AN AUGURY OF REVOLUTION: THE IRANIAN STUDENT ...

The Iranian intelligentsia that became largely influential during the Pahlavi era began to
grow into a new bureaucratic elite during the Qajar era. Many Iranians who were foreign
educated became high-ranking generals, financial officials, and provincial governors. 11
In Iran,
like Egypt and the Ottoman Empire, “the path to state employment passed through Paris.” 12
However, Iranians “learned more from their French-speaking instructors than the calculation of
cannonball trajectories and double-entry bookkeeping.” 13
Many new ideas were cultivated at
European universities, and the new intelligentsia believed that the ideas of nationalism and
progress “could reach the masses only through education.” 14
Many students that were educated abroad began to challenge the status quos. In many
instances, European education led to the infiltration of Western ideas into Middle Eastern
society. For example, the Constitutional Revolution (1905-1911) in Iran was in many ways
encouraged by an influx of European ideas. Also, Mohammad Mosaddeq, who later challenged
Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s regime in Iran, studied in France and Switzerland in the early
twentieth century. Mosaddeq was an avid nationalist, and he “considered Paris the center of the
civilized world.” 15
Many changes came about in the Middle East in the aftermath of World War I. Between
1921 and 1925, Reza Khan, a commander of the Cossack Brigade, assumed power in Iran and
became the first Pahlavi shah. The years 1925 through 1930 marked the beginning of Reza
Shah’s educational reform, and numerous laws were passed that encouraged foreign education,
including a 1928 law that “provided for sending Iranian students abroad each year.” 16 The
11 Mottahedeh, The Mantle and the Prophet, 58-9.
12 Cleveland and Bunton, A History of the Modern Middle East, 94.
13 Mottahedeh, The Mantle and the Prophet, 51.
14 Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet, 51.
15 Kinzer, All the Shah’s Men, 54.
16 Nikki Keddie, Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution (Yale University Press, 2003), 91.
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