HISTORIOGRAPHY AND POLITICAL CULTURE
IN TWENTIETH CENTURY IRAN
Conference | Introduction

Venue:
Wadham College, Oxford University, Oxford.

Dates:
17-18 September 2004.

Convened by:
Prof. Touraj Atabaki.

Organised by:
The Iran Heritage Foundation, the Oriental Institute (Oxford University) and the Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute
in association with
Wadham College and The Middle East Centre (St. Antony’s College).

Introduction:
In the course of its history, Iran has experienced many eventful epochs. The last century was far from exceptional in this respect: the country was ravaged by three major wars (1914-1918, 1941-1945, 1980-1988) in which hundreds of thousands of people died; two coups (1921, 1953) transformed power relations within the political and military elite; and two revolutions (1905-1909, 1978-1979) led to radical changes in social, cultural and political relationships.

Such changes in social, cultural and political relationships were manifested more than anywhere else in the new perceptions of Iranian historiography. As was the case with European historiography, up to the twentieth century the historiography of Iran was dominated by political, dynastical, genealogical issues as well as narratives of the life and times of individual members of the elite. However, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century and especially in the post-Constitutional Revolution (1905-1909) period, a new school of Iranian historiography has gradually established itself. The main criteria of this new school was, while crafting a significant and unbroken link with a seminal ancient past that could fill the gap between the country’s origins and its present actuality, to adopt exclusive approaches to history from an elitist perspective. By assigning the agency in history to an elite that in its multiplicity could be clerics, secular intelligentsia, colonialist and social or political institutions, the historians not only deny the agency of the subaltern and its autonomous consciousness but also adopt an essentialist approach that de-historicises the process of social and cultural change.

Historical research into twentieth-century Iran’s spectacular upheavals, schisms and shifts has developed very erratically. Generally speaking, one can distinguish three areas of historical research. First, the macro political picture, i.e. foreign relations, military and diplomatic. This top-down approach has played a role for at least one hundred years and has led to much interesting research on, for example, the institutional aspects of the Constitutional Revolution. Secondly, the number of research contributions to economic, urban and demographic history has grown during the second half of the twentieth century. The third field is that of Iran’s social history. Although this is the most recent and least developed trend, nonetheless, the social history of Iran was gradually acknowledged as an academic field by many historians.

In the 1960s and 1970s a serious trend in writing the history of nineteenth/twentieth-century Iran developed amongst historians. For the first time, British, French and also Iranian diplomatic archives were utilized by native Iranian historians. The sudden availability of the new archival materials after 1978 on the Qajar and Pahlavi periods has encouraged this emerging school. Moreover, the number of interpretations of the Islamic Revolution has also grown dramatically, inspired in many cases by theories drawn from sociology and political science. Outside Iran a small community of scholars emerged, especially after the Second World War, which made important contributions. During the Soviet era, many Russian historians had an interest in Iran, but their publications were necessarily constrained by their Marxism-Leninist framework.

This conference brings together leading historians from Iran, Europe and the United States to discuss different readings of modern Iranian historiography and the resulting interpretations of Iran’s political culture throughout its long history.

Registration fee:
30.00 Pounds (concession 15.00 Pounds).

Enquiries and registration:
+44 (20) 74934766, info@iranheritage.org.
AMEX, Visa, Mastercard and cheques accepted. Make cheques payable to Iran Heritage Foundation and mail to 5 Stanhope Gate London W1K 1AH.