Exploring Iran's Constitutional Revolution

I'm here to talk to you today about uh the history of the Constitutional revolution in Iran um a couple of quick sort of background comments before we get started I shall be using the terms Persia and Iran interchangeably they are the same country don't worry uh Iran is simply the term that those uh native to the country have called that country Persia is obviously the term that many people in Europe have known the country I tend to like to use it into partly because in a western context you will find much more Connection in some ways much more historical and cultural connection with the term Persia but even in the context of the time that we're looking at uh many British and other observers would be talking about Persia and you know those Iranians who were active and the political activists of the time would obviously in their own language be talking about uh about Iran I want to say quite emphatically now also that the term Iran is not a new invention just in case anyone sort of picks that up from some Wayward textbook which has got it wrong sadly but I just want you to sort of be absolutely clear on that now secondly I want to sort highlight why we should be looking at an event that happened over 100 years ago uh in framing the context of the demonstrations and the protests that happened last year and which in many ways are still simmering away I mean the problems have not gone away and the reason is very simple the Constitutional Revolution marks that moment when the modern IRA I State basically is born it shapes the political sort of lexicon for the next you know 100 years at least to this day and many people today who are fighting for their rights in Iran look to 1906 as that period when this sort of this process was born 1906 itself of course has a long gestation okay it's it's a it's a process that took many many years to come to fruition and it's a process which I'm sorry to say has yet yet to be fulfilled that promise of the 1906 Constitution and that that that uh that that period of revolution uh the promise that it held has yet to be fulfilled and even at the centinary in 2006 Iranian students who seem I have to say to be amongst the uh most courageous uh elements in Iranian s today repeatedly come up and say to their leaders uh why is it you know that we have not yet achieved even the most fundamental aims of the Constitutional process uh in 1906 and of course what they do in saying that is they undermine in some ways or delegitimize the importance of the 1979 Revolution which they don't see as a as a movement that actually achieved uh the aims that it set out to do and not only that but didn't actually even progress some of the uh the ideas that were outlined in 1906 so this period I think is very important for our understanding of modern Iran because it's important to Iranians themselves they find it vital as an understanding of their own political development but I think it's very important for us to understand also how this came to FR also in some ways because of British Iranian relations themselves as you'll see the relationship between Britain and Iran in this period was particularly intimate uh not entirely not entirely positive it has to be said but not for the reasons that you might think um and one which nonetheless shows that there is a sort of a a tradition in some way of of Anglo Iranian or Anglo Persian cooperation that we might going forward uh see fit to resuscitate now this whole event starts in July uh 1906 this this particular moment in the Constitutional Revolution where the British charade Affair in tan at the time even in Grant Duff someone who was a relatively Junior official is approached by a number of senior Iranian clerics as it happens and they say to him they say you know that we have been continuing our struggle against the monarchy and the absolute monarchy over the last 6 months and we would like to seek your assistance in the pursuit of our aims and we would like to take sanctuary in the British Embassy because we don't trust our government anymore and Grant Duff with a customary tact says well you know it is not the policy of his Majesty's government to intervene in the domestic politics of of Iran so the clerics go off they they disappear off and they don't talk about anything and and then a few days later they come back and they said if we were to take sanctuary in the British Embassy compound and this was a compound in outside of Teran in the north of tan it is actually inside Teran now but in those was outside Teran said would you would you use Force to evict us and we don't know what evil and Grant D said at that time but he can't have said anything too harsh he basically said they might have said well it's not really our business really to forcibly evict you so within two to three weeks a number of individuals settled in encamped in the British Embassy compound and within those two to three weeks those initial 50 individuals that go in eventually amount to 14,000 14,000 people from a city of Teran which at that time we estimate may have been no more than 250,000 in total 14,000 men let's limit it to the men so we would say it's a huge proportion of the politically active population and certainly and the male population of Iran at the and tan at the time all settled in in the British Embassy compound and there they instructed evil and Granda they said in our negotiations with the Iranian government with the crown we want you to be our interlocutor it's worth pausing and thinking about that for a moment that these Persian revolutionaries at the time decided to ask a relatively Junior official at the British Embassy he was in charge the minister wasn't hadn't arrived yet that you know they want him to be the interlocutor why is it and how was it that the British played such a central role in the development and the progress of this of this revolutionary movement and I think to understand that you have to look back over the preceding century actually at the interaction and engagement between Iranians and The Wider world and how they absorbed the ideas that were confronting them and we finally come now to this slide which was meant to be the second slide uh which is actually uh one of the earlier encounters between British diplomats and the Persian king in around 1808 1809 and it's just mainly emblematic of the interactions that occurred at the time during the Napoleonic Wars where the British were looking to engage Iran as an ally certainly in one sense for the defense of India the growth of the British Empire in India but also as a means of basically containing France initially and then ultimately the Russians and for the better part of a 100 years Iran found itself as an imperial State an imperial state in Decline although it took a bit of time to realize it was in Decline as an imperial State caught between the pins in a sense of the Russian Empire to the north by far the greatest threat to Iranian sovereignty has to be said in this period because they were moving south and the British Empire to the south and east in in India and intellectuals in Iran at the time began to divide over what was the best route and the best way to achieve in some ways their you know the challenge to cope with the challenge that the West Was providing Iran had coped with many challenges in the past coming from abroad and tended to sort of cope with them in one way or another absorb them convert them you know whatever adapt to their new but the European challenge was something different the European challenge was not only an economic and political challenge but it was also an ideological Challenge and the British in this respect were particularly good partly out of necessity in expressing and exuding the soft power that they had the British didn't have the luxury of the Russians in 19th in the 19th century of sending a brigade over if they wanted to get their job done the British on the other hand excelled in another thing political officers people trained really in Persuasion and what did they have to sell they basically sold like a lot of these earlier diplomats they said to the the Persians the Iranians at the time if you want to reap the benefits of modernity this is what you need to do they didn't say to them by the way that you're incapable of this they said actually quite interesting if you read the accounts they say look we in a miserable Island on the northwest coast of Europe we haven't really done a huge out but the last 100 years have been pretty good for us why have they been good for us education discipline law and that's what they say to the Persians say you want this this is what you need to do and a number of Persians Iranians absorbed this they travel to Britain and they've been traveling to Britain really since the 19th century there have been some extraordinary people who came to Britain at the time and basically absorbed and digested and lapped up really with with a good deal of enthusiasm what they saw and the British were very keen to basically obviously sell them sort of a British success story remember this is post-napoleonic Britain very confident industrial and what they say is that what you need to do is you know pick up the things that we've done look at the way we've adapted our politics because the problem you have is not a social one it's not because you're Persian there's no biological deficiency here the problem you have is political and you see this in a number of British writers and of course it's very attractive to the Iranians and the Iranians sort of adapt and and and and and engage with this one of the things many of the Persian diplomats who are engaged with Britain do is they all become members almost universally I have to say of the Masons they all become Freemasons why do they become Freemasons because the Freemasons offers them a Rootin to what they consider to be an international int ual Brotherhood one that doesn't require them to believe in weird and wonderful ideas of the Christian Trinity but it does expect them to believe in God which suits them very well and it has lots of ritual which suits them even more yeah they love it and they engage with it and it's one of the means by which these ideas these sort of what we term radical wig ideas begin to become infused into the into the Iranian Consciousness and throughout the 19th century you begin to see this process of intellectuals arguing very forcefully that what the country needs is a political change not a revolution on the French model let's not get carried away with the French okay we don't want to execute our king or anything it's a bit rough but the British seem to have a fairly nice idea of what we need to get done here Constitution rule of law limits on the power of the Monet more than that they also pick up and this is an inter interesting thing that most people don't pick up on they also pick up that Britain is a a Cosmopolitan Nation if you will put it that way it's made up of different components it's got English Scottish Welsh Irish and they all seem to bind together and of course for the Iranians who are seeking a sort of a the development of a sort of a national state from what is essentially an imperial Kingdom this has its attractions too it's a model they can follow so when you're looking at this initial period there are attractions but there's also a push factor too let's not be let's not be to Rose tinted about what the relationship is because one of the problems that the Iranians have with their British interlocutors is they're very good on ideas but they're not very good at putting them in practice okay they look at the British and they say you know what do you think these ideas are marvelous but why don't you live up to them and of course the British attitude is well you know we've got It's Complicated politics is complicated the Russians you know we don't want to mess around with them so there's a wonderful case actually where a Persian Prince complains to an Iranian Diplomat uh beg you pardon to a British Diplomat in the 1860s where he says why is it that you have pursued the abolition of the slave trade with so much enthusiasm for no other reason than your shared common Humanity but you won't help us abolish the slave trade in Central Asia and the reasons are simple because Britain has a Navy it doesn't have a very strong Army and it can't get to Central Asia so it can't do it but the British Diplomat says privately you know I obviously have to fob the guy off but privately I had to admit that it probably wasn't a great look in some ways that you know we weren't delivering on some that we did impress on some levels but we couldn't on others now in 1856 Britain and Iran went to war hopefully for the last time actually it was wasn't technically Britain it was the East India Company but nonetheless it was the last war the East India Company fought it was shortlived didn't last long but what was remarkable about it actually was not the war itself it was the treaty that followed and the treaty that followed the British actually imposed a very lenient treaty on the Iranians the Iranians were quite shocked compared to the Russian treaty it was it didn't have a huge amount to it what that did is it also opened the door in some ways to British ideas being much much more influential Within Iranian political Elites because they suddenly realized that actually you know the British might be our friends they were to be mistaken some level but nonetheless they saw it as attractive and one of the things they did Mistake by the way was they decided the way we need to pursue this the way we need to pursue change is not through political change because we can't do it the monar going to allow will'll invite British entrepreneurs to come and set up corporations offer concessions economic EC economic change and that economic change will catalyze political change these economic concessions that were to come in in some ways in in many ways were to be enormously influential okay in an economic sense I'm not going to go into the into depth of them now because we don't have time what it did do however is it galvanized opinion in some ways against the British as well so the British had both a positive and a negative impact on the way in which Iranian intellectuals uh forg the future one is they were attracted by the ideas of British political organization but to they were in some ways offended by British policy and practice okay the various the various economic concessions were seen in many ways as selling out the country was selling out but their criticism was really against the monarch it wasn't really it wasn't so much against the British it was against the monarch the Monarch was seen as selling out the country so all this sort of feeds into a sentiment and an agitation but I have to say it's very slow Iran doesn't have a print culture in this period literacy rate is pretty slow is pretty low so it's not like you have you know political ideas you know in a sort of a febr political environment intellectual environment it's not it's pretty small it is run through a series of sort of networks of of uh connections of sort of lodges real or imagined it has to be said many of them were imagined but nonetheless they were sort of connected so what you have the the initial Awakening as people say and it's one that Edward Brown basically let me get to I've forgotten to now push these slides on so I'm going to skip this slide because it's not quite as important anymore I've moved on these are individuals who are who are basically active in the uh in the uh um in in developing ideas of constitutionalism in Iran this gentleman here incidentally say Jamal afani was is generally known by a lot of of writers certainly in the Arab Muslim world as a political islamist I don't think he was I think he was actually a he was a someone who pursued ideas of constitutionalism and Enlightenment ideas certainly Iran he was very popular in London and Paris and the salons and he wrote quite widely on it Malcolm Khan was another gentleman who lived in London for for for for at least a decade and he produced a newspaper called the law which he wanted to get you know in order to impress people on the different ideas now there are two things that basically several things which which accelerate the momentum towards change as we get up to 1906 let's park these two individuals for a moment because we'll get to them in a minute classic foreign office style here by the way as you can see on your on your uh on your left in 1890 91 there was a concession given completely misjudged to a British entrepreneur a bit of of a crook to be honest by the name of major tolber for a monopoly on Tobacco selling in Iran it caused huge offense amongst the amongst the merchant classes and it sparked a Revolt it sparked a Revolt which combined different elements in Iranian Society part of the Iranian Elite against the monarch intellectuals Aristocrats and intellectuals the clergy and uh the merchant classes the Bazar and these three groups came together they persuaded a senior cleric issue a fatwa Banning smoking was very preent he said smoking's bad for you don't do it and almost overnight everyone in Iran stopped smoking they boycotted it I mean it didn't last don't worry don't get too excited but the fact is it it was it was quite a moment it was helped interesting by interesting Enough by an earlier concession which was the establishment of the telegraph company in Iran which was the British Indo Iranian Indo European Telegraph company which allowed these ideas to disseminate quicker but nonetheless this this moment is seen by different writers as as as the moment when this sort of Iranian Awakening started that there was this Coalition of different interests that catalyzed a process of of of change and resistance the Sha at the time was forced to cancel the concession at Great cost and it was seen as a bit of a Triumph but actually from that period 1891 through to sort of 1905 nothing much happens the Sha is assassinated in 1896 but nobody really notices his son comes in again nobody really notices because he was even even worse and even more laxidasical than the father and again nothing much happens there are certain things happening internationally which are quite important one is there's a Russia Persian War uh big Russia Japanese War and the Russians lose it's a shocker okay the Russian Empire the seat of autocracy loses a war to an Asiatic power and it sends shock waves around Asia then there's also the Russian Revolution in 1905 which fails but the agitation a lot of re Russian revolutionaries particularly from the Caucasus the Armenians move South so there's a certain amount of agitation in the air the economy in Iran isn't doing particularly well but it hasn't been for a while there's a particularly obstructive Belgian Customs official by the name of missan Na who is there instructed to extra extract as much tax as he possibly can from the merchants and in one particular case at the end of 1905 he he's particularly brutal when I say particular brutal he basically beats someone he didn't shoot him he beats him but the person he beats is someone who seemed to have a certain religious standing in society and for some reason and we don't know why and this is always the problem with these revolts this is the trigger this is the straw that breaks the camels back I mean it would have been extremely routine to punish someone who was agitating about something or complaining about paying too much tax but for some reason beating this guy Sparks off a Revolt now the British minister in Iran at the time a gentleman by the name of hard rights a very very sort of some of you will have read this of course uh a very very uh LAX no actually it's not a bad report actually but but he's he is a bit bored I mean you can see when he it's at the end of 1905 beginning 19 and he says there's been a few things in Iran going but not much it's a bit boring uh you know nothing happens this country you know is useless you know we ought to talk to the Russians about how we can split spheres of influence and he says that and he goes off now in the period January 1906 onwards you get a series of rebellions they're fairly light touch in some ways but increasingly significant they involve the clergy they involve the intellectuals and they involve the Bazar just as you had in 1891 and the clergy in particular start to withdraw their services from the city from the capital and to withdraw from the capital they say until the king actually yields to our demands for a house of justice we're not coming back the king characteristically says yeah okay okay we don't we don't want hassle we'll think of a house of justice for you whatever that is and in classic style I mean like all governments he says we'll set up a committee and we'll discuss it so everyone comes back says okay we'll set up your committee now the detail of this goes on and on a bit but it's about and this is the period of several months when this goes on and nothing really happens but the protests Mount they start to get violent troops are sent in people a shot people get killed again we're not talking a vast number of people but it's still significant by Iranian standards and what you're beginning to hear is people talking in terms that they've never talked before you have an official sitting you know the king says to people they say we're very pleased that you are here uh to support and and your loyal Servants of the crown and you get people saying we are not Servants of the crown we are Servants of the nation completely different language the king Al he's very lacks at Day School doesn't really sort of understand what's going on but clearly the momentum is losing is getting away them the king then with alarmingly good timing has a paralytic stroke and he's out he's out of action fortunately his minister of Court takes over who's even more reactionary because he thinks well the king is a bit useless so now that he's had a paralytic stroke I'll take care of and I'll sort this Rabel out of course in trying to sort the Rabel out just makes matters worse I say these things because I just want to sort emphasize to you how revolutionary movements are very contingent it's a bit of bad luck a bit of good luck but the king you know there's a wonderful account by cesil Spring rice here the chap on the right who says that the king and his partical stroke was being told by his courtiers just how well and fit he was even though clearly he wasn't even really communicating anything at all but they were encouraging him to continue living it's at this stage in July where you get the sanctuary and the in the British Embassy and they go to the British Embassy because they've tried sanctuary in other places in mosques for instance and they haven't been able to get you know the the crown just thinks that a mo there's nothing sacred about a mosque so let's not bother about that so they go to the British Embassy those 14,000 people sitting in the British Embassy compound are very well organized and very well managed again there's an account of the British Embassy and they say actually to be honest it's not a mob they're actually pretty well they look after themselves there's been a few damage to the flower beds but you know let's not get you know we won't get too fuss about that but by and large the Bazar is supplying all the food and you know they they keep themselves themselves and they're discussing things it's probably the greatest political seminar ever have taken place in Iran and they in discussion with evil in Grant Duff they organize they sort of actually start to refine and organize what exactly their demands are and their demands ultimately are for a constitution with a parliament a separation of powers and the notion of the of of the implementation of the rule of law wasf Sha for got that this fetching gentleman here finally signs the new constitution into law or basically gives the edict for the new constitution to go in and then does the good thing and dies okay so he he he just doesn't you know that's it that's his job done it's in some ways not a great idea because the his son is is is is a mega reactionary but nonetheless it's done and there is this wonderful sort of pen portrait of people saying for God's sake sign it sign it you know before he just s finally conks out in the period of a year there's a transformation in the political landscape of Iran and it took Everyone by surprise I mean this is one of the things that I find really quite striking it was a movement that was founded fundamentally on ideas and new ideas that people had engaged with it was it was ideas which allowed people to think the unthinkable and at a period of time from when you know Arthur Harding earlier says there's absolutely nothing going on it's all a bit of a disaster within a year suddenly you get this sort of complete transformation of the landscape in Iran and cesil spring rice writes to Edward gray this chap who's the foreign secretary and says 1906 has been a transformative year in the history of Persia because it has given Persia a constitution in the parliament but he adds to it also that The Prestige of Britain has never been higher because all these revolutionaries are looking to us to support their Endeavor this chap in particular a gentleman by the name of Hassan who became a very prominent ideologue of nationalism in the in the in the following 50 years was a key revolutionary he was very good friend with Edward Brown who was the professor of Persian at actually he was Professor Arabic I'm sorry to say but the his his speciality was Persian at Cambridge and they were communicated a great deal T sends a a missive to England calls it an appeal to England and you're going to know why he did send an appeal to England but he sends an appeal to England where he says the Constitutional revolution in our country is in a very speci special sense the spiritual child of Great Britain it's a striking thing to say and in the document he says it three times why does he say it before you before you wonder why why does he say it because this gentleman Edward gray who' become foreign secretary in 1906 and was suddenly confronted with this turmoil in Iran wasn't very interested in the turmoil in Iran Edward gray was the new liberal foreign secretary everyone has a go at Lord Ken Arch imperialist but interestingly enough Lord Ken was a good deal more sympathetic to what was going in Iran than Edward gray Edward gray was principally interested in Britain Security in Europe Britain Security in Europe depended on Alliance or a Dayton with France a Dayton with France to contain Germany required Britain to have a Dayton with Russia who was France's Ally for most Brits this was a fiasco the idea that we'd be siding up to zaris Russia the headquarters of autocracy not the done thing so Edward Gray's diplomacy was really done sort of under the covers if you will he wasn't very keen on publicizing exactly what he was doing but nonetheless he writes back the cesil pring rice who's the uh who then arrives as minister in Teran at the end of 1906 who's full of if diffusiveness and praise for what's gone in Iran and he says why the hell did Evil and Grant Duff let these people into the compound anyway why are we interfering in the domestic politics of Iran this revolution isn't going to go anywhere and we need to look at the bigger picture so what gray does is he organizes and follows on a sort of an agreement with the Russians encouraged by the French to basically settle all their disputes in Asia their Imperial distributes in Asia in order to basically consolidate the alliance in Europe one of the areas obviously that they settled their disputes are is in is in Iran and in Iran Edward gray settles on a convention with the Russians called the Anglo Russian Convention of 1907 in which Iran is split into spheres of influence I emphasize spheres of influence by the way they're not sort of taking the country apart but nonetheless of influence and it's a dreadful deal for the British Dreadful why because basically what Edward gray concedes to the Russians is he says that your sphere of influence will be Northern Iran covering all the populated areas tabes Teran mashad all the way down to isvan there'll be a little Central bit which will be neutral which we can both meddle in and then the southeast bit baluchistan will be the British sphere of influence ostensibly for the protection of India even the British government in India thought it was a disaster said why why what have you what you've given away Northern Iran for beluchistan I mean what what what the hell's that about I emphasize this because one of the side developments that I don't mention is at this stage the British have just been awarded a concession for the discovery for the exploitation of oil in Iran which is in Southwest Iran it's not included in the zone of influence okay think about it in my view it's one of the less salubrious shall we say deals struck by the British government this but what it does do is it cuts off basically the revolutionaries like tarod and others are looking to the British they're looking to the British for support they say the Russians are against this the Russians they've been defeated by the Japanese they've had a bit of the hassle with their own Revolution but now Zan Nicholas is back and he wants rid of this nonsense constitutionalism so people like say what we need is the British to help us stop the Russians interfering in our country and it's a very interesting document he puts out he says I don't want the British to intervene in Iran I want the British to stop the Russians intervening in Iran but gray sadly is of the view that no we've signed an agreement and you know those areas are going to be in the Russian sphere of influence and if the Russians intervene to basically block the constitution in support of a reactionary monarchy we're not intervening in that it's not our problem massive mistake in my view certainly and cesil bring rice writes the gray privately and he says in doing this we will be seen by many of our Persian friends as having betrayed them C bring right as I saying to Martin earlier also wrote the uh the him I Ved be my country by the way in his spare time um quite an achievement in itself he later becomes ambass in Washington actually as it happened so quite a list of celebrated post things but spring rice is absolutely right and he laments in his letters he says what we have done is we've dropped the ball very very badly here there is a constitutional Revolution that is built on a model of a British constitution you'll see in books by the way that they'll say it's based on the Belgian Constitution or the Bulgarian Constitution or this that the other this is all flannel all right this is because nobody wants to admit it's actually from the English Constitution because you know that would be a bit problematic for them but basically the Belgian Constitution is a redacted English Constitution Okay so this is what it so they've adapted it from that it's a parliamentary system okay with the um you know with with limitations on the uh on the on the powers of the Monarch a limited franchise by the way we're not talking about a franchise that's that that's Universal by any stretch of imagination but it doesn't compare too badly with what's going on in Europe but more pertinently within it it does say in its original construct in its original reading that sovereignty lies with the people and this is quite striking and it's pretty Progressive but almost immediately you get problems not only with the divisions internationally which are clearly problems that are going to suffocate the way the revolution moves but also the revolutionaries themselves again one of the great problems of liberals the world over from 1848 onwards really they achieve something and then in their enthusiasm at their achievement actually don't know what to do next yeah the way in which the parliament is set up and this is the big problem of course is that it's set up with a heavily weighted number of deputies from Teran on the capital the rest of the country is very poorly represented but not only is the capital over represented the mid all the votes came in and all the deputies are elected for Teran the parliament meets it's corate all the other deputies can we can wait for them to get them sorted out so they get on with things they're so enthusiastic and then they suddenly come to the realization well we want free education we want a good transport Network we want standardization of weight me we want a national anthem we want this we want an army we want and someone says who's going to pay for it and they say well I mean doesn't it just happen no so they then go to the Monarch and they say well you can pay for it he says I'm not paying for it I don't like this constitution business anyway the whole point was of course that what had to be done was a system of Taxation but of course nobody wants to pay taxes even if they wanted to pay taxes there was no system for collecting taxes I mean this was the fundamental problem facing the Constitutional revolutionist big on ideas not great on implementation and it confronted them very hard I mean it hit them very hard that all these ideas they had and the ideas are extraordinary actually I mean they are extraordinary the fact is they were running into a sort of a a a real Ravine in terms of being able to do anything about it so you get this twoing and throwing you get the sort of the counterrevolutionaries and the revolutionaries and they fight two and fro two and fro two and fr it goes on to about 1911 finally the Constitution seems to have triumphed but in terms of the power of the constitutionalist it's not getting very far the country is beginning to become ungovernable the Russians aren't letting go either they commit some pretty serious atrocities as well it's it's accounted for in a number of writings of the time the constitutionalists in desperation shall we say suddenly decide they say we need to bring in someone to come and help us sort out the finances of this country so they go to the United States the Americans don't want to get involved but they said we'll let you have a financial adviser gentleman by the name of Morgan Schuster but he can be your employee we're not sending him as an American he can be an employee of your government shusta lasts about a year not only is the system so Byzantine its own way and quite corrupt but he says there's a whole plethora of foreign powers including the British and the Russians who just not interested in me being here and they're not helping so the whole thing comes to crashing halt until we then get to the Great War and in the Great War basically Iran becomes a Battleground for essentially the Ottomans and the Russians the British coming in later but in a very small way now I put this picture up because I just want to sort of emphasize the the sort of the um the relationships between uh intellectuals across the Divide this is that gentleman Taris zodo who I showed you earlier now see suly tied and suited up coming to London to come and plead the case for the Constitutional Revolution he is aided and abetted by his colleague at the University of Cambridge Edward Brown suitably attired in Persian costume okay Brown in a classic sense said to T he said when you come here and give a talk for God's sake play it up dress like a Persian because they'll like a bit of exoticness and of course tagis said I'm not a performing monkey you know I'm not I'm not you know I'm not coming to play the play the role but the bond between these two was extremely tight and brown ultimately in 1910 writes what is still in some ways the definitive study of the Persian Revolution um certainly in the English language it's then used by Iranian historians for their own histories although I have to say that his own history is D you know there's a much more of a reciprocal relationship between you know it's not as if you know Brown was using a lot of sources from Iran as well and so they sort of fed off each other but Brown in many ways represents one of the first academic activists he was a very very prominent academic in his field but in the Persian Revolution he becomes quite polemical in his in his bid to sort of push the idea of um of uh of the importance of the Persian Revolution for Britain and uh and The Wider world and not least obviously for the Iranians themselves it's writers like these of course that set the scene and set the Legacy for the Constitutional Revolution going forward because the Constitutional revolution in Iran fails in Practical terms it doesn't succeed but what it does do is it basically inaugurates what we might term a revolution of the mind okay and this is important because the legacy of the Constitutional Revolution is profound and subsequent sort of rulers basically reflect off it none of them fulfill its promise nobody pays any attention to a constitution tion but they all want to implement its ideas about the development of the modern State and basically these become fulfilled later with the arrival of the pavi Dynasty in particular the new Dynasty that replaces the old Raja Dynasty in Iran from 1925 onwards and it's the ideas of these men like and others and this gentleman like furui another gentleman another ideologue of the period an intellectual who basically pushed through a series a series of reforms that uh transform the Iranian State they engage with the world with the wider world and it's a profound intellectual engagement many people think that much of this engagement started in the 20th century it didn't it started a century earlier and the ideas that transferred across borders were were were welldeveloped and they were absorbed by the Iranians yeah we we see too much I'm sorry to say those who are not from the historical profession tend to tend to get a little bit too obsessed with what we might term presentism which is that it's all about you know what happens now you know but the fact is it has Deep Roots and one of the reasons why I think ultimately people's fight for their rights in Iran will ultimately yield success is because its roots are so deep and because the ideas haven't been shifted these ideas that you get in Iran today about the rights of the individual about constitutional about the rule of law despite every attempt by successions of autocrats and most particularly the Islamic Republic and its religious theocracy to uproot these it hasn't worked and even the people who are fighting on the streets last year were simply echoing many of the ideas that were expressed first 100 years ago it's very striking actually that individuals like T or furui who were dismissed by the Islamic Republic as you know westernized Stooges are basically now coming back in to the political lexicon of many young people as as the people for whom you know that they should look up to and they say we've dismissed these people as Lackey of the west but actually far from it they had the right idea they understood what needed to be done in order to build a state from the bottom up with nothing it is in in a in a in a classic sense a sort of real politique as a friends of mine have discussed not realism but how do you apply liberal ideas in an illiberal environment probably the chief question of our Times by the way yeah but this is what these people are dealing with how do you apply liberal ideas in a situation which is the most unsympathetic to it we neither have the tools we neither have the means we have a reactionary government we have an international environment that isn't particularly good how do we do it and they got a good way there I won't go through all this particularly but I if you have a look at it you can always ask me questions on what on Earth I'm talking about in terms of conservatism and wigis but it's there there are a lot of the ideas that come through reflect many of the ideas that were permeating in in the west and in Britain in particular during the 19th century they're very fond you'll be interested to know in people like Edmund Burke it's obvious why they should be because Edmund Burke is seen as someone who reconciles tradition with modernity so that's what they try and that's what they try and do ultimately the state that is built by the pavis and Rasha in particular and his son Muhammad Rasha only fulfills part of the promise of the Constitutional Revolution and the part that it fulfills of course is the development of the state what they don't do they don't get round to doing is the rights of the individuals within that state okay so you get the development of the Judiciary you get the development of mass education you get a transformation of the law but you don't have actually that completion of that process which is the social aspect of it and many people assume that the 1979 Revolution might be the Great Leap Forward that would achieve that I think we've been sadly disabused of that notion but that's not the case in many ways what the current crop of rulers in Iran are trying to do is to take Iran to a precon constitutional revolutionary phase where the king is absolute but not just absolute in this case even more seriously truly divinely mandated to do as they please but the social push back against this I think is quite interesting I'll leave you for those of you who think angle R relations are really terrible which they they have been of late has to be said with this which I I think it still exists there are some Iranian colleagues here in the audience who might be able to tell me if it's still true or not true but I think it is true this is Edward Brown Street and Teran they never changed the name they kept Edward Brown very firmly I mean it's just a street it's not like a highway or anything but hell you know it's better than nothing um and Edward Brown is still considered by Iranians as the one person who supported the people against their government and didn't abandon them in their time of need and as a consequence of that brown is the one intellectual of any nationality by the way of any nationality who is still honored uh in the Iranian Capital today let's hope that that maybe uh a little lesson that can be leared by all sorts of policy makers going forward uh that um certain ideas certainly certain ideas are worth supporting and worth pushing through and uh I do think ultimately that the founding principles of these individuals on a whole range of and I've only touched the surface obviously um are the founding principles that I think will will will guide Iran through to a much more successful I hope and much more uh productive future and I shall Martin leave it there which I think is just about 45 [Applause] minutes thank you I stay stay there yeah so um could you clarify for me a little bit about the period of time when the Spheres of influ were developing so we've got Russia on one side and UK or on the other um the how aware were they of the potential raw material Pro raw materials in Iran at that time so a little bit before we needed oil wasn't it so um why were they splitting it up was it to control the access to India or other Roots Sil route and so on what that stage in 1907 it was purely a geopolitical decision for the protection as a buffer zone for India and obviously for the Russians for their own sever of influence of their North they weren't thinking in terms of Natural Resources at the time I mean oil hadn't been discovered yet right oil would be discovered in 1908 I mean what one of the great you know problems when we look at the oil industry in Iran is we sort of assume that it was a given that it would be you know this was going to be a major Center of oil production but at the time when um uh Darcy nox Darcy was given the concession in 1901 despite the fact that there was obviously clearly oil seeping out the ground in places um the fact is they couldn't find reserves that were exploitable I me they couldn't find it took him seven years to disc and they were almost went bankrupt but it is it is striking that it didn't even feature in Brown's uh in um Gray's calculations I mean he didn't he didn't it wasn't even a feature in 1915 during the Great War the sphere of inance is extended because by then oil is being produced and of course the Royal Navy has gone over to oil as as its principal source of F and was there um an involvement of of Commerce commercial organiz like the East India Company had such a a powerful in influence over Indian politics was there a commercial companies engag in the periphery of all of this at the time oh yes I mean so the British had the the British Imperial Bank of Persia which was the one sort of body that um uh basically had fiscal sort of Duties in Iran affected could print Bank notes um there was a limited amount of sort of um commercial exchange partly because the British and Russians never wanted to give the other preferential concessions I mean the the the British had one um pretty dramatic concession the Reuters concession in 1872 which was so extraordinary that even Ken commented on it and said it was the most extraordinary sort of like uh Dives of of of a country's natural resources to a single entrepreneur but it was so it was so objected to not only by foreign powers but by in the foreign office itself that they it was canceled I mean it had was canceled but then they went through extended negotiations until Reuters then got his concession for the British Imperial Bank of Persia there was the telegraph company of course and then there were various other trading concessions but until you get the oil company in 1908 which eventually forms that it's the oil company that basically transforms the um how should we say the industrial landscape of Iran so this is this is a question which obviously linked to what happened later in 1979 yeah but um I can't say where it's from I don't know was there any role for Shia Islam in this era was the yes the clerics were very actively involved in in and they were sh yeah yeah yeah absolutely I mean when we're talking about the three so in 1891 the fat words issued by a senior cleric but the the point about it is is that a senior cleric in conjunction with you know intellectual secular intellectuals in the Bazar in 1906 the clerics basically split there were some clerics who were very supportive of the Constitutional movement very actively so there were others that were completely against it um and one of them uh gentleman by the name of Nuri fazo Nuri was eventually hanged for his sins in 1909 but of course in the Islamic Republic of Iran he's seen as very much a hero of the Constitutional movement even though he was opposed to all its principles so the Shia clergy basically split I mean they split very even and of course you know we have to be careful when we talk about intellectuals and you know the Bazar and the clergy as being all sort of like single groups they're not in that sense I mean there there are people who basically split sorry I was wondering if you could comment on the class or occupational composition of the parliament that was convened after 1906 roughly speaking who is your median Deputy who is your median deput well there were there were an awful I mean the difficulty here by the way is because um first of all you don't have the the dress code changes that come in afterward so when you get a picture of the parliament in 1906 there seems to be an awful lot of people with turbans right and everyone's assumes they're all clerics they're not all clerics but the fact is that you know traditional costume tended to to be to be you know worn by quite a few people I think very much at this stage the the the median um composition of your deputies at time are still pretty elitist in that sense I mean you're talking about an elite group of people remember that you're not talking about a period of time when uh literacy or political awareness is is is is socially extensive so you even when you're talking about members of the Bazar or intellectuals or or or members of the clergy you're talking about the higher echelons of those of those of of those groups the educated the educated elements they're not all rich if that's what you're asking sorry thank you um I want to ask you about the bahai problem um I think uh the Bob was was uh executed I think around about that time and no no much earlier was earlier than that and there was bahula and also there was this problem of the bahis can you throw some light on this I can indeed I sort of uh um um skipped over that unfortunately because of of time but also because I think it adds another layer but I'm happy to outline it here so we have a uh the millenarian movement in the Barb in the 1840s and the early 1850s what that does um for those of you just to give quick background the bar basically is a is a is a um an individual who basically claims uh that not only is he the is he the sort of gateway to the the final hidden Imam of the of the uh uh of the Shia again this is why I didn't want to sort of go into a huge amount of depth about this because it's a little bit more more complex um but not only that but at some stage is claimed certainly by his followers as being the hidden Imam return so he's basically seen it's it's basically this mesic millenarian figure now why is this important in many ways is because in being uh in making these claims it's actually quite a revolutionary moment there are some people that argue that the Barbie re Revolt is basically an old style religious Revolt I tend to see it actually as something quite modern um albe it in a religious guys but one in which the Bob tries to basically argue uh you know with what he's saying that there's an abrogation of of of of Islamic law and and and and and and religion is renewed and it's the first time by the way that you see women unveil in Iran okay because they say that you know Islamic law is now is now over uh needless say the traditional clergy aren't overly joyed by Overjoyed by this development and basically the Barbie movement is is crushed ultimately it takes shape under bah to the bahis that you have today and they move abroad obviously there's still a lot of bahis obviously in Iran they are treated by the Orthodox clergy essentially as Heretics okay I mean that's the way they're treated they are not recognized now why are they important in some ways for the Constitutional Revolution because one the Barbie revolt encouraged again people to think the unthinkable it shattered that that Orthodoxy okay so that's one thing and there were a lot of Barbies who came from very well-educated groups very wealthy groups a lot of aristocrats became Barbies and those Barbies who stayed in Iran it didn't go with Baha into the bahai faith but became what are known the aali Barbies they are generally considered also to have been very pivotal in the development of the uh in the development of the Constitution Revolution so you can see from the Islamic Republic's point of view of course the Constitutional Revolution is full of Barbies and Freemasons which is why they they're deeply suspicious of it but it's I think it's very very important actually in terms of showing how um uh you know these new ideas basically shattered the orthodoxes and I think the Barbies are actually extremely important in that process as well so that's what I would say in terms of the Constitutional Revolution h bah what about bah I mean he he was his disciple but it's the aali Barbies who are who split off from the from bah so Baha would have gone abroad by that stage but nonetheless they would have had it yes I mean I think they would have had an influence and changing the ideas that that were shaping uh that were shaping the political Dynamic Iran at the time but I want to make that distinction between the two different groups in that sense there's a group of questions which I'll try and reward which is um when did a an identity as a state arise so there some people drawing parallels between um what's happening to the azaris and in southern aan moment what is the sense of national pride of of being in Persian or in Iranian was that a long time ago is this something that reformed as these countries country established itself that is a that is a I mean that is a complex question on a a number of different levels however I mean Iran is probably unusual in the Middle East as being an identifiable Territorial state from quite early on okay so it's not a dynastic State it's not like the Ottoman Empire which defines itself in relation to the dynasty already from the 17th century onwards you have in documents the notion of the state of Iran okay so it's clearly seen as a distinctive State and a distinctive polity and there is an identity now that's distinct from nationalism which most of us would accept is basically a modern ideology and the development of nationalism but clearly that modern nationalism which I think basically develops in the 19th century and spreads from an elite you know outwards as you get education and others um is founded on a much longer sense of uh of distinct identity um I've just got a question about uh the way that like ideas spread I suppose um and I feel like your lecture gave an argument um um saying that the uh individuals uh behind this process were basically uncritically absorbing uh like post Enlightenment ideals from the British and that model of absorption and I wondered if you press deeper um it might get more complicated just from the examples I'm familiar with um in the Indian context C Bailey wrote a book about liberalism um being diffused in India and he offers a model of like creative adaptation and fusing with local Traditions um and that process of like Enlightenment and ideals being translated into like non-western context if that makes sense it does I mean that I that's exactly what happens by the way I mean I don't want to give the impression they don't uncritically accept them they digest them I mean they integrate them into their own model but what is striking as we're talking at this stage about very basic ideas okay so it's basic ideas of State development of which they find some of the ideas about you know what what the British give the Iranians at this period is this possibility of change okay that's basically what it is and that's what I mean by a very wigg is narrative okay now when it goes into practice clearly there's a there's an element there where they need to integrate these I mean you get a whole group of constitutionalist who who basically rigorously interrogate many of the sort of intellectual texts and start to try and adapt them to the local environment that said I wouldn't want to exaggerate to to what ex I mean you will see that later in the 20th century but it it's it's it's very interesting how people have rebounded back so in the Islamic Republic for instance people will talk about Islamic economics or Islamic human rights or this that the other in many cases what people have concluded is that this doesn't make a huge amount of sense okay there are human rights and there's economics and these are disciplines and these are other things and rights that you need to basically incorporate now does it have to sort of sit well within a Iranian context yes so in the Constitutional Revolution for instance you know one of the aspects of the Constitution was there should be a fivan religious committee made of clerics to make sure that laws that are passed are not Contra do not contradict Islamic law but again the first of all I mean I should say that the committee never sat which was a major issue right but the uh but the um but the idea was certainly there and but the fact is also depended very much on what you understood by Islamic law okay I mean there is a there is a distinction between that notion that what people were arguing here for was for rights okay and I think there is a sort of a um there was a division of opinions certainly among the clerics at the time about how you can reconcile those but there were those that did reconcile them you know they said that you know sovereignty belongs to God but God has delegated that to man and therefore by extension you know man has you know agency over his future I'm I use man and women interchangeably by the way in case anyone I'm going to read a last question from someone in the Overflow room it's quite a little bit longer as a question you said that the Islamic Republic is trying to take Iran back to a precons sitution era but this person has heard that one of the consequences of the post 1979 Revolution and the war with Iraq was actually significant bureaucratization of the state within postrevolutionary Iran is that right and therefore has the Islamic Republic actually developed aspects of Constitution constitutionalism by accident as it were yeah no I mean that's uh you know there are elements that I have a friend of mine who says that you know K is the third pavi King which is quite an interesting idea the um I I think one of the problems we have here is that we tend to see the Islamic Republic which you know has been going for 44 years after all almost like it's some sort of like static um static political organization it's certainly true that what you see so when I look when I chart the Islamic Republic I see the Islamic Republic as a legacy of the pav state so it carries a certain momentum of the previous 50 years of development but then there's a period when that stops and the thing starts to go into Decline and what you find is that basically in in certainly in my view is that many of the aspects of the state that exist in at least in in in in in in theory in practice don't really work anymore so I mean one of the the the Striking things of course is that no no State since 1906 has ever has ever thought it legitimate to abolish Parliament no one they won't dare okay Parliament is a fixed aspect we've got to have it almost every single one of them has ignored it however yeah or tried to manipulate it or tried to you know and what you're finding now is that people are complaining that Parliament which at the onset of the revolution in 1979 was seen as you know House of the nation and this that the other is basically now seen as a cipher I mean it's basically seen as a sort of an adjunct to the office of the supreme leader so essentially all these or all these institutions have have become hollowed out I mean that's basically what's happening and what you found as a dominance of reestablishment with the dominance of the role of the supreme leader in Iran I mean this is a this is a lecture for one of your subsequent lectures but of of of the of of of of the uh the supreme leader office that has taken on as a sort of a religious despotism um a degree of power and authority that most Persian Monarch monarchs would have envied I mean that that that in in theory at least whether you can do it in practice is another matter but in theory at least few Persian monarchs at least in the last 300 years could make the sort of claims uh to Authority that the current supreme leader in Iran is making thank you very much I'm sure you can see while we why invited Professor anari it's been a delight to hear you thank you very much from all of [Applause] us

I&#39;m here to talk to you today about uh the history of the Constitutional revolution in Iran um a couple of quick sort of background comments before we get started I shall be using the terms Persia and Iran interchangeably they are the same country don&#39;t worry uh Iran is simply the term that those uh native to the country have called that country Persia is obviously the term that many people in Europe have known the country I tend to like to use it into partly because in a western context you will find much more Connection in some ways much more historical and cultural connection with the term Persia but even in the context of the time that we&#39;re looking at uh many British and other observers would be talking about Persia and you know those Iranians who were active and the political activists of the time would obviously in their own language be talking about uh about Iran I want to say quite emphatically now also that the term Iran is not a new invention just in case anyone sort of picks that up from some Wayward textbook which has got it wrong sadly but I just want you to sort of be absolutely clear on that now secondly I want to sort highlight why we should be looking at an event that happened over 100 years ago uh in framing the context of the demonstrations and the protests that happened last year and which in many ways are still simmering away I mean the problems have not gone away and the reason is very simple the Constitutional Revolution marks that moment when the modern IRA I State basically is born it shapes the political sort of lexicon for the next you know 100 years at least to this day and many people today who are fighting for their rights in Iran look to 1906 as that period when this sort of this process was born 1906 itself of course has a long gestation okay it&#39;s it&#39;s a it&#39;s a process that took many many years to come to fruition and it&#39;s a process which I&#39;m sorry to say has yet yet to be fulfilled that promise of the 1906 Constitution and that that that uh that that period of revolution uh the promise that it held has yet to be fulfilled and even at the centinary in 2006 Iranian students who seem I have to say to be amongst the uh most courageous uh elements in Iranian s today repeatedly come up and say to their leaders uh why is it you know that we have not yet achieved even the most fundamental aims of the Constitutional process uh in 1906 and of course what they do in saying that is they undermine in some ways or delegitimize the importance of the 1979 Revolution which they don&#39;t see as a as a movement that actually achieved uh the aims that it set out to do and not only that but didn&#39;t actually even progress some of the uh the ideas that were outlined in 1906 so this period I think is very important for our understanding of modern Iran because it&#39;s important to Iranians themselves they find it vital as an understanding of their own political development but I think it&#39;s very important for us to understand also how this came to FR also in some ways because of British Iranian relations themselves as you&#39;ll see the relationship between Britain and Iran in this period was particularly intimate uh not entirely not entirely positive it has to be said but not for the reasons that you might think um and one which nonetheless shows that there is a sort of a a tradition in some way of of Anglo Iranian or Anglo Persian cooperation that we might going forward uh see fit to resuscitate now this whole event starts in July uh 1906 this this particular moment in the Constitutional Revolution where the British charade Affair in tan at the time even in Grant Duff someone who was a relatively Junior official is approached by a number of senior Iranian clerics as it happens and they say to him they say you know that we have been continuing our struggle against the monarchy and the absolute monarchy over the last 6 months and we would like to seek your assistance in the pursuit of our aims and we would like to take sanctuary in the British Embassy because we don&#39;t trust our government anymore and Grant Duff with a customary tact says well you know it is not the policy of his Majesty&#39;s government to intervene in the domestic politics of of Iran so the clerics go off they they disappear off and they don&#39;t talk about anything and and then a few days later they come back and they said if we were to take sanctuary in the British Embassy compound and this was a compound in outside of Teran in the north of tan it is actually inside Teran now but in those was outside Teran said would you would you use Force to evict us and we don&#39;t know what evil and Grant D said at that time but he can&#39;t have said anything too harsh he basically said they might have said well it&#39;s not really our business really to forcibly evict you so within two to three weeks a number of individuals settled in encamped in the British Embassy compound and within those two to three weeks those initial 50 individuals that go in eventually amount to 14,000 14,000 people from a city of Teran which at that time we estimate may have been no more than 250,000 in total 14,000 men let&#39;s limit it to the men so we would say it&#39;s a huge proportion of the politically active population and certainly and the male population of Iran at the and tan at the time all settled in in the British Embassy compound and there they instructed evil and Granda they said in our negotiations with the Iranian government with the crown we want you to be our interlocutor it&#39;s worth pausing and thinking about that for a moment that these Persian revolutionaries at the time decided to ask a relatively Junior official at the British Embassy he was in charge the minister wasn&#39;t hadn&#39;t arrived yet that you know they want him to be the interlocutor why is it and how was it that the British played such a central role in the development and the progress of this of this revolutionary movement and I think to understand that you have to look back over the preceding century actually at the interaction and engagement between Iranians and The Wider world and how they absorbed the ideas that were confronting them and we finally come now to this slide which was meant to be the second slide uh which is actually uh one of the earlier encounters between British diplomats and the Persian king in around 1808 1809 and it&#39;s just mainly emblematic of the interactions that occurred at the time during the Napoleonic Wars where the British were looking to engage Iran as an ally certainly in one sense for the defense of India the growth of the British Empire in India but also as a means of basically containing France initially and then ultimately the Russians and for the better part of a 100 years Iran found itself as an imperial State an imperial state in Decline although it took a bit of time to realize it was in Decline as an imperial State caught between the pins in a sense of the Russian Empire to the north by far the greatest threat to Iranian sovereignty has to be said in this period because they were moving south and the British Empire to the south and east in in India and intellectuals in Iran at the time began to divide over what was the best route and the best way to achieve in some ways their you know the challenge to cope with the challenge that the West Was providing Iran had coped with many challenges in the past coming from abroad and tended to sort of cope with them in one way or another absorb them convert them you know whatever adapt to their new but the European challenge was something different the European challenge was not only an economic and political challenge but it was also an ideological Challenge and the British in this respect were particularly good partly out of necessity in expressing and exuding the soft power that they had the British didn&#39;t have the luxury of the Russians in 19th in the 19th century of sending a brigade over if they wanted to get their job done the British on the other hand excelled in another thing political officers people trained really in Persuasion and what did they have to sell they basically sold like a lot of these earlier diplomats they said to the the Persians the Iranians at the time if you want to reap the benefits of modernity this is what you need to do they didn&#39;t say to them by the way that you&#39;re incapable of this they said actually quite interesting if you read the accounts they say look we in a miserable Island on the northwest coast of Europe we haven&#39;t really done a huge out but the last 100 years have been pretty good for us why have they been good for us education discipline law and that&#39;s what they say to the Persians say you want this this is what you need to do and a number of Persians Iranians absorbed this they travel to Britain and they&#39;ve been traveling to Britain really since the 19th century there have been some extraordinary people who came to Britain at the time and basically absorbed and digested and lapped up really with with a good deal of enthusiasm what they saw and the British were very keen to basically obviously sell them sort of a British success story remember this is post-napoleonic Britain very confident industrial and what they say is that what you need to do is you know pick up the things that we&#39;ve done look at the way we&#39;ve adapted our politics because the problem you have is not a social one it&#39;s not because you&#39;re Persian there&#39;s no biological deficiency here the problem you have is political and you see this in a number of British writers and of course it&#39;s very attractive to the Iranians and the Iranians sort of adapt and and and and and engage with this one of the things many of the Persian diplomats who are engaged with Britain do is they all become members almost universally I have to say of the Masons they all become Freemasons why do they become Freemasons because the Freemasons offers them a Rootin to what they consider to be an international int ual Brotherhood one that doesn&#39;t require them to believe in weird and wonderful ideas of the Christian Trinity but it does expect them to believe in God which suits them very well and it has lots of ritual which suits them even more yeah they love it and they engage with it and it&#39;s one of the means by which these ideas these sort of what we term radical wig ideas begin to become infused into the into the Iranian Consciousness and throughout the 19th century you begin to see this process of intellectuals arguing very forcefully that what the country needs is a political change not a revolution on the French model let&#39;s not get carried away with the French okay we don&#39;t want to execute our king or anything it&#39;s a bit rough but the British seem to have a fairly nice idea of what we need to get done here Constitution rule of law limits on the power of the Monet more than that they also pick up and this is an inter interesting thing that most people don&#39;t pick up on they also pick up that Britain is a a Cosmopolitan Nation if you will put it that way it&#39;s made up of different components it&#39;s got English Scottish Welsh Irish and they all seem to bind together and of course for the Iranians who are seeking a sort of a the development of a sort of a national state from what is essentially an imperial Kingdom this has its attractions too it&#39;s a model they can follow so when you&#39;re looking at this initial period there are attractions but there&#39;s also a push factor too let&#39;s not be let&#39;s not be to Rose tinted about what the relationship is because one of the problems that the Iranians have with their British interlocutors is they&#39;re very good on ideas but they&#39;re not very good at putting them in practice okay they look at the British and they say you know what do you think these ideas are marvelous but why don&#39;t you live up to them and of course the British attitude is well you know we&#39;ve got It&#39;s Complicated politics is complicated the Russians you know we don&#39;t want to mess around with them so there&#39;s a wonderful case actually where a Persian Prince complains to an Iranian Diplomat uh beg you pardon to a British Diplomat in the 1860s where he says why is it that you have pursued the abolition of the slave trade with so much enthusiasm for no other reason than your shared common Humanity but you won&#39;t help us abolish the slave trade in Central Asia and the reasons are simple because Britain has a Navy it doesn&#39;t have a very strong Army and it can&#39;t get to Central Asia so it can&#39;t do it but the British Diplomat says privately you know I obviously have to fob the guy off but privately I had to admit that it probably wasn&#39;t a great look in some ways that you know we weren&#39;t delivering on some that we did impress on some levels but we couldn&#39;t on others now in 1856 Britain and Iran went to war hopefully for the last time actually it was wasn&#39;t technically Britain it was the East India Company but nonetheless it was the last war the East India Company fought it was shortlived didn&#39;t last long but what was remarkable about it actually was not the war itself it was the treaty that followed and the treaty that followed the British actually imposed a very lenient treaty on the Iranians the Iranians were quite shocked compared to the Russian treaty it was it didn&#39;t have a huge amount to it what that did is it also opened the door in some ways to British ideas being much much more influential Within Iranian political Elites because they suddenly realized that actually you know the British might be our friends they were to be mistaken some level but nonetheless they saw it as attractive and one of the things they did Mistake by the way was they decided the way we need to pursue this the way we need to pursue change is not through political change because we can&#39;t do it the monar going to allow will&#39;ll invite British entrepreneurs to come and set up corporations offer concessions economic EC economic change and that economic change will catalyze political change these economic concessions that were to come in in some ways in in many ways were to be enormously influential okay in an economic sense I&#39;m not going to go into the into depth of them now because we don&#39;t have time what it did do however is it galvanized opinion in some ways against the British as well so the British had both a positive and a negative impact on the way in which Iranian intellectuals uh forg the future one is they were attracted by the ideas of British political organization but to they were in some ways offended by British policy and practice okay the various the various economic concessions were seen in many ways as selling out the country was selling out but their criticism was really against the monarch it wasn&#39;t really it wasn&#39;t so much against the British it was against the monarch the Monarch was seen as selling out the country so all this sort of feeds into a sentiment and an agitation but I have to say it&#39;s very slow Iran doesn&#39;t have a print culture in this period literacy rate is pretty slow is pretty low so it&#39;s not like you have you know political ideas you know in a sort of a febr political environment intellectual environment it&#39;s not it&#39;s pretty small it is run through a series of sort of networks of of uh connections of sort of lodges real or imagined it has to be said many of them were imagined but nonetheless they were sort of connected so what you have the the initial Awakening as people say and it&#39;s one that Edward Brown basically let me get to I&#39;ve forgotten to now push these slides on so I&#39;m going to skip this slide because it&#39;s not quite as important anymore I&#39;ve moved on these are individuals who are who are basically active in the uh in the uh um in in developing ideas of constitutionalism in Iran this gentleman here incidentally say Jamal afani was is generally known by a lot of of writers certainly in the Arab Muslim world as a political islamist I don&#39;t think he was I think he was actually a he was a someone who pursued ideas of constitutionalism and Enlightenment ideas certainly Iran he was very popular in London and Paris and the salons and he wrote quite widely on it Malcolm Khan was another gentleman who lived in London for for for for at least a decade and he produced a newspaper called the law which he wanted to get you know in order to impress people on the different ideas now there are two things that basically several things which which accelerate the momentum towards change as we get up to 1906 let&#39;s park these two individuals for a moment because we&#39;ll get to them in a minute classic foreign office style here by the way as you can see on your on your uh on your left in 1890 91 there was a concession given completely misjudged to a British entrepreneur a bit of of a crook to be honest by the name of major tolber for a monopoly on Tobacco selling in Iran it caused huge offense amongst the amongst the merchant classes and it sparked a Revolt it sparked a Revolt which combined different elements in Iranian Society part of the Iranian Elite against the monarch intellectuals Aristocrats and intellectuals the clergy and uh the merchant classes the Bazar and these three groups came together they persuaded a senior cleric issue a fatwa Banning smoking was very preent he said smoking&#39;s bad for you don&#39;t do it and almost overnight everyone in Iran stopped smoking they boycotted it I mean it didn&#39;t last don&#39;t worry don&#39;t get too excited but the fact is it it was it was quite a moment it was helped interesting by interesting Enough by an earlier concession which was the establishment of the telegraph company in Iran which was the British Indo Iranian Indo European Telegraph company which allowed these ideas to disseminate quicker but nonetheless this this moment is seen by different writers as as as the moment when this sort of Iranian Awakening started that there was this Coalition of different interests that catalyzed a process of of of change and resistance the Sha at the time was forced to cancel the concession at Great cost and it was seen as a bit of a Triumph but actually from that period 1891 through to sort of 1905 nothing much happens the Sha is assassinated in 1896 but nobody really notices his son comes in again nobody really notices because he was even even worse and even more laxidasical than the father and again nothing much happens there are certain things happening internationally which are quite important one is there&#39;s a Russia Persian War uh big Russia Japanese War and the Russians lose it&#39;s a shocker okay the Russian Empire the seat of autocracy loses a war to an Asiatic power and it sends shock waves around Asia then there&#39;s also the Russian Revolution in 1905 which fails but the agitation a lot of re Russian revolutionaries particularly from the Caucasus the Armenians move South so there&#39;s a certain amount of agitation in the air the economy in Iran isn&#39;t doing particularly well but it hasn&#39;t been for a while there&#39;s a particularly obstructive Belgian Customs official by the name of missan Na who is there instructed to extra extract as much tax as he possibly can from the merchants and in one particular case at the end of 1905 he he&#39;s particularly brutal when I say particular brutal he basically beats someone he didn&#39;t shoot him he beats him but the person he beats is someone who seemed to have a certain religious standing in society and for some reason and we don&#39;t know why and this is always the problem with these revolts this is the trigger this is the straw that breaks the camels back I mean it would have been extremely routine to punish someone who was agitating about something or complaining about paying too much tax but for some reason beating this guy Sparks off a Revolt now the British minister in Iran at the time a gentleman by the name of hard rights a very very sort of some of you will have read this of course uh a very very uh LAX no actually it&#39;s not a bad report actually but but he&#39;s he is a bit bored I mean you can see when he it&#39;s at the end of 1905 beginning 19 and he says there&#39;s been a few things in Iran going but not much it&#39;s a bit boring uh you know nothing happens this country you know is useless you know we ought to talk to the Russians about how we can split spheres of influence and he says that and he goes off now in the period January 1906 onwards you get a series of rebellions they&#39;re fairly light touch in some ways but increasingly significant they involve the clergy they involve the intellectuals and they involve the Bazar just as you had in 1891 and the clergy in particular start to withdraw their services from the city from the capital and to withdraw from the capital they say until the king actually yields to our demands for a house of justice we&#39;re not coming back the king characteristically says yeah okay okay we don&#39;t we don&#39;t want hassle we&#39;ll think of a house of justice for you whatever that is and in classic style I mean like all governments he says we&#39;ll set up a committee and we&#39;ll discuss it so everyone comes back says okay we&#39;ll set up your committee now the detail of this goes on and on a bit but it&#39;s about and this is the period of several months when this goes on and nothing really happens but the protests Mount they start to get violent troops are sent in people a shot people get killed again we&#39;re not talking a vast number of people but it&#39;s still significant by Iranian standards and what you&#39;re beginning to hear is people talking in terms that they&#39;ve never talked before you have an official sitting you know the king says to people they say we&#39;re very pleased that you are here uh to support and and your loyal Servants of the crown and you get people saying we are not Servants of the crown we are Servants of the nation completely different language the king Al he&#39;s very lacks at Day School doesn&#39;t really sort of understand what&#39;s going on but clearly the momentum is losing is getting away them the king then with alarmingly good timing has a paralytic stroke and he&#39;s out he&#39;s out of action fortunately his minister of Court takes over who&#39;s even more reactionary because he thinks well the king is a bit useless so now that he&#39;s had a paralytic stroke I&#39;ll take care of and I&#39;ll sort this Rabel out of course in trying to sort the Rabel out just makes matters worse I say these things because I just want to sort emphasize to you how revolutionary movements are very contingent it&#39;s a bit of bad luck a bit of good luck but the king you know there&#39;s a wonderful account by cesil Spring rice here the chap on the right who says that the king and his partical stroke was being told by his courtiers just how well and fit he was even though clearly he wasn&#39;t even really communicating anything at all but they were encouraging him to continue living it&#39;s at this stage in July where you get the sanctuary and the in the British Embassy and they go to the British Embassy because they&#39;ve tried sanctuary in other places in mosques for instance and they haven&#39;t been able to get you know the the crown just thinks that a mo there&#39;s nothing sacred about a mosque so let&#39;s not bother about that so they go to the British Embassy those 14,000 people sitting in the British Embassy compound are very well organized and very well managed again there&#39;s an account of the British Embassy and they say actually to be honest it&#39;s not a mob they&#39;re actually pretty well they look after themselves there&#39;s been a few damage to the flower beds but you know let&#39;s not get you know we won&#39;t get too fuss about that but by and large the Bazar is supplying all the food and you know they they keep themselves themselves and they&#39;re discussing things it&#39;s probably the greatest political seminar ever have taken place in Iran and they in discussion with evil in Grant Duff they organize they sort of actually start to refine and organize what exactly their demands are and their demands ultimately are for a constitution with a parliament a separation of powers and the notion of the of of the implementation of the rule of law wasf Sha for got that this fetching gentleman here finally signs the new constitution into law or basically gives the edict for the new constitution to go in and then does the good thing and dies okay so he he he just doesn&#39;t you know that&#39;s it that&#39;s his job done it&#39;s in some ways not a great idea because the his son is is is is a mega reactionary but nonetheless it&#39;s done and there is this wonderful sort of pen portrait of people saying for God&#39;s sake sign it sign it you know before he just s finally conks out in the period of a year there&#39;s a transformation in the political landscape of Iran and it took Everyone by surprise I mean this is one of the things that I find really quite striking it was a movement that was founded fundamentally on ideas and new ideas that people had engaged with it was it was ideas which allowed people to think the unthinkable and at a period of time from when you know Arthur Harding earlier says there&#39;s absolutely nothing going on it&#39;s all a bit of a disaster within a year suddenly you get this sort of complete transformation of the landscape in Iran and cesil spring rice writes to Edward gray this chap who&#39;s the foreign secretary and says 1906 has been a transformative year in the history of Persia because it has given Persia a constitution in the parliament but he adds to it also that The Prestige of Britain has never been higher because all these revolutionaries are looking to us to support their Endeavor this chap in particular a gentleman by the name of Hassan who became a very prominent ideologue of nationalism in the in the in the following 50 years was a key revolutionary he was very good friend with Edward Brown who was the professor of Persian at actually he was Professor Arabic I&#39;m sorry to say but the his his speciality was Persian at Cambridge and they were communicated a great deal T sends a a missive to England calls it an appeal to England and you&#39;re going to know why he did send an appeal to England but he sends an appeal to England where he says the Constitutional revolution in our country is in a very speci special sense the spiritual child of Great Britain it&#39;s a striking thing to say and in the document he says it three times why does he say it before you before you wonder why why does he say it because this gentleman Edward gray who&#39; become foreign secretary in 1906 and was suddenly confronted with this turmoil in Iran wasn&#39;t very interested in the turmoil in Iran Edward gray was the new liberal foreign secretary everyone has a go at Lord Ken Arch imperialist but interestingly enough Lord Ken was a good deal more sympathetic to what was going in Iran than Edward gray Edward gray was principally interested in Britain Security in Europe Britain Security in Europe depended on Alliance or a Dayton with France a Dayton with France to contain Germany required Britain to have a Dayton with Russia who was France&#39;s Ally for most Brits this was a fiasco the idea that we&#39;d be siding up to zaris Russia the headquarters of autocracy not the done thing so Edward Gray&#39;s diplomacy was really done sort of under the covers if you will he wasn&#39;t very keen on publicizing exactly what he was doing but nonetheless he writes back the cesil pring rice who&#39;s the uh who then arrives as minister in Teran at the end of 1906 who&#39;s full of if diffusiveness and praise for what&#39;s gone in Iran and he says why the hell did Evil and Grant Duff let these people into the compound anyway why are we interfering in the domestic politics of Iran this revolution isn&#39;t going to go anywhere and we need to look at the bigger picture so what gray does is he organizes and follows on a sort of an agreement with the Russians encouraged by the French to basically settle all their disputes in Asia their Imperial distributes in Asia in order to basically consolidate the alliance in Europe one of the areas obviously that they settled their disputes are is in is in Iran and in Iran Edward gray settles on a convention with the Russians called the Anglo Russian Convention of 1907 in which Iran is split into spheres of influence I emphasize spheres of influence by the way they&#39;re not sort of taking the country apart but nonetheless of influence and it&#39;s a dreadful deal for the British Dreadful why because basically what Edward gray concedes to the Russians is he says that your sphere of influence will be Northern Iran covering all the populated areas tabes Teran mashad all the way down to isvan there&#39;ll be a little Central bit which will be neutral which we can both meddle in and then the southeast bit baluchistan will be the British sphere of influence ostensibly for the protection of India even the British government in India thought it was a disaster said why why what have you what you&#39;ve given away Northern Iran for beluchistan I mean what what what the hell&#39;s that about I emphasize this because one of the side developments that I don&#39;t mention is at this stage the British have just been awarded a concession for the discovery for the exploitation of oil in Iran which is in Southwest Iran it&#39;s not included in the zone of influence okay think about it in my view it&#39;s one of the less salubrious shall we say deals struck by the British government this but what it does do is it cuts off basically the revolutionaries like tarod and others are looking to the British they&#39;re looking to the British for support they say the Russians are against this the Russians they&#39;ve been defeated by the Japanese they&#39;ve had a bit of the hassle with their own Revolution but now Zan Nicholas is back and he wants rid of this nonsense constitutionalism so people like say what we need is the British to help us stop the Russians interfering in our country and it&#39;s a very interesting document he puts out he says I don&#39;t want the British to intervene in Iran I want the British to stop the Russians intervening in Iran but gray sadly is of the view that no we&#39;ve signed an agreement and you know those areas are going to be in the Russian sphere of influence and if the Russians intervene to basically block the constitution in support of a reactionary monarchy we&#39;re not intervening in that it&#39;s not our problem massive mistake in my view certainly and cesil bring rice writes the gray privately and he says in doing this we will be seen by many of our Persian friends as having betrayed them C bring right as I saying to Martin earlier also wrote the uh the him I Ved be my country by the way in his spare time um quite an achievement in itself he later becomes ambass in Washington actually as it happened so quite a list of celebrated post things but spring rice is absolutely right and he laments in his letters he says what we have done is we&#39;ve dropped the ball very very badly here there is a constitutional Revolution that is built on a model of a British constitution you&#39;ll see in books by the way that they&#39;ll say it&#39;s based on the Belgian Constitution or the Bulgarian Constitution or this that the other this is all flannel all right this is because nobody wants to admit it&#39;s actually from the English Constitution because you know that would be a bit problematic for them but basically the Belgian Constitution is a redacted English Constitution Okay so this is what it so they&#39;ve adapted it from that it&#39;s a parliamentary system okay with the um you know with with limitations on the uh on the on the powers of the Monarch a limited franchise by the way we&#39;re not talking about a franchise that&#39;s that that&#39;s Universal by any stretch of imagination but it doesn&#39;t compare too badly with what&#39;s going on in Europe but more pertinently within it it does say in its original construct in its original reading that sovereignty lies with the people and this is quite striking and it&#39;s pretty Progressive but almost immediately you get problems not only with the divisions internationally which are clearly problems that are going to suffocate the way the revolution moves but also the revolutionaries themselves again one of the great problems of liberals the world over from 1848 onwards really they achieve something and then in their enthusiasm at their achievement actually don&#39;t know what to do next yeah the way in which the parliament is set up and this is the big problem of course is that it&#39;s set up with a heavily weighted number of deputies from Teran on the capital the rest of the country is very poorly represented but not only is the capital over represented the mid all the votes came in and all the deputies are elected for Teran the parliament meets it&#39;s corate all the other deputies can we can wait for them to get them sorted out so they get on with things they&#39;re so enthusiastic and then they suddenly come to the realization well we want free education we want a good transport Network we want standardization of weight me we want a national anthem we want this we want an army we want and someone says who&#39;s going to pay for it and they say well I mean doesn&#39;t it just happen no so they then go to the Monarch and they say well you can pay for it he says I&#39;m not paying for it I don&#39;t like this constitution business anyway the whole point was of course that what had to be done was a system of Taxation but of course nobody wants to pay taxes even if they wanted to pay taxes there was no system for collecting taxes I mean this was the fundamental problem facing the Constitutional revolutionist big on ideas not great on implementation and it confronted them very hard I mean it hit them very hard that all these ideas they had and the ideas are extraordinary actually I mean they are extraordinary the fact is they were running into a sort of a a a real Ravine in terms of being able to do anything about it so you get this twoing and throwing you get the sort of the counterrevolutionaries and the revolutionaries and they fight two and fro two and fro two and fr it goes on to about 1911 finally the Constitution seems to have triumphed but in terms of the power of the constitutionalist it&#39;s not getting very far the country is beginning to become ungovernable the Russians aren&#39;t letting go either they commit some pretty serious atrocities as well it&#39;s it&#39;s accounted for in a number of writings of the time the constitutionalists in desperation shall we say suddenly decide they say we need to bring in someone to come and help us sort out the finances of this country so they go to the United States the Americans don&#39;t want to get involved but they said we&#39;ll let you have a financial adviser gentleman by the name of Morgan Schuster but he can be your employee we&#39;re not sending him as an American he can be an employee of your government shusta lasts about a year not only is the system so Byzantine its own way and quite corrupt but he says there&#39;s a whole plethora of foreign powers including the British and the Russians who just not interested in me being here and they&#39;re not helping so the whole thing comes to crashing halt until we then get to the Great War and in the Great War basically Iran becomes a Battleground for essentially the Ottomans and the Russians the British coming in later but in a very small way now I put this picture up because I just want to sort of emphasize the the sort of the um the relationships between uh intellectuals across the Divide this is that gentleman Taris zodo who I showed you earlier now see suly tied and suited up coming to London to come and plead the case for the Constitutional Revolution he is aided and abetted by his colleague at the University of Cambridge Edward Brown suitably attired in Persian costume okay Brown in a classic sense said to T he said when you come here and give a talk for God&#39;s sake play it up dress like a Persian because they&#39;ll like a bit of exoticness and of course tagis said I&#39;m not a performing monkey you know I&#39;m not I&#39;m not you know I&#39;m not coming to play the play the role but the bond between these two was extremely tight and brown ultimately in 1910 writes what is still in some ways the definitive study of the Persian Revolution um certainly in the English language it&#39;s then used by Iranian historians for their own histories although I have to say that his own history is D you know there&#39;s a much more of a reciprocal relationship between you know it&#39;s not as if you know Brown was using a lot of sources from Iran as well and so they sort of fed off each other but Brown in many ways represents one of the first academic activists he was a very very prominent academic in his field but in the Persian Revolution he becomes quite polemical in his in his bid to sort of push the idea of um of uh of the importance of the Persian Revolution for Britain and uh and The Wider world and not least obviously for the Iranians themselves it&#39;s writers like these of course that set the scene and set the Legacy for the Constitutional Revolution going forward because the Constitutional revolution in Iran fails in Practical terms it doesn&#39;t succeed but what it does do is it basically inaugurates what we might term a revolution of the mind okay and this is important because the legacy of the Constitutional Revolution is profound and subsequent sort of rulers basically reflect off it none of them fulfill its promise nobody pays any attention to a constitution tion but they all want to implement its ideas about the development of the modern State and basically these become fulfilled later with the arrival of the pavi Dynasty in particular the new Dynasty that replaces the old Raja Dynasty in Iran from 1925 onwards and it&#39;s the ideas of these men like and others and this gentleman like furui another gentleman another ideologue of the period an intellectual who basically pushed through a series a series of reforms that uh transform the Iranian State they engage with the world with the wider world and it&#39;s a profound intellectual engagement many people think that much of this engagement started in the 20th century it didn&#39;t it started a century earlier and the ideas that transferred across borders were were were welldeveloped and they were absorbed by the Iranians yeah we we see too much I&#39;m sorry to say those who are not from the historical profession tend to tend to get a little bit too obsessed with what we might term presentism which is that it&#39;s all about you know what happens now you know but the fact is it has Deep Roots and one of the reasons why I think ultimately people&#39;s fight for their rights in Iran will ultimately yield success is because its roots are so deep and because the ideas haven&#39;t been shifted these ideas that you get in Iran today about the rights of the individual about constitutional about the rule of law despite every attempt by successions of autocrats and most particularly the Islamic Republic and its religious theocracy to uproot these it hasn&#39;t worked and even the people who are fighting on the streets last year were simply echoing many of the ideas that were expressed first 100 years ago it&#39;s very striking actually that individuals like T or furui who were dismissed by the Islamic Republic as you know westernized Stooges are basically now coming back in to the political lexicon of many young people as as the people for whom you know that they should look up to and they say we&#39;ve dismissed these people as Lackey of the west but actually far from it they had the right idea they understood what needed to be done in order to build a state from the bottom up with nothing it is in in a in a in a classic sense a sort of real politique as a friends of mine have discussed not realism but how do you apply liberal ideas in an illiberal environment probably the chief question of our Times by the way yeah but this is what these people are dealing with how do you apply liberal ideas in a situation which is the most unsympathetic to it we neither have the tools we neither have the means we have a reactionary government we have an international environment that isn&#39;t particularly good how do we do it and they got a good way there I won&#39;t go through all this particularly but I if you have a look at it you can always ask me questions on what on Earth I&#39;m talking about in terms of conservatism and wigis but it&#39;s there there are a lot of the ideas that come through reflect many of the ideas that were permeating in in the west and in Britain in particular during the 19th century they&#39;re very fond you&#39;ll be interested to know in people like Edmund Burke it&#39;s obvious why they should be because Edmund Burke is seen as someone who reconciles tradition with modernity so that&#39;s what they try and that&#39;s what they try and do ultimately the state that is built by the pavis and Rasha in particular and his son Muhammad Rasha only fulfills part of the promise of the Constitutional Revolution and the part that it fulfills of course is the development of the state what they don&#39;t do they don&#39;t get round to doing is the rights of the individuals within that state okay so you get the development of the Judiciary you get the development of mass education you get a transformation of the law but you don&#39;t have actually that completion of that process which is the social aspect of it and many people assume that the 1979 Revolution might be the Great Leap Forward that would achieve that I think we&#39;ve been sadly disabused of that notion but that&#39;s not the case in many ways what the current crop of rulers in Iran are trying to do is to take Iran to a precon constitutional revolutionary phase where the king is absolute but not just absolute in this case even more seriously truly divinely mandated to do as they please but the social push back against this I think is quite interesting I&#39;ll leave you for those of you who think angle R relations are really terrible which they they have been of late has to be said with this which I I think it still exists there are some Iranian colleagues here in the audience who might be able to tell me if it&#39;s still true or not true but I think it is true this is Edward Brown Street and Teran they never changed the name they kept Edward Brown very firmly I mean it&#39;s just a street it&#39;s not like a highway or anything but hell you know it&#39;s better than nothing um and Edward Brown is still considered by Iranians as the one person who supported the people against their government and didn&#39;t abandon them in their time of need and as a consequence of that brown is the one intellectual of any nationality by the way of any nationality who is still honored uh in the Iranian Capital today let&#39;s hope that that maybe uh a little lesson that can be leared by all sorts of policy makers going forward uh that um certain ideas certainly certain ideas are worth supporting and worth pushing through and uh I do think ultimately that the founding principles of these individuals on a whole range of and I&#39;ve only touched the surface obviously um are the founding principles that I think will will will guide Iran through to a much more successful I hope and much more uh productive future and I shall Martin leave it there which I think is just about 45 [Applause] minutes thank you I stay stay there yeah so um could you clarify for me a little bit about the period of time when the Spheres of influ were developing so we&#39;ve got Russia on one side and UK or on the other um the how aware were they of the potential raw material Pro raw materials in Iran at that time so a little bit before we needed oil wasn&#39;t it so um why were they splitting it up was it to control the access to India or other Roots Sil route and so on what that stage in 1907 it was purely a geopolitical decision for the protection as a buffer zone for India and obviously for the Russians for their own sever of influence of their North they weren&#39;t thinking in terms of Natural Resources at the time I mean oil hadn&#39;t been discovered yet right oil would be discovered in 1908 I mean what one of the great you know problems when we look at the oil industry in Iran is we sort of assume that it was a given that it would be you know this was going to be a major Center of oil production but at the time when um uh Darcy nox Darcy was given the concession in 1901 despite the fact that there was obviously clearly oil seeping out the ground in places um the fact is they couldn&#39;t find reserves that were exploitable I me they couldn&#39;t find it took him seven years to disc and they were almost went bankrupt but it is it is striking that it didn&#39;t even feature in Brown&#39;s uh in um Gray&#39;s calculations I mean he didn&#39;t he didn&#39;t it wasn&#39;t even a feature in 1915 during the Great War the sphere of inance is extended because by then oil is being produced and of course the Royal Navy has gone over to oil as as its principal source of F and was there um an involvement of of Commerce commercial organiz like the East India Company had such a a powerful in influence over Indian politics was there a commercial companies engag in the periphery of all of this at the time oh yes I mean so the British had the the British Imperial Bank of Persia which was the one sort of body that um uh basically had fiscal sort of Duties in Iran affected could print Bank notes um there was a limited amount of sort of um commercial exchange partly because the British and Russians never wanted to give the other preferential concessions I mean the the the British had one um pretty dramatic concession the Reuters concession in 1872 which was so extraordinary that even Ken commented on it and said it was the most extraordinary sort of like uh Dives of of of a country&#39;s natural resources to a single entrepreneur but it was so it was so objected to not only by foreign powers but by in the foreign office itself that they it was canceled I mean it had was canceled but then they went through extended negotiations until Reuters then got his concession for the British Imperial Bank of Persia there was the telegraph company of course and then there were various other trading concessions but until you get the oil company in 1908 which eventually forms that it&#39;s the oil company that basically transforms the um how should we say the industrial landscape of Iran so this is this is a question which obviously linked to what happened later in 1979 yeah but um I can&#39;t say where it&#39;s from I don&#39;t know was there any role for Shia Islam in this era was the yes the clerics were very actively involved in in and they were sh yeah yeah yeah absolutely I mean when we&#39;re talking about the three so in 1891 the fat words issued by a senior cleric but the the point about it is is that a senior cleric in conjunction with you know intellectual secular intellectuals in the Bazar in 1906 the clerics basically split there were some clerics who were very supportive of the Constitutional movement very actively so there were others that were completely against it um and one of them uh gentleman by the name of Nuri fazo Nuri was eventually hanged for his sins in 1909 but of course in the Islamic Republic of Iran he&#39;s seen as very much a hero of the Constitutional movement even though he was opposed to all its principles so the Shia clergy basically split I mean they split very even and of course you know we have to be careful when we talk about intellectuals and you know the Bazar and the clergy as being all sort of like single groups they&#39;re not in that sense I mean there there are people who basically split sorry I was wondering if you could comment on the class or occupational composition of the parliament that was convened after 1906 roughly speaking who is your median Deputy who is your median deput well there were there were an awful I mean the difficulty here by the way is because um first of all you don&#39;t have the the dress code changes that come in afterward so when you get a picture of the parliament in 1906 there seems to be an awful lot of people with turbans right and everyone&#39;s assumes they&#39;re all clerics they&#39;re not all clerics but the fact is that you know traditional costume tended to to be to be you know worn by quite a few people I think very much at this stage the the the median um composition of your deputies at time are still pretty elitist in that sense I mean you&#39;re talking about an elite group of people remember that you&#39;re not talking about a period of time when uh literacy or political awareness is is is is socially extensive so you even when you&#39;re talking about members of the Bazar or intellectuals or or or members of the clergy you&#39;re talking about the higher echelons of those of those of of those groups the educated the educated elements they&#39;re not all rich if that&#39;s what you&#39;re asking sorry thank you um I want to ask you about the bahai problem um I think uh the Bob was was uh executed I think around about that time and no no much earlier was earlier than that and there was bahula and also there was this problem of the bahis can you throw some light on this I can indeed I sort of uh um um skipped over that unfortunately because of of time but also because I think it adds another layer but I&#39;m happy to outline it here so we have a uh the millenarian movement in the Barb in the 1840s and the early 1850s what that does um for those of you just to give quick background the bar basically is a is a is a um an individual who basically claims uh that not only is he the is he the sort of gateway to the the final hidden Imam of the of the uh uh of the Shia again this is why I didn&#39;t want to sort of go into a huge amount of depth about this because it&#39;s a little bit more more complex um but not only that but at some stage is claimed certainly by his followers as being the hidden Imam return so he&#39;s basically seen it&#39;s it&#39;s basically this mesic millenarian figure now why is this important in many ways is because in being uh in making these claims it&#39;s actually quite a revolutionary moment there are some people that argue that the Barbie re Revolt is basically an old style religious Revolt I tend to see it actually as something quite modern um albe it in a religious guys but one in which the Bob tries to basically argue uh you know with what he&#39;s saying that there&#39;s an abrogation of of of of Islamic law and and and and and and religion is renewed and it&#39;s the first time by the way that you see women unveil in Iran okay because they say that you know Islamic law is now is now over uh needless say the traditional clergy aren&#39;t overly joyed by Overjoyed by this development and basically the Barbie movement is is crushed ultimately it takes shape under bah to the bahis that you have today and they move abroad obviously there&#39;s still a lot of bahis obviously in Iran they are treated by the Orthodox clergy essentially as Heretics okay I mean that&#39;s the way they&#39;re treated they are not recognized now why are they important in some ways for the Constitutional Revolution because one the Barbie revolt encouraged again people to think the unthinkable it shattered that that Orthodoxy okay so that&#39;s one thing and there were a lot of Barbies who came from very well-educated groups very wealthy groups a lot of aristocrats became Barbies and those Barbies who stayed in Iran it didn&#39;t go with Baha into the bahai faith but became what are known the aali Barbies they are generally considered also to have been very pivotal in the development of the uh in the development of the Constitution Revolution so you can see from the Islamic Republic&#39;s point of view of course the Constitutional Revolution is full of Barbies and Freemasons which is why they they&#39;re deeply suspicious of it but it&#39;s I think it&#39;s very very important actually in terms of showing how um uh you know these new ideas basically shattered the orthodoxes and I think the Barbies are actually extremely important in that process as well so that&#39;s what I would say in terms of the Constitutional Revolution h bah what about bah I mean he he was his disciple but it&#39;s the aali Barbies who are who split off from the from bah so Baha would have gone abroad by that stage but nonetheless they would have had it yes I mean I think they would have had an influence and changing the ideas that that were shaping uh that were shaping the political Dynamic Iran at the time but I want to make that distinction between the two different groups in that sense there&#39;s a group of questions which I&#39;ll try and reward which is um when did a an identity as a state arise so there some people drawing parallels between um what&#39;s happening to the azaris and in southern aan moment what is the sense of national pride of of being in Persian or in Iranian was that a long time ago is this something that reformed as these countries country established itself that is a that is a I mean that is a complex question on a a number of different levels however I mean Iran is probably unusual in the Middle East as being an identifiable Territorial state from quite early on okay so it&#39;s not a dynastic State it&#39;s not like the Ottoman Empire which defines itself in relation to the dynasty already from the 17th century onwards you have in documents the notion of the state of Iran okay so it&#39;s clearly seen as a distinctive State and a distinctive polity and there is an identity now that&#39;s distinct from nationalism which most of us would accept is basically a modern ideology and the development of nationalism but clearly that modern nationalism which I think basically develops in the 19th century and spreads from an elite you know outwards as you get education and others um is founded on a much longer sense of uh of distinct identity um I&#39;ve just got a question about uh the way that like ideas spread I suppose um and I feel like your lecture gave an argument um um saying that the uh individuals uh behind this process were basically uncritically absorbing uh like post Enlightenment ideals from the British and that model of absorption and I wondered if you press deeper um it might get more complicated just from the examples I&#39;m familiar with um in the Indian context C Bailey wrote a book about liberalism um being diffused in India and he offers a model of like creative adaptation and fusing with local Traditions um and that process of like Enlightenment and ideals being translated into like non-western context if that makes sense it does I mean that I that&#39;s exactly what happens by the way I mean I don&#39;t want to give the impression they don&#39;t uncritically accept them they digest them I mean they integrate them into their own model but what is striking as we&#39;re talking at this stage about very basic ideas okay so it&#39;s basic ideas of State development of which they find some of the ideas about you know what what the British give the Iranians at this period is this possibility of change okay that&#39;s basically what it is and that&#39;s what I mean by a very wigg is narrative okay now when it goes into practice clearly there&#39;s a there&#39;s an element there where they need to integrate these I mean you get a whole group of constitutionalist who who basically rigorously interrogate many of the sort of intellectual texts and start to try and adapt them to the local environment that said I wouldn&#39;t want to exaggerate to to what ex I mean you will see that later in the 20th century but it it&#39;s it&#39;s it&#39;s very interesting how people have rebounded back so in the Islamic Republic for instance people will talk about Islamic economics or Islamic human rights or this that the other in many cases what people have concluded is that this doesn&#39;t make a huge amount of sense okay there are human rights and there&#39;s economics and these are disciplines and these are other things and rights that you need to basically incorporate now does it have to sort of sit well within a Iranian context yes so in the Constitutional Revolution for instance you know one of the aspects of the Constitution was there should be a fivan religious committee made of clerics to make sure that laws that are passed are not Contra do not contradict Islamic law but again the first of all I mean I should say that the committee never sat which was a major issue right but the uh but the um but the idea was certainly there and but the fact is also depended very much on what you understood by Islamic law okay I mean there is a there is a distinction between that notion that what people were arguing here for was for rights okay and I think there is a sort of a um there was a division of opinions certainly among the clerics at the time about how you can reconcile those but there were those that did reconcile them you know they said that you know sovereignty belongs to God but God has delegated that to man and therefore by extension you know man has you know agency over his future I&#39;m I use man and women interchangeably by the way in case anyone I&#39;m going to read a last question from someone in the Overflow room it&#39;s quite a little bit longer as a question you said that the Islamic Republic is trying to take Iran back to a precons sitution era but this person has heard that one of the consequences of the post 1979 Revolution and the war with Iraq was actually significant bureaucratization of the state within postrevolutionary Iran is that right and therefore has the Islamic Republic actually developed aspects of Constitution constitutionalism by accident as it were yeah no I mean that&#39;s uh you know there are elements that I have a friend of mine who says that you know K is the third pavi King which is quite an interesting idea the um I I think one of the problems we have here is that we tend to see the Islamic Republic which you know has been going for 44 years after all almost like it&#39;s some sort of like static um static political organization it&#39;s certainly true that what you see so when I look when I chart the Islamic Republic I see the Islamic Republic as a legacy of the pav state so it carries a certain momentum of the previous 50 years of development but then there&#39;s a period when that stops and the thing starts to go into Decline and what you find is that basically in in certainly in my view is that many of the aspects of the state that exist in at least in in in in in in theory in practice don&#39;t really work anymore so I mean one of the the the Striking things of course is that no no State since 1906 has ever has ever thought it legitimate to abolish Parliament no one they won&#39;t dare okay Parliament is a fixed aspect we&#39;ve got to have it almost every single one of them has ignored it however yeah or tried to manipulate it or tried to you know and what you&#39;re finding now is that people are complaining that Parliament which at the onset of the revolution in 1979 was seen as you know House of the nation and this that the other is basically now seen as a cipher I mean it&#39;s basically seen as a sort of an adjunct to the office of the supreme leader so essentially all these or all these institutions have have become hollowed out I mean that&#39;s basically what&#39;s happening and what you found as a dominance of reestablishment with the dominance of the role of the supreme leader in Iran I mean this is a this is a lecture for one of your subsequent lectures but of of of the of of of of the uh the supreme leader office that has taken on as a sort of a religious despotism um a degree of power and authority that most Persian Monarch monarchs would have envied I mean that that that in in theory at least whether you can do it in practice is another matter but in theory at least few Persian monarchs at least in the last 300 years could make the sort of claims uh to Authority that the current supreme leader in Iran is making thank you very much I&#39;m sure you can see while we why invited Professor anari it&#39;s been a delight to hear you thank you very much from all of [Applause] us

Transcript for:Exploring Iran's Constitutional Revolution

Transcript for:
Exploring Iran's Constitutional Revolution