What do you think?
Rate this book
Nationalizing Iran: Culture, Power, and the State, 1870-1940
When Naser al-Din Shah, who ruled Iran from 1848 to 1896, claimed the title Shadow of God on Earth, his authority rested on premodern conceptions of sacred kingship. By 1941, when Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi came to power, his claim to authority as the Shah of Iran was infused with the language of modern nationalism. In short, between roughly 1870 and 1940, Iran's traditional monarchy was forged into a modern nation-state.
In Nationalizing Iran , Afshin Marashi explores the changes that made possible this transformation of Iran into a social abstraction in which notions of state, society, and culture converged. He follows Naser al-Din Shah on a tour of Europe in 1873 that led to his importing a new public image of monarchy-an image based on the European late imperial model-relying heavily on the use of public ceremonies, rituals, and festivals to promote loyalty to the monarch. Meanwhile, Iranian intellectuals were reimagining ethnic history to reconcile “authentic” Iranian culture with the demands of modernity. From the reform of public education to the symbolism surrounding grand public ceremonies in honor of long-dead poets, Marashi shows how the state invented and promoted key features of the common culture binding state and society. The ideological thrust of that century would become the source of dramatic contestation in the late twentieth century.
Marashi's study of the formative era of Iranian nationalism will be valuable to scholars and students of history, sociology, political science, and anthropology, as well as journalists, policy makers, and other close observers of contemporary Iran.
In Nationalizing Iran , Afshin Marashi explores the changes that made possible this transformation of Iran into a social abstraction in which notions of state, society, and culture converged. He follows Naser al-Din Shah on a tour of Europe in 1873 that led to his importing a new public image of monarchy-an image based on the European late imperial model-relying heavily on the use of public ceremonies, rituals, and festivals to promote loyalty to the monarch. Meanwhile, Iranian intellectuals were reimagining ethnic history to reconcile “authentic” Iranian culture with the demands of modernity. From the reform of public education to the symbolism surrounding grand public ceremonies in honor of long-dead poets, Marashi shows how the state invented and promoted key features of the common culture binding state and society. The ideological thrust of that century would become the source of dramatic contestation in the late twentieth century.
Marashi's study of the formative era of Iranian nationalism will be valuable to scholars and students of history, sociology, political science, and anthropology, as well as journalists, policy makers, and other close observers of contemporary Iran.
200 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2008
60 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 11, 2018
Confession: I skimmed this book for what I needed. Instead of reading it cover to cover, I gathered what I needed from the "meatier" parts instead of the sections that droned on and on about the biographies of different revolutionaries. For a basic history, I actually enjoyed my skim. I learned a lot, and I liked the writer's voice. It wasn't quite as dry as I feared it would be, even if it was a bit repetitive.
Read
October 13, 2024this man can sure yap.
September 16, 2018
Rituals of the Modern State
An interesting case study but not very exciting book, written originally as a PhD thesis. The gist is that Iran followed the same pattern into modernity and nationalism that other nations did and only lagged a behind for a bit, ostensibly because Shah Naser al-Din delayed taking the same European tour that other national leaders did until 1873. The inspiration for most was Baron Haussmann's redesigned Paris, the wide boulevards, glassed in shops which, along with London and its Crystal Palace, created a grand sense of spectacle and public ceremony. It's a pattern well described in Walter Benjamin's Paris The Arcades Project, and widely emulated elsewhere in Cairo, Berlin, Istanbul, Baghdad, the far east and in the Americas. Marashi delights over how much Naser al-Din observed and learned about the effect of an engineered public space on public participation and the imagination.
Marashi's interest is in general legitimization of dynastic power as Iranian society moved into a shared modernity. One aspect of this was the widespread performance of the Ta'ziyeh, a Shiite passion play commemorating the martrydom of Imam Hoseyn during the month of Moharram, usually performed in public spaces or smaller theatres. To this end on a grander scale, the Takyeh Dowlat amphitheatre was built in the 1870s, seating some 20,000 was built, and attending a performance was considered to be a highly desirable social act at all levels of Qajar society.
A second pattern of modernization was the invocation of ancient traditions as idealized seed elements of a nationalist present. Inheriting an ancient culture was often used to validate the historicity of the modern nation-state. One intriguing relationship was the largely Zoroastrian-Parsi community of Bombay which, was regarded as a preserved model of ancient Iran. Another source Iranian intellectuals drew on the were writings of European orientalists who through their research and archeological studies knew more about these earlier periods than did most Iranians, for example their translation of Herodotus' History of the Persians. The Indo-European hypothesis of linguistic genealogy and ancient migration proved useful in establishing Iran's historic position in the pantheon of nations, while differentiating it from Semitic-Arabic culture.
The final pattern is the growth of public education. As happened elsewhere, French and British military advisers were brought in to train, educate and modernize the army and French Lazarists and American Presbyterian missionaries created schools for the education of Christian children along with the France based Alliance Israelite Universelle bringing modern western style education to the Jews, all of which tied in nicely to the nationalist project which required a literate and numerate bureaucratic elite. Reza Shah Pahlavi ascended the Peacock Throne in 1926. Under his rule the missionary aspect of the schools was curtailed, and by 1939 the schools were nationalized and taken over. The Ministry of Education was charged with creating a universal Iranian education and the public sphere poets such as Omar Kayyam and Ferdowsi's 1000 year epic poem the The Shahnameh was given special prominence, as was the visit of Bengali sage and Nobel Prize winning poet Rabindranath Tagore in 1932.
The account ends on the cusp of WW II, just before things start to get really interesting. A reasonable backgrounder to Iranian society and the politics of the State of the day. The audience would be almost entirely academic.
An interesting case study but not very exciting book, written originally as a PhD thesis. The gist is that Iran followed the same pattern into modernity and nationalism that other nations did and only lagged a behind for a bit, ostensibly because Shah Naser al-Din delayed taking the same European tour that other national leaders did until 1873. The inspiration for most was Baron Haussmann's redesigned Paris, the wide boulevards, glassed in shops which, along with London and its Crystal Palace, created a grand sense of spectacle and public ceremony. It's a pattern well described in Walter Benjamin's Paris The Arcades Project, and widely emulated elsewhere in Cairo, Berlin, Istanbul, Baghdad, the far east and in the Americas. Marashi delights over how much Naser al-Din observed and learned about the effect of an engineered public space on public participation and the imagination.
Marashi's interest is in general legitimization of dynastic power as Iranian society moved into a shared modernity. One aspect of this was the widespread performance of the Ta'ziyeh, a Shiite passion play commemorating the martrydom of Imam Hoseyn during the month of Moharram, usually performed in public spaces or smaller theatres. To this end on a grander scale, the Takyeh Dowlat amphitheatre was built in the 1870s, seating some 20,000 was built, and attending a performance was considered to be a highly desirable social act at all levels of Qajar society.
A second pattern of modernization was the invocation of ancient traditions as idealized seed elements of a nationalist present. Inheriting an ancient culture was often used to validate the historicity of the modern nation-state. One intriguing relationship was the largely Zoroastrian-Parsi community of Bombay which, was regarded as a preserved model of ancient Iran. Another source Iranian intellectuals drew on the were writings of European orientalists who through their research and archeological studies knew more about these earlier periods than did most Iranians, for example their translation of Herodotus' History of the Persians. The Indo-European hypothesis of linguistic genealogy and ancient migration proved useful in establishing Iran's historic position in the pantheon of nations, while differentiating it from Semitic-Arabic culture.
The final pattern is the growth of public education. As happened elsewhere, French and British military advisers were brought in to train, educate and modernize the army and French Lazarists and American Presbyterian missionaries created schools for the education of Christian children along with the France based Alliance Israelite Universelle bringing modern western style education to the Jews, all of which tied in nicely to the nationalist project which required a literate and numerate bureaucratic elite. Reza Shah Pahlavi ascended the Peacock Throne in 1926. Under his rule the missionary aspect of the schools was curtailed, and by 1939 the schools were nationalized and taken over. The Ministry of Education was charged with creating a universal Iranian education and the public sphere poets such as Omar Kayyam and Ferdowsi's 1000 year epic poem the The Shahnameh was given special prominence, as was the visit of Bengali sage and Nobel Prize winning poet Rabindranath Tagore in 1932.
The account ends on the cusp of WW II, just before things start to get really interesting. A reasonable backgrounder to Iranian society and the politics of the State of the day. The audience would be almost entirely academic.
December 6, 2025
روایتی از شکلگیری ملیگرایی ایرانی از اواسط سلطنت ناصرالدینشاه تا پایان دورهٔ پهلوی اول
نویسنده نشان میدهد چگونه از خلال سفرهای اروپایی ناصرالدینشاه، مفروضات تازهای از رابطهٔ دولت و جامعه پدید آمد که مجرایی برای امکان تصور عنصر«ملت» را فراهم کرد، و در ادامه با اشاره به کوششهایی که به واسطه بازخوانی تاریخ ایران باستان از خلال روایتهای جلالالدین میرزای قاجار، میرزا فتحعلی آخوندزاده و سید حسن تقیزاده که بر زمینه دانش خاورشناسی قرن نوزدهم اروپایی نضج یافته بود، به روایتهای نوینی از هویت ملی انجامید. این پروژه در دورهٔ رضاشاه، از طریق آموزش، سیاست فرهنگی و آیینهای یادبود و خاطره فرهنگی، به شکلی منسجم و دولتی تثبیت شد.
نویسنده نشان میدهد چگونه از خلال سفرهای اروپایی ناصرالدینشاه، مفروضات تازهای از رابطهٔ دولت و جامعه پدید آمد که مجرایی برای امکان تصور عنصر«ملت» را فراهم کرد، و در ادامه با اشاره به کوششهایی که به واسطه بازخوانی تاریخ ایران باستان از خلال روایتهای جلالالدین میرزای قاجار، میرزا فتحعلی آخوندزاده و سید حسن تقیزاده که بر زمینه دانش خاورشناسی قرن نوزدهم اروپایی نضج یافته بود، به روایتهای نوینی از هویت ملی انجامید. این پروژه در دورهٔ رضاشاه، از طریق آموزش، سیاست فرهنگی و آیینهای یادبود و خاطره فرهنگی، به شکلی منسجم و دولتی تثبیت شد.
January 3, 2016
Whether you are interested in the subject matter or interested in great academic writing, this book will not disappoint. Marashi has an effortless writing style that weaves scholarship, theory, description and narrative into an enjoyable manuscript. I was told that this was his dissertation which speaks to his comfort with the material. It has both pace and clarity which are usually missing from dissertation turned text. I want to reread it not so much to study the subject matter but for the form.
November 3, 2014
Focusing on the movements that nationalized Iran - the intellectual, social, and political currents that shaped Iran's modern identity, Marashi manages to contextualize how Iran came to be unified as a nation. Disengaging from the typical political history, Marashi chooses to examine how Reza Shah's idea of an Iranian identity had been in the making since the late Qajar times, and firmly situates Iran within the wider global nationalist movement. A cultural, social, and political exploration into the evolution of Iran.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews