In Persia (renamed Iran in 1935) strong-arm efforts to build a unified modern nation ultimately proved less successful than in Turkey. In the late nineteenth century Persia had also been subject to extreme foreign pressure, which stimulated efforts to reform the government as a means of reviving Islamic civilization. In 1906 a nationalistic coalition of merchants, religious leaders, and intellectuals revolted. The despotic shah was forced to grant a constitution and establish a national assembly, the Majlis. Nationalist hopes ran high.

Yet the 1906 Persian revolution was doomed to failure, largely because of European imperialism. Without consulting Iran, Britain and Russia in 1907 divided the country into spheres of influence. Britain’s sphere ran along the Persian Gulf; the Russian sphere encompassed the whole northern half of Persia (see Map 29.1). Thereafter Russia intervened constantly. It blocked reforms, occupied cities, and completely dominated the country by 1912. When Russian power collapsed in the Bolshevik Revolution, British armies rushed into the power vacuum. By bribing corrupt Persians, Great Britain in 1919 negotiated a treaty allowing the installation of British “advisers” in every government department.

The Majlis refused to ratify the treaty, and the blatant attempt to make Persia a British satellite aroused the national spirit. In 1921 reaction against the British brought to power a military dictator, Reza Shah Pahlavi (1877–1944), who proclaimed himself shah in 1925 and ruled until 1941.

Inspired by Turkey’s Mustafa Kemal, the patriotic, religiously indifferent Reza Shah had three basic goals: to build a modern nation, to free Persia from foreign domination, and to rule with an iron fist. The challenge was enormous. Persia was a vast, undeveloped country of deserts, mountain barriers, and rudimentary communications. The rural population was mostly poor and illiterate, and among the Persian majority were sizable ethnic minorities with their own aspirations. Furthermore, Iran’s powerful religious leaders hated Western (Christian) domination but were equally opposed to a more secular, less Islamic society.

To realize his vision of a strong Persia, the energetic shah created a modern army, built railroads, and encouraged commerce. He won control over ethnic minorities such as the Kurds in the north and Arab tribesmen on the Iraqi border. He reduced the privileges granted to foreigners and raised taxes on the powerful Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which had been founded in 1909 to exploit the first great oil strike in the Middle East. Yet Reza Shah was less successful than Atatürk.

Because the European-educated elite in Persia was smaller than the comparable group in Turkey, the idea of re-creating Persian greatness on the basis of a secularized society attracted relatively few determined supporters. Many powerful religious leaders turned against Reza Shah, and he became increasingly brutal, greedy, and tyrannical, murdering his enemies and lining his pockets. His support of Hitler’s Nazi Germany (discussed in Chapter 30) also exposed Persia’s tenuous and fragile independence to the impact of European conflicts.

Afghanistan, meanwhile, was nominally independent in the nineteenth century, but the British imposed political restrictions and constantly meddled in the country’s affairs. In 1919 the violently anti-British emir Amanullah Khan (1892–1960) declared war on the British government in India and won complete independence for the first time. Amanullah then decreed revolutionary modernizing reforms designed to hurl his primitive country into the twentieth century. He established modern, secular schools for both boys and girls, and adult education classes for the predominantly illiterate population. He did away with seclusion and centuries-old dress codes for women, abolished slavery, created the country’s first constitution in 1923, restructured and reorganized the economy, and established a legislative assembly and secular (rather than Islamic) court system. The result was tribal and religious revolt, civil war, and retreat from reform. Islam remained both religion and law. A powerful but primitive patriotism enabled Afghanistan to win political independence from the West, but not to build a modern society.

Amanullah’s efforts to modernize Afghanistan were similar to Mustafa Kemal’s in Turkey and Shah Pahlavi’s in Persia. Most of Kemal’s reforms took root and remain in place today. Shah Pahlavi’s reforms have a mixed history, as Persia/Iran became increasingly modern and westernized through the mid-twentieth century, particularly in the urban areas. After the Islamic revolution of 1979, however, Iran became much more conservative socially, while remaining a modern industrialized nation (see “Revolution and War in Iran and Iraq” in Chapter 32). In Afghanistan most of Amanullah’s reforms were abandoned when he was forced to abdicate in 1929.