A History of Modern Iran Since 1921: The Pahlavis and After

Book Description
Combining detailed historical narrative with comprehensive analysis and explanation, Ali Ansari presents a new interpretation of the complex cultural polity that is modern Iran. Straddled between the world's two major energy basins, the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea, and possessing a rich reservoir of hydrocarbon resources as well as diverse minerals, Iran has always been economically significant. The Islamic Revolution thrust the country back onto the political centre-stage, and dramatically altered relations between Iran and the West. This book looks at these developments within an historical context. It charts how Iran sought to respond to the challenge of the West through reform and revolution, and to reverse the decline of the previous century with an ambitious program of development. This text offers a new interpretation of key events including the 1979 Revolution and the origins of the Iran-Iraq war. The author uses wide range of foreign and Persian sources including interviews with key players and shows how domestic and international events combined to produce certain outcomes. For readers interested in the Middle East.

From the Back Cover
Combining detailed historical narrative with comprehensive analysis and explanation, Ali Ansari presents a new interpretation of the complex cultural polity that is modern Iran. Straddled between the world's two major energy basins, the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea, and possessing a rich reservoir of hydrocarbon resources as well as diverse minerals, Iran has always been economically significant. The Islamic Revolution thrust the country back onto the political centre-stage, and dramatically altered relations between Iran and the West. This book looks at these developments within an historical context. It charts how Iran sought to respond to the challenge of the West through reform and revolution, and to reverse the decline of the previous century with an ambitious program of development. This text offers a new interpretation of key events including the 1979 Revolution and the origins of the Iran-Iraq war. The author uses wide range of foreign and Persian sources including interviews with key players and shows how domestic and international events combined to produce certain outcomes. For readers interested in the Middle East.

About the Author
Ali M Ansari is lecturer in the Political History of the Middle East at the University of Durham and an expert in Iranian affairs. He acts as consultant to business and policy makers and makes regular media appearances.


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Seeing the rise of Reza Khan to power as the event that "brought the modern to Iran in a material sense," Ansari (political history of the Middle East, U. of Durham, UK) begins his history of Iran from that moment in the early 1920s. He explores the political history of Iran as a process by which political elites managed change in pursuit of particular conceptions of modernity. The narrative of reform and revolution touches upon such themes as the harnessing and managing of social forces, the emergent integration of Iran into the international order, and nationalism as a force for mass mobilization. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR


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