Introduction

The Iran of Yore, from Assertion of Independence to the White Revolution

By George Lenczowski

H.I.M. Farah Pahlavi amongst Kurdish villagers near Shahre-Kord

In 1976 Iran celebrated a major landmark in her modern history, fifty years of growth and development under the aegis of the Pahlavi dynasty. Half a century may not appear a long period if compared with twenty-five hundred years of existence as a political entity and distinct civilization since the ancient Iranian empire was founded by Cyrus the Great. By the standards of modern history, however, which has witnessed unprecedented changes in every sphere of human life throughout the world as a result of advances in science and technology, half a century is a sufficiently long stretch of time for a nation to undergo radical and dramatic changes. Both domestically and externally, such changes have indeed occurred in the life of Iran.

In the sociopolitical sense, the twentieth century will go down in history as an era of revolution and modernization, particularly as regards the areas of the world situated outside western Europe and North America. The continent of Asia has experienced probably more dramatic changes in a short span of time than any other area of the world. In the 1950s and 1960s there was a tendency among social scientists to concentrate on two countries at the extremities of the Asian continent, Japan and Turkey, as subjects of their studies inasmuch as the two represented, each in her own way, a radical process of modernization outside the Communist orbit. Perhaps this selection was justified at the time when it was made. By the 1970s, however, it was certain that Iran should not only be included as a subject of such investigation but that she might even claim primacy. This was so because Iran had experienced a transformation not less profound and, in many respects, more spectacular than the other two countries. This claim to attention could be based on three reasons: Iran's transition from weakness to strength, from backwardness to progress, and from poverty to wealth. It all ended in 1979 with the advent of the Islamic Republic, but what will the future hold?

A modern Queen for a modern Iran.

At right, with Giscard d'Estaing President of France.

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