The Age of Aryamehr

Fully incorporates Pahlavi Iran into the global history of the 1960s and '70s, when Iran mattered far beyond its borders.

The reign of the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1941–79), marked the high point of Iran's global interconnectedness. Never before had Iranians felt the impact of global political, social, economic, and cultural forces so intimately in their national and daily lives. Iranian actors also played an important global role on battlefields, barricades, and in board rooms far beyond Iran's borders. Iranian intellectuals, technocrats, politicians, workers, artists, and students alike were influenced by the global ideas, movements, markets, and conflicts that they also helped to shape.

From the launch of the Shah's White Revolution in 1963 to his overthrow in the popular revolution of 1978–79, Iran experienced the longest period of sustained economic growth that the country had ever known. An entire generation took its cue from the shift from oil consumption to oil production, aspiring to a modernized Iran. The history of Iran in this period is often presented as a prologue to the revolution, with its political, social, and cultural origins firmly rooted within a national context, interrupted by global actors as Iranian actors retreated.

While engaging with this national narrative, The Age of Aryamehr is concerned with Iran's place in the global history of the 1960s and '70s. It examines and highlights the transnational threads that connected Pahlavi Iran to the world, from the global traffic in modern art and narcotics to the embrace of American social science by Iranian technocrats and the encounter of European intellectuals with the Iranian Revolution.