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Iran
THE ERA OF REZA SHAH, 1921-41
Tabatabai became prime minister and Reza Khan became commander
of the armed forces in the new government. Reza Khan, however,
quickly emerged as the dominant figure. Within three months, Tabatabai
was forced out of the government and into exile. Reza Khan became
minister of war. In 1923 Ahmad Shah agreed to appoint Reza Khan
prime minister and to leave for Europe. The shah was never to
return. Reza Khan seriously considered establishing a republic,
as Atatürk had done in Turkey, but abandoned the idea as a result
of clerical opposition. In October 1925, a Majlis dominated by
Reza Khan's men deposed the Qajar dynasty; in December the Majlis
conferred the crown on Reza Khan and his heirs. The military officer
who had become master of Iran was crowned as Reza Shah Pahlavi
in April 1926.
Even before he became shah, Reza Khan had taken steps to create
a strong central government and to extend government control over
the country. Now, as Reza Shah, with the assistance of a group
of army officers and younger bureaucrats, many trained in Europe,
he launched a broad program of change designed to bring Iran into
the modern world (see Historical Background , ch. 5). To strengthen
the central authority, he built up Iran's heterogeneous military
forces into a disciplined army of 40,000, and in 1926 he persuaded
the Majlis to approve a law for universal military conscription.
Reza Shah used the army not only to bolster his own power but
also to pacify the country and to bring the tribes under control.
In 1924 he broke the power of Shaykh Khazal, who was a British
protégé and practically autonomous in Khuzestan. In addition,
Reza Shah forcibly settled many of the tribes.
To extend government control and promote Westernization, the
shah overhauled the administrative machinery and vastly expanded
the bureaucracy. He created an extensive system of secular primary
and secondary schools and, in 1935, established the country's
first European-style university in Tehran. These schools and institutions
of higher education became training grounds for the new bureaucracy
and, along with economic expansion, helped create a new middle
class. The shah also expanded the road network, successfully completed
the trans-Iranian railroad, and established a string of state-owned
factories to produce such basic consumer goods as textiles, matches,
canned goods, sugar, and cigarettes.
Many of the Shah's measures were consciously designed to break
the power of the religious hierarchy. His educational reforms
ended the clerics' near monopoly on education. To limit further
the power of the clerics, he undertook a codification of the laws
that created a body of secular law, applied and interpreted by
a secular judiciary outside the control of the religious establishment.
He excluded the clerics from judgeships, created a system of secular
courts, and transferred the important and lucrative task of notarizing
documents from the clerics to state-licensed notaries. The state
even encroached on the administration of vaqfs (religious
endowments) and on the licensing of graduates of religious seminaries.
Among the codes comprising the new secular law were the civil
code, the work of Justice Minister Ali Akbar Davar, enacted between
1927 and 1932; the General Accounting Act (1934-35), a milestone
in financial administration; a new tax law; and a civil service
code.
Determined to unify what he saw as Iran's heterogeneous peoples,
end foreign influence, and emancipate women, Reza Shah imposed
European dress on the population. He opened the schools to women
and brought them into the work force. In 1936 he forcibly abolished
the wearing of the veil.
Reza Shah initially enjoyed wide support for restoring order,
unifying the country, and reinforcing national independence, and
for his economic and educational reforms. In accomplishing all
this, however, he took away effective power from the Majlis, muzzled
the press, and arrested opponents of the government. His police
chiefs were notorious for their harshness. Several religious leaders
were jailed or sent into exile. In 1936, in one of the worst confrontations
between the government and religious authorities, troops violated
the sanctity of the shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad, where worshipers
had gathered to protest Reza Shah's reforms. Dozens of worshipers
were killed and many injured. In addition, the shah arranged for
powerful tribal chiefs to be put to death; bureaucrats who became
too powerful suffered a similar fate. Reza Shah jailed and then
quietly executed Abdul-Hosain Teimurtash, his minister of court
and close confidant; Davar committed suicide.
As time went on, the shah grew increasingly avaricious and amassed
great tracts of land. Moreover, his tax policies weighed heavily
on the peasants and the lower classes, the great landowners' control
over land and the peasantry increased, and the condition of the
peasants worsened during his reign. As a result, by the mid-1930s
there was considerable dissatisfaction in the country.
Meanwhile, Reza Shah initiated changes in foreign affairs as
well. In 1928 he abolished the capitulations under which Europeans
in Iran had, since the nineteenth century, enjoyed the privilege
of being subject to their own consular courts rather than to the
Iranian judiciary. Suspicious of both Britain and the Soviet Union,
the shah circumscribed contacts with foreign embassies. Relations
with the Soviet Union had already detiorated because of that country's
commercial policies, which in the 1920s and 1930s adversely affected
Iran. In 1932 the shah offended Britain by canceling the agreement
under which the Anglo-Persian Oil Company produced and exported
Iran's oil. Although a new and improved agreement was eventually
signed, it did not satisfy Iran's demands and left bad feeling
on both sides. To counterbalance British and Soviet influence,
Reza Shah encouraged German commercial enterprise in Iran. On
the eve of World War II, Germany was Iran's largest trading partner.
Data as of December 1987
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