The State and the Subaltern

by Touraj Atabaki

"In the 1920s Turkey and Iran faced political upheaval as both states attempted to find their routes to modernity. This is the first study to observe the practice of modernization in Turkey and Iran not only from above, by examining the measures adopted by the political regimes of the late Ottomans, Atatürk and Reza Shah, but also from below, exploring how different social levels contributed to the drive for modernity. It is a full and thorough analysis of how these societies reacted to reform and change. The efforts of nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century reformers did not protect either country from the challenges of the separatism of minorities or from occupation by European powers. The setback that the Iranian Constitutional Movement suffered in the years before the outbreak of the First World War; the political disintegration and partial occupation of Persia during the war; the traumatic loss of the European provinces of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkan War and its subse