with food.

The military attache complains a bit because the flower bed has been trampled on. I mean, that's about it. A couple of them have carved their initials and the trees and this sort of thing. But they basically say, actually, it's jolly well-run. What they do quite staggeringly is they then say to Grant Duff that we want you to be our negotiator with the Iranian government, and we want the British king to guarantee the agreement. Now, of course, Gray is going apoplectic about this in London, because he's just the want to get involved. But actually, Grant Duff does negotiate this, and they eventually get an

agreement for the establishment of a constitution. I mean, what Grant Duff basically does is he helps the Iranians define and articulate, you know, what they want to do with the government. The Islamic Republic, by the way, argued that the Constitution was a British import and the British condom. That's complete nonsense. The Iranians knew what they want. I mean, they've been talking about this for 50, 60 years. This was a time, though, that they, because they didn't trust them, own government. They wanted a foreign embassy. And it goes back to this point, you see, and I was talking to this with my students actually just yesterday, that when you think about the anglophobia that might exist, obviously it didn't extend so far that they weren't willing

to rely on a British diplomat to be their chief interlocutor. And it's actually a fascinating moment. The problem is, as you will realize, is that despite this achievement of diplomats on the ground, Gray was not interested in London. So you find, within a year that the British... He doesn't guarantee it in any way. He doesn't. No, what he does, in fact, is he decides to come to an agreement with the Russians, who are now back on the scene, by the way, having had a bit of a knock, in the interests of British defence in Europe. I mean, it's all about the conflict of British imperial interests

and British sort of strategic interests in Europe. And basically, the fear of Germany wins out, essentially, so the British come to an arrangement with the Russian. Okay. But just going back to this, sort of, you know, because there's, as you know, ferocious argument that reigns over whether it is sort of cunning central that operates in Britain that messes up the rest of the world, or it is actually, you know, people expecting a lot more than Britain can do. So, I mean, you know, Britain doesn't guarantee the constitution. What guarantee could it possibly offer in another country in another place where it's got 14,000 people camped out and a garden? What are they, you know, what, what is Gray meant to do if anyone

reneges on this constitution? I think, I think that the difficulty was, and this is where, when we come to do later episodes, including the oil nationalisation crisis. For me, this is the one moment where Britain was in a position to do something because the Russians were absent largely. And Britain was in a very paramount position. Instead, what Gray did is he basically decided to abandon the revolutionaries by signing a convention with Russia, which saw Iran split into two spheres of influence. And it's very important to understand this as a sphere of influence. It was not a partition of the country, but there were spheres of influence which basically gave much of northern Iran and the populist areas of Iran to the Russians and where the British wouldn't interfere.

Ali, just before we break one question, what is the constitution? It's a constitutional monarchy? What's the arrangement? Yes, it's basically very much, it's a parliamentary constitution on a sort of a constitutional monarchy based on the parliamentary system, very much based on the English system. I mean, it's basically based on the British system. Now, people will tell you it's based on the Belgian constitution or the Bulgarian constitution, But these are all redacted systems of the uncodified British constitution. And it's a parliamentary system with the monarch as a sort of a head of state, essentially. And so very much ahead of its time.

It was. I think it was a very progressive, I mean, if you look at it, it's fascinating. It's absolutely riven through with enlightenment whigish ideas. And that, of course, was its problem, by the way. Because while intellectuals in Iran were basically excited about all this, Most Iranians didn't have a clue what it meant. I mean, it basically says that sovereignty belongs to the people. I mean, it's an astonishing document compared to what you get in 1979, which is quite a different, which is a much more religious document. It does have religious elements in it, undoubtedly, but it's basically a national, secular type of document. Well, it's a good point to take a break. Join us after the break when we find out what happens to a country now which has a leader who derives his power from the people rather than from God himself. Welcome back. So just before the break, we were talking about this constitutional revolution, which,

Ali, I just think, you know, isn't it a huge psychological break or turnaround for the people of Iran, that, you know, they are going to have power over a leader rather than their leader deriving power from God himself? That's a big deal, isn't it? I mean, one of the fascinating things, of course, is that you get elements of the clergy who are quite divided over what this means. I mean, some elements of the more reactionary clergy do exactly what you said. They'd say, no, no, God is supreme and all this. But there are many senior clergy and two pivotal members who are very much pro the constitution, by the way. They don't see it as antithetical to Islam at all. And there is a tension clearly between those who are much more secular in their

outlook and aggressively secular in their outlook and see the nation as dominant, whereas, you know, others see, no, no, this is the role of the divine has to be there. But initially at least, it's the secularists who win out. Okay, I mean, that is what's quite interesting. And the real problem that Iran has in the constitutional revolution in a practical sense, those do with the practical sense, is that what they've developed is essentially a constitutional system without the tools of government to be able to implement it. You know, so the first thing they do, they have their first parliament and they say, oh, we're going to set up free comprehensive education for everyone. And someone says, well, how are we going to do it? And they say, well, he's going to pay for that.

Yeah, exactly. And then they go, well, we'll have to set up taxation. Well, how do it? I mean, how are we going to do that? So it comes into this where you have these grand ideas that simply are not realisable. I mean, it's very, very difficult. And has no roots in the soil or the history or traditions? Well, it's very difficult for them because they don't have the tools of government to achieve what they want to do. But they have the most astonishing ideas. I mean, what we'll see later in the early Pahlavi period in Rezaa Shah is basically Rezaa Shah realizing some of the ambitions of this earlier period when he starts to implement things on the ground. Now, in this earlier what you have is this sheer tension between, you know, the great ideas and the ability to do them.

But also this tension, I suppose, as we're sort of alluding to, this idea of, is Iran a sort of a nation or is it an imperial state? And what I think the geniuses, I have to say, of Iranian intellectuals in this period, is they're able to make this transition from being an imperial state to a national state. And the greatest indication of this, by the way, even though Iran is, is that while the Ottoman Empire, collapsed and was dismembered after the First World War, the Iranian state was not. I mean, this is quite interesting because there were many people who would have liked to have taken bits and pieces of Iran and chucked it around, you know, and apportioned it. But, Ali, nonetheless, the Constitution Revolution does not lead to peace. Termole goes on. Initially, obviously, the reaction comes from the monarchy. The Shah that signed in the Constitution does the decent thing and

dies of a paralytic stroke. So he sort of signs it. They basically force him to sign him to sign. They basically force him to sign it and then he goes, oh, you know, dies. So his son comes in. His son is much more reactionary. Mohamed Alishah. Is a young man? I mean, paint as a portrait of Mohammed Alishah. What's his sort of personality? Basically, he's supported by the Russians who are very much against this sort of thing. You know, the bazaar doesn't want a constitutional system on his southern border. So initially you get a reaction by the Russians, then the constitutionalists come back. So there is essentially a civil war going on in Iran. I mean, this is the thing that's going on. And of course, just as the country is settling to some sort of harmony, you then get the Great War.

And we shouldn't forget that in the background to all this, by the way, and it is in the background, it's almost in the dim disney, is the discovery of oil. Okay, so you then have the Anglo-Persian oil company. On the last day of the concession or something, he looked and he looked and nothing came. And then on the very last day, wait, wait, wait, this is too good a story to just skip that way. So now, who is the he that we're talking about? It's a chap called Darcy, Knox Darcy. He's an Australian British entrepreneur. He never went to Iran, actually.

I mean, he never went to Iran. He signed a concession. No, but he's a big old chance. I mean, he is kind of sort of the digger barns of this story. You know, he's a pirate and a chancer. And he's got people looking for the oil or they just happen upon it. No, no, they're looking. They spend, so, I mean, the interesting thing is, and to go back,

so he signs a concession in 1901. They spent basically seven years trying to find exploitable reserves. I mean, they know there's something there. But again, the problem with this story is people always look at it on the basis of the retrospectively from the 1940s and 1950s. I mean, the sheer fact is that actually it was pretty difficult in these early days. And the most interesting thing about it is really when the Anglo-Russian Convention is signed in 1907, this is before oil is actually discovered. I mean, the areas of southwestern Iran where the British have their concession is not even included in the British sphere of influence. Gray doesn't even include it. So they didn't even take it seriously. I mean, it's only afterwards. really after the First World War, that oil starts to have a much, much bigger impact. But this is part of another narrative, of course, of the development of modern Iran in this period, both the political sense in the constitutional revolution and an economic sense with oil. So I was right. So if I can put it this way, oil is bubbling away in the background, just about.

Nice. Nice. Yeah, see what I did. Tell us about Reza Shah and his rise, because this is the backdrop to his emergence on the scene. Tell us about Reza Shah. So, I mean, the important thing to realize is that the Constitution Revolution basically portrays the monarch for the first time as a sort of a national monarch. They sort of see him as a, you know, the people's king. But of course, the Khadjars are deeply unpopular. I mean, they're seen as people who have been dragged, kicking and screaming into the sort of the modern age. Old feudal elite. And so basically, many of the intellectuals are looking. They come to the Constitution Revolution and they say, God, we had all these fantastic ideas. And frankly, it's all ended in a bit of a dud. I mean, you know, we haven't really been. able to succeed to do anything. So what they start looking around is they start casting around for a strong man, essentially, who they think is going to be able to save the kind. It's a sort of like a Nader Shah-like figure, which is a bit worrying, by the way, but nonetheless, it's that sort of myth of the saviour. Sure. Are they looking for somebody from an aristocratic family

with sort of Safavid wisps in his hair? I mean, you know, what does he have to have this leader that they want? By the way, this is all part of this enlightenment narrative. They say what we need in order to set ourselves up properly is an enlightened despot to get things kickstarted. And they actually use the term. In fact, one of the characters they look at, they say, is they say, what we need is someone like Peter the Great who could sort us out. But is it? So, I mean, again, I just, because you know so much about this, and we're all coming to

this fresh, is it sort of like a, I don't know, X-factual audition where they bring people, these intellectuals, these Iranian intellectuals, bring people in front of them and interview them for the job of being the nation's next. man. How do they do this? No. So basically, we have to go into the period of the Great War. And the crucial factor is the Russian Revolution. Okay? Russian Revolution comes in. Cossack Brigade is in disarray. The Russian officers are off. Iranian officers take over the Cossack Brigade. One of the chaps who comes through is this chat called Reza Khan, and he becomes the commander of the Cossack Brigade. Supported by a British guy called General Ironside, who says straight out of central casting.

So Reza Khan is making his name as a good soldier and is sort of getting into order these unruly Cossacks and he's got British backing. And what is his, I mean, what is his lineage? Does he have any of the blue blood? No, he doesn't. He's basically, no, no, no. Just a normal Iranian bloke. He invents a, he invents a genealogy. Well, everybody does that. I mean, everybody says eventually. He's a sort of the earth stuff, actually. Okay. Well, well, that's very compelling. Pretty dower, tall, military. I mean, they sort of claim he was in. He wasn't illiterate. He was a self-made man, though. He was a self-made man, and he becomes part of a coup in 1921. Not the leader, incidentally, but the sort of the armed wing of it.

And he's looking over his shoulder at Ataturk next door, seeing what Ataturk's doing. I'm going to say no, actually, no. Oh, really? He's a modernised. This is one of these myths. The Turkish-Iran link is very strong. But actually, I would stress that a lot of the stuff that Reza Khan is doing emanates really. from the intellectual legacy of the constitutional revolution and beforehand. I mean, he's very much grounded there. So there's a lot, and the reason I say that is when we get on to Reza Khan,

there's a lot of stuff that Reza Khan does that predates what I had to turn. So the chronology isn't that clear. Okay, all right. On Reza Khan, though, you said he commits a coup, but I thought they liked him anyway. They wanted him in charge anyway. What's the nature of this coup? Who's backing?

Who's bankrolling the coup? I mean, what's going on here? After the Great War, the dominant power in Iran is foreign power, is the British. I mean, the Russians are gone. The Ottomans are in a disdain, and about to collapse. And the British remain there. The Iranians are seeking reparations and help for the rebuilding their country. And of course, this is the moment that Kursin steps in, because Kersen has a sort of a very patrician-like love affair with Iran. Kersen is the foreign secretary at this point. He is, yes. He's traveled there as a young man. Oh, yeah. I mean, he's very enamored. I mean, he's so enamored with Iran that even the foreign officer fed up with him. What Kersen does is he tries to develop what he calls the Anglo-Persian Treaty, which basically many Iranians think, well, certainly nationalist Iranians, think actually this is going to reduce

Iran to the status of a protectorate. I think it's more nuanced than that, but certainly the reason why the Anglo-Persian Treaty doesn't work is because the UK Treasury isn't interested. I mean, they basically say we're not getting into this shenanigans of Iran. The British Empire is big enough, frankly, and we're not taking on any other responsibilities. Kersen is absolutely livid about it. I mean, he feels Britain is losing an opportunity. And he's very, very, you know, he's very upset.

I mean, there are some wonderful comments where you. Now, the British military on the ground say that we just can't stay here. We need something that, you know, something has to happen. Something permanent. Something permanent needs to happen. Yeah. This is where Ironside and others say, you know, what we need is a proper government in this country, hopefully friendly, by the way, but, you know, we need a proper guy.

And so, Cursons, you know, apoplectic about all this, but you can't do anything about it. And eventually, Iranian, I mean, this is the point. The whole thing about the coup in 1921 is it actually originates with Iranians. It doesn't originate with the British. The thing is, is that the British basically enable it. They say, fine, this seems like a good solution to our problem. We can leave. You guys can take, you know, the charge.

And the leader of this coup is a journalist by the name of Tabataboi, Sayyatia Tabatabai, who's seen as very pro, he's an Anglophile. So the British are very happy with that. And this coup comes in. It doesn't overthrow the monarchy, by the way. It simply overthrows the government. The government who they say had got into this tussle with the British over the Anglo-Persian agreement and, you know, we don't like this, get rid of them.

The British say, yeah, that's fine with us, set up a decent government. What we want is something stable. You know what the British want? They just want a stable, something that we don't have to spend any more money on. Our man in Tehran. And it's a straightforward military coup. Yeah, yeah. There's a military wing to it.

But again, it's led by a journalist. The government comes in. and then Reza Khan within six months basically turfs out all his competitors. And in stages becomes commander-in-chief of the armed forces, minister of war, and then prime minister. So at what point does Reza Khan finally wear the crown of Shah? I mean, and how does that actually take place? Well, you know, is there much rejoicing in the street? So we're talking about 1925?

1925, yeah. So basically, Rezachan, as prime minister, restores order to Iran. He does, and I have to say, I must say this because it's a very important moment. He, you know, the southern, the south-western part of Iran where the oil fields are and the Anglo-Persian oil companies working, the British minister in Tehran, so Percy Lorraine, basically writes a report to London and says, we're going to put our money behind Reza Khan, who was seeking to reunite the country. There was a movement to actually split Khuzistan away from Iran, okay?

There was the local Arab Sheikh wanted to be a separate protector. And Rezahan prevents this. and he convinces the British to back him. It's actually, to my mind, a much more important moment than the coup, okay, because it basically brings Iran's oil resources into Iranian central government control. And this is the bit where he toys, and this is the bit where he toys of the idea of a republic. He looks at a bit, and this is the bit where Mustafa Kamal, Kamalaatatat, the bit comes in. He looks across and he says, oh, yeah, you know, they've abolished the caliphate, they've abolished this,

will toy with the idea of a republic. Now, the argument here is that Reza Khan was, playing a very cunning game because he then goes to the clergy and he says, I'm thinking about setting up a republic. And the clergy go, oh my God, this is a dictatorship. We've seen what Ataturk's doing over there and he's a bloody atheist. We're not having this. So we'd much prefer if the monarchy stayed. And he says, well, okay, but then I'll become monarch. And they go, yeah, that's fine. I mean, this is what is quite interesting. At this stage, the clergy are basically of the view that monarchy is more Muslim than a republic.

Is that interesting? Which if you look at Turkey, by the way, it's a fair assessment. Yes, it's fair. So basically, Reza Khan goes to Qombe in 1924, has this apparent discussion. We don't know what the details are called. Kazangli says, I've discussed with the clergy, and it's quite clear that, you know, I understand that a republic is not really in Iran's tradition, therefore we'll have a monarchy. He then goes to Parliament, and he gets Parliament in a very British sense, I have to say,

to vote out the Rajas and to vote him in as the founder of the Pahlavi dynasty, which was a contested. I mean, I have to say, not everyone was happy with it. Okay, but now you've brought in a name that's really important, the Pallavi. Now, where does he take the name? Why the name, Palavi? He is Reza Khan, after all. So where is that name from? What does it mean? So in 1924, when he was Prime Minister, the fifth parliament is a very important parliament. He implements a number of reforms. And this is why I say it's well ahead of what was happening in Turkey, brother. And one of the things they do is they adopt surnames. Now, why do they adopt surnames? Because

they adopt surnames, because it's easier to administer. If you have a name and a surname, you can start a bureaucracy and start collecting records, right? And he decides, I'll take the term Pahavi. And the term Pahavi has two connotations. One, it's the term for the Middle Persian language, the language of the Sassanians, but also associates him with the Sassanians. I mean, that's what he's interested in. So yet again, we have everyone looking back to the Sassanians. Yeah, yeah. I mean, he basically draws a lot from that. And the intellectuals who back him at this stage are, you know, lured him on the basis that he's a new sort of a people's monarch. I mean, he wasn't, but a sort of a national monarch. But I should say it's not at all, interestingly, it's not as innovative as people think, because of course, Arama'amah Khan did exactly the same. Okay, so we've got a new man, a new name, a new future for Iran. So join us on Thursdays. We look at the rule of Reza Pahlavi, the rise of his son, Muhammad Rezaa Pahlavi, also known as the last Shah.

But William, what if they want to hear that episode right now? Well, we've got great news for you, because if you are a member of the Empire Podcub, you can sign up and get access not just to the next episode, but access to all our series on the Iranian Revolution. Over this week and the next, we will be telling the full story and unpick just how one of the most significant events of the 20th century occurred. It's the incredibly improbable story of how a Western-leaning, modernizing monarch was overthrown by a theocracy, by Mullers from Com, advocating the rule of Shia Islam. It's also improbable, as it may seem, was the beginning of a whole series of similar events. across the rest of the Middle East. Yeah.

So, I mean, if you are on Apple Podcasts, you can sign up with a few clicks on your Empire Podcast feed, or if not, you can sign up at EmpirePoduk.com. If you've signed up, we'll see you in a minute. But if you haven't, then you'll have to wait. Either way, we'll be back. It's goodbye from me, Anita Arnhem.

And goodbye from me, William Durember.