The Rise, Reign and Fall of Reza Shah, Iran's Modernizer

What follows is a timely interview with Professor Ali Ansari, a leading historian of modern Iran at the University of St Andrews, on the rise and reign of Reza Shah Pahlavi (1878-1944), the founder of the Pahlavi dynasty responsible for ousting the preceding Qajar monarchy which had ruled Iran since 1785. He is a figure who continues to excite both hostility and admiration amongst Iranians to this day. Last year Ansari published an important contribution to our understanding of the development of Iranian nationalism in the 20^th century, The Politics of Nationalism in Modern Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2012), in which he analyses the period in considerable depth and examines many of the reforms which were enacted in the course of Reza Shah’s reign. Since Reza Shah’s forced abdication at the hands of the allies in World War II he has most often been framed as an archetypal authoritarian moderniser and is best remembered for establishing Iran’s first university, as well as banning the veil and his inveterate hostility to the traditional prerogatives of the clergy. Ansari here attempts to convey a more nuanced view of the period, delineating many of its advances, but also serious shortcomings, to offer a more rounded view of the man who undoubtedly had a pivotal role in the transformation of modern Iran and whose persona continues to cast a shadow, for better or worse, over the present.  

Reza Shah has long been a figure who has inspired fear and opprobrium, but also nostalgia, national pride and profound admiration. Could you perhaps start by telling us something about his socio-economic and cultural background and the era in which he lived and grew up and its role in the formation of his personality and world-view?

The context of the emergence of Reza Khan is extremely important and too often people judge his rise and impact on Iranian state and society in retrospect and with the benefit of hindsight and pay little or no attention to historical context. Reza Khan’s rise from relative obscurity mirrors the emergence of other Iranian dynasts, who had little or no connection with the ruling elites of the day, most obviously Nader Shah. The fact that he was an outsider in every sense of the term had an important impact on his attitude towards the ruling elites of the day and vice versa. From what we know, Reza Khan came from a military background, and his father served in the Qajar military , which was not a fighting force as we would understand it today. That said Reza Khan himself joined one of the two military units organised and administered by foreign powers in Iran (and by extension adhering to military norms and discipline as we would understand the term), the Russian officered Cossack Brigade. This Brigade was officered by Russians until the  Russian Revolution in 1917 when these officers were gradually withdrawn and Reza Khan was able to move up the ranks, eventually becoming the commander. He was therefore in command of one of the few military forces in the country, but again to put things in context, it is worth noting that the Brigade itself probably did not number more than 2000 effective troopers.

What were the main factors which led to Reza Khan’s alliance with the reputed Anglophile politician and journalist, Seyyed Zia Tabataba’i, and the February 1921 coup which overthrew the incumbent government held to be in effective and incompetent?  Is it accurate to view it primarily as a reaction to the disorder which had been unleashed in the aftermath of the Constitutional Revolution (1905-1911)?

The Constitutional Revolution had unleashed new ideas and a new political order onto Iran. I use the term deliberately because it was by no means an ordered transition, and if the moment of revolution involved less violence than other revolutions, the process itself was chaotic and unsettled with the consequence that by 1912, central government in Iran, in any meaningful sense, ceased to exist. Add to this the scourge of the First World War when Iran, despite its professed neutrality, became a battlefield for competing armies (occasionally with the connivance of Iranian politicians!) and succumbed to social and economic dislocation and suffering on a wide scale. Many Iranian intellectuals – including for example the noted nationalist Hassan Taqizadeh – became increasingly despondent by the failure of the revolution to deliver and they came to the conclusion that constitutional reform in the absence of institutional government was meaningless and that they must take a step back and first construct a state before delimiting it. Looking to European history, they drew on the idea of ‘enlightened despotism’ as distinct from despotism, in which the defining characteristic (drawing from Voltaire) was the ruler was a ‘lawgiver’ and institution builder. During the First World War this idea gained ground and it is important to remember that it was not regarded as contradicting the constitutional project but as a means of achieving it. Taqizadeh argues this in a famous article in the periodical Kaveh dated to 1921 in which the model that is highlighted, interestingly, is Peter the Great.

What was the view of the British government vis-à-vis the coup? Till this day many Iranians believe that both the coup and Reza Khan’s coronation four years later were part of a British orchestrated conspiracy. How much truth is behind this old canard? 

As I mentioned there was considerable interest among Iranian intellectuals in seeking a strong man to take the helm of government and give some direction to it. We now have evidence that Reza Khan, at quite an early stage – in 1916 – had approached the German embassy for support, so these ideas were around. British involvement is generally sourced to two facts: first and perhaps most importantly was the fact that after the Russian Revolution, Britain remained by default the preeminent foreign power in Iran and therefore it would be have been odd if they did not play some role, even if this was not to obstruct. The other fact is the failure of the Anglo-Persian Agreement which the coup of 1921 by some exercise in intellectual acrobatics, was meant to compensate for. On the latter point, if it was compensation then it was very much the least bad option insofar as the British wanted stability so that they could effectively withdraw their troops. But the coup government almost immediately abrogated the stillborn agreement much to the frustration of Curzon among others. The coup of 1921 was Iranian in inception and organisation but the realities on the ground and the closeness of Seyyed Zia to the British means that [British officials/diplomats] on the ground in Iran would have been aware and were probably sympathetic – indeed more sympathetic than either the government in London or Delhi. Not for the first time British diplomats used their initiative not to oppose the coup and presented their masters in London with a fait accompli.

To what extent did the experience of Reza Shah in the Cossack Brigades shape his ideas on political order, nationalism / patriotism, modernisation and nation building? In your recent book you speak at length about these issues, along with a desire to revive a powerful and unified central government predicated on an idealised conception of ancient Sassanian rule. Could you please elaborate on the factors of overriding importance for Reza Shah’s vision of the modern nation-state?

Much of this has to do with the intellectuals who surrounded Reza Shah, many of whom would have grown up suffused with a distinct pride in Ancient Iran. The key here is to understand that was not Achaemenid Iran – the archaeology of which had yet to make an impact – but principally Sasanian Iran which had fed into the intellectual body politic both through classical literature and the Shahnameh in particular. The historical mythology of the Sasanians was deeply ingrained in the popular Iranian culture and the work of European historians such as the Danish orientalist Arthur Christensen gave further impetus to these ideas. Christensen is the real author of the idea of Sasanian Iran as a powerful centralised state, however anachronistic that might have been, but it seems that he projected his ideas onto the emergent Pahlavi state and interestingly (from a historiographical perspective) there is a suggestion that he also projected backwards onto the Sasanian state. For Reza Shah, as his adopted surname suggested, the Sasanians symbolised the powerful, central state with a strong Iranian identity and the king at the centre. The Sasanians provided Iranian intellectuals with an authentic indigenous model on which to build their modern State.

Prior to the formal demise of the Qajar dynasty the Iranian army pacified a number of regional and tribal movements. The the most famous  is perhaps the Soviet Republic of Gilan which was brought to an end in September 1921, but also the uprising of Colonel Mohammad Taqi Pesyan in Khorasan province and the widespread violence unleashed by General Amir Ahmadi in Lorestan. Did the country’s territorial integrity really stand on the precipice in the early 1920s and how did Reza Khan as Minister of War and the army address this quandary? Do you deem the campaign to pacify both regional and tribal unrest a success? Did it suffer from unnecessary excesses?

These centrifugal forces have tended to gain in credence as some intellectuals, especially on the left, fell out of love with Reza Shah. But it is important to remember that at the time they were seen as a real threat to the integrity of the state and Reza Khan was idolised for having brought them to heel. There is no doubt that excesses were committed but for many at the time, the national imperative remained paramount and these regional forces were nothing more than ‘brigands’. There is something undoubtedly of the urban-rural conflict which shapes this tendency to centralise and there are many ways in which this could be interpreted as a civilising mission, but at heart there was a sense among the urban elites that rural (tribal) elements had to be brought under control. One of the great sins of modern nationalism has been the over concentration on centralisation without any concession to regionalism. It was and is an emphasis drawn from the French revolution but ironically for all the criticism of Reza Shah, none of his successors have seen fit to do otherwise. Most glaring in this respect was the reaction to the tribes after Reza Shah’s fall in 1941. After a brief respite when the tribes were considered ‘oppressed’, the Iranian parliament, fearful of the centrifugal forces they represented, were quick once again to revert to form and bring them to heel. Much the same could be said about the attitude of the authorities in the Islamic Republic. It is undoubtedly a flaw in the nationalist project but one that few have seen fit to do anything about.

Reza Shah’s relationship with religion has been the subject of much speculation. He famously met with leading clergymen in Qom (namely, Hajj Shaykh Abdolkarim Ha’eri-Yazdi, Seyyed Abolhassan Isfahani, and Hajj Mirza Hossein Na’ini) to discuss the virtues of establishing a republic, before finally deciding to found a new imperial dynasty. What was his relationship with the clergy like prior to his coronation? 

In my view, Reza Shah had a largely instrumentalist view of religion. I don’t particularly see him as irreligious and he clearly was careful to respect opinions when it mattered to him. But he was undoubtedly what we might describe as a ‘realist’ with regards to religion and the religious classes. For the intellectuals that informed Reza Shah religion could and should be distinguished from superstition and power politics, which for many was what  many of the ulema were involved in. Reza Shah therefore understood the power of religion but he also strongly believed, as did many others, that the ulema represented a vested interest, not religion per se, and that ‘irrational’ religion was contradictory to progress. In this view he fell right into line with enlightenment philosophy.

Few things earned Reza Shah greater animosity from the clergy than legal reform and the introduction of a civil code by the Western-trained technocrat Ali Akbar Davar. Can you please explain when and why Reza Shah and his allies instigated this process and what it entailed for the clergy? What was the relationship, if any, between Davar’s reforms and reforms instituted in the Qom seminary itself?

Judicial reform had been one of the key ambitions of the revolutionaries of 1906. Their view of the modern state was centred on the notion of the rule of law, and the constitutional state whether a republic or a constitutional monarchy, was one bounded by law. Some attempt had been made to initiate this process but for the reasons noted above, in the absence of a coherent state, legal reform made no sense. The immediate catalyst for judicial reform however came in the desire to abolish the capitulations. Europeans had argued that the reason they needed legal exemptions for their nationals was because Iran did not have a legal system to speak of. Reza Shah understood that to abolish the capitulations, legal reform was an imperative and he set Davar to work. In so doing he basically brought all judicial operations under the control of the state and away from the clerics who had traditionally made some of their money – and enjoyed social status – from their administration of the law derived from the sharia. This was seen as inadequate both in form and substance for the administration of a modern state.

The reform of the Iranian educational system was another significant change which many have interpreted as the central government asserting its authority in an effort to wrest control and authority from the clergy. Could you comment on these reforms and what they involved? 

This was as you mentioned the second great pillar of reform and one that was central to the goals of the constitutionalists, for whom the real revolution lay in education.  As with judicial reform the problem was how to start when you literally had to start from scratch. A number of writers have criticised the concentration on higher education as opposed to  secondary education. But the reality was you needed teachers before you could establish schools. The foundations of a national school system were therefore established in this period but the really dramatic achievements were made at the higher levels with the foundation of Tehran University. This was founded in part, it is argued, because Reza Shah was keen to keep people in Iran and avoid their needless contact with dangerous foreign ideas. But too much is made of this, and while Reza Shah, as with his son, was frustrated that those he had sent abroad for an education, or indeed had benefitted from education in Iran, had a propensity to turn against him (for obvious reasons in many ways, given his continued grip on power), this should not detract from the enormous achievement this represented. Needless to say the clergy were against this assault on their monopoly and many decried the growth of ‘secular’ education. Foroughi has an excellent lecture on the difficulties that were faced in setting up a law school in Iran (one of the founding bodies of the what would eventually become the University) and he mentions that one way they got round the objections was to assure the ulema that students would have to take a course in theology and religious law!

The transformation of Iran’s transport infrastructure is generally seen, often quite literally, as one of the most enduring legacies of Reza Shah’s modernising reforms. What were some of the most significant of these?

Quite apart from the roads that were constructed the most significant if misunderstood development was  the construction of the railway  binding the Caspian provinces to the oil rich Khuzestan. The significance of this development lay in large part on the fact that Reza Shah raised the funds through customs duties and not through a loan. Foreign engineers were hired but this was essentially an Iranian venture. There had been criticism that Reza Shah decided on a north-south axis for the railroad at the instigation of the British who then used it to supply the Russians during the WWII. Few analyses of Reza Shah’s policies have been more silly than this one in ascribing a British motive. The British were in fact much more keen on an East-West railroad which would have linked India to Iraq, and to be fair there were sound commercial reasons for this. But Reza Shah’s motives were much more about internal cohesion, being able to move troops more easily around the country but above all connecting the Caspian Provinces (where not coincidentally his own estates were) to the rest of the country. Traditionally, the Caspian provinces had been shielded by the great Alborz mountain range and had been difficult to reach.

Did a genuine desire for equality between the sexes motivate Reza Shah’s forceful unveiling of women? What were the successes but also the failures of this policy? Because of it he has often been accused of being callously indifferent to the beliefs and values of the overwhelming majority of Iranian society. Is the appraisal of such critics fair? In a similar vein his sartorial reforms, namely, the forcing of Iranian men to wear a European-style bowler hat have been depicted as examples of Reza Shah’s superficial ‘pseudo-modernism’. What do you make of these two distinct sartorial reforms and the motivations behind them? What do they say about Reza Shah and his confidants’ conceptions of ‘modernity’ and ‘progress’?

I don’t think it had anything to do with pseudo modernism. At the time the belief among nationalists was that dress and appearance mattered, and here the example of Peter the Great looms large in their thinking. It was about revolutionising the self. You dress differently, you think differently. We view this is odd today but at the time it was a mainstream view. The Asian country that reformists admired most was Japan, and they had done just this with the Meiji restoration. Women’s rights were also seen as a part of modernity and most nationalist ideologues supported equality. What they understood by that is something else of course and I have little doubt that Reza Shah viewed it as an aspect of modernity, but didn’t really understand what it meant or necessarily agreed with it. There was no philosophy behind it for him. In terms of hat-ware, I should add that I have never seen that Reza Shah enforced the ‘bowler hat’; first there was the Pahlavi cap, basically something akin the French kepi and then this was replaced in the 1930s by the chapeau, which is basically a fedora. As to the charge that Reza Shah offended traditional Iranian attitudes; well there were lots of traditional attitudes relating to crime and punishment (to say nothing of slavery) which were also reformed. It is true that matters could have been handled more sensitively at times and certainly the confrontation at Mashhad in which a number of people died was a tragedy which should have been avoided.

What was the significance of Reza Shah’s visit to Turkey and meeting Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in June 1934? What were the similarities between the two men, but also the differences which distinguished them as leaders of their respective countries?

I think they saw each other as kindred spirits but it is wrong to assume too much imitation. In the first place Reza Shah had to operate quicker from a lower base. For example the 5^th Majlis reforms of 1924 introduced surnames in Iran a good ten years before they were introduced in Turkey. Similarly, it was the visit of the King and Queen of Afghanistan to Iran in 1928 (without the veil) that encouraged Reza Shah to move quicker with the abolition of the veil in Iran.

It is widely alleged that Reza Shah accumulated much land and wealth from Iran’s landed gentry under force of violence and subsequently amassed an unrivalled fortune. For instance, it has been claimed that after assuming power that he rapidly became the largest landowner in the country by a significant margin. How much truth lies behind these claims?

He did indeed become one of the largest landowners in northern Iran though he always claimed that the land was being left fallow and he wanted to use it to lead by example. This may be somewhat disingenuous but it is also not unusual for a dynast without a landed base to accumulate land. It may not be what we might term best practice but we should not be surprised by it. What matters in some ways is what he did with the land and in this respect it does appear that he cultivated it. Of course Mohammad Reza Shah subsequently sought to redistribute some of it to the peasantry. Perhaps of more importance in this respect is the amount of moveable wealth he acquired because this is normally a better indication of corruption and evidence of a need to move quickly if need be! It is worth bearing in mind that at his death his wealth was estimated be £129,317.

What led Reza Shah’s autocratic rule to become increasingly arbitrary and wayward during the course of the 1930s?  Not only seasoned critics such as Seyyed Hassan Modarres and literati like Mirzadeh Eshqi met with grisly fates, but even longstanding allies such as Abdolhossein Teymurtash (Minister of Court) met violent deaths on the order of the court. What can account for this?

Put very simply power corrupts, he became more paranoid and less tolerant. Some of this was genuine but a great deal was not and as a result the latter years of reign are tainted with his poor treatment of former allies. At the same time, it has become normal to blame every death on him and there is for instance little evidence that he murdered Davar, for example. In fact he seems to have genuinely missed Davar. The tragedy of Teymourtash is to my mind the tragedy of atabegs down the ages. Reza Shah grew increasingly paranoid about Teymourtash’s ambitions and the latter was not discrete enough about his role in the making of modern Iran and (dangerously) in the ‘education’ of Reza Shah. Whether orders were given or not, it certainly seems true that Reza Shah let him languish in prison till his untimely death. At the same time, for all the brutality that undoubtedly existed, Reza Shah’s rule was a vast improvement on what happened earlier and one of the striking realities is the relative absence of torture, certainly for political prisoners, during his reign – something which cannot be said for his son, or the Islamic Republic.

What were the reasons behind Reza Shah deciding to unilaterally renege on the D’Arcy concession (1901) in 1932 and what was the subsequent fall out? Also, for those less familiar with the oil agreement in question, what was its historical background and significance?

The oil concession signed with D’Arcy in 1901 was transformative both for Iran’s political economy but also for Iran’s relations with Britain. It was a bad agreement signed by the Qajars on the basis that they did not think there was any oil to be found! The agreement ensured that Iran would receive 16% of the total profits of the company. It was a very bad deal. Reza Shah wanted it renegotiated because in the aftermath of the abolition of the capitulations, the Oil Agreement seemed ripe for discussion. In the end Iran was not able to get the deal it wanted but it sent a strong signal to the British that a deal that seemed apposite (if not fair) in 1901, could not last without some sort of revision. 

Why did Reza Shah finally abdicate his throne in September 1941? Was it solely the consequence of his alleged Nazi sympathies as he detractors allege? What was the calculus of the British and Soviet governments (the Allies) at the time and what instigated their occupation of Iran and attitude to the incumbent monarch?

Reza Shah fell because of a series of miscalculations and the unfortunate fact that the Germans had invaded Russia in 1941 with such rapidity. Britain wanted to protect her oil assets in Abadan and open a transit route for supplies to Russia. Since Nazi Germany had effectively made it to the Caucasus, Iran became the natural land bridge. Reza Shah wanted to maintain Iran’s neutrality. There were Germans working in Iran but there is no evidence that he was tilting towards Nazism. Perhaps of more concern for the Allies was the fear that pro-Nazi officers could stage a take over as they tried to do in Iraq. In the event, seeking to ensure Iran was not infiltrated by the Axis, the Allies made a series of demands on Iran that Reza Shah found unacceptable and exploiting Reza Shah’s general unpopularity, they invaded in the summer of 1941. Iran’s armed forces capitulated in 6 days, a major shock to Reza Shah’s system given that he had staked so much on building the army. What is interesting is that the collapse was precipitated by the failures at officer level rather than with the rank and file. The Allies were determined to rid themselves of Reza Shah and Churchill even considered restoring the Qajars. Ultimately some of the leading intellectuals of the constitutional era, including Foroughi, ensured the peaceful transition to the inexperienced Mohammad Reza Shah, at the tender age of 21.

Finally, what do you think are the chief lessons we might draw from Reza Shah’s rise to power and his reign today? Do you see the palpable nostalgia for this autocratic and secularising moderniser amongst certain sectors of Iranian society as welcomed or worrisome?

The history of Reza Shah and Iran proves Croce’s dictum that all history is contemporary history. Reza Shah’s rule looks better the further away we are from it and more we have to compare to it. For supporters and detractors alike, Reza Shah has come to be identified with all that was good or bad, but this is a gross simplification. Not only can we not paint such broad historical strokes, it is clear that we can better understand the era as a collective rather than a singular enterprise. Reza Shah provided the political will and the muscle, but many of the ideas came from elsewhere. He was in many ways the enabler. Another important lesson is that of context and judging people by the standards of the times and the conditions they inherited. There is nostalgia today in Iran because of what he and his supporters achieved; in a relatively short time – roughly 16 years – there is no doubt that they laid the foundations of modern Iran, and much of the institutions of the state we see today were the results of their efforts. This legacy is in many ways his final testament. At the same time, the importance of context should remind us that Reza Shah was a man of his times and that to seek something like him today would be meaningless. There is undoubtedly a growing appetite for a secular moderniser with a strongly nationalist agenda. But we should be wary, as perhaps he and his intellectuals sympathisers might have cautioned, of looking backwards, when what Iran needs is someone of our time facing firmly to the future.

 

Professor Ali M Ansari BA (Lon) PhD (Lon) is Professor of Iranian History & Director of the Institute for Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews; Senior Associate Fellow, Royal United Services Institute and Vice President of the British Institute for Persian Studies. He is also the author of several books including, and Editor of the Cambridge History of Iran Vol 8 (The Islamic Republic).

Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi is a final year doctoral candidate at Queen’s College, University of Oxford, focusing on modern Iranian intellectual and political history.