Description
Book SynopsisAfter the 1979 Islamic Revolution, constitutionalist leaders represented a diverse composite of beliefs, yet they all shared a similar vision of a new Iran, one that included far-reaching modernizing reforms. Mangol Bayat provides a much-needed detailed analysis of this historic episode.
Trade ReviewThis is one of the finest works on the Iranian Constitutional Revolution. . . . Bayat’s meticulous scholarship has substantially raised the stakes in analyzing Iran’s Constitutional Revolution. Bayat’s
Iran’s Experiment with Parliamentary Governance is simply magisterial in terms of sources, contexts, and analysis, but its importance goes beyond the hitherto neglected Second Majlis to re-center secular liberalism as the major thread in the whole of the Constitutional period, 1905-1911, with its preceding developments in the late 19th century and in Iran’s subsequent history. A
tour de force revealing both how the imperial powers undermined democracy and how eager the early reformers were in striving to establish parliamentary government in Iran. This groundbreaking work—a worthy continuation of her earlier work on the First Majles—helps debunk the widely accepted notion that early twentieth-century Iran was not yet ready for parliamentary government.
