r/wikipedia • u/Ok-Goose6242 • 13h ago

Reza Shah modernised Iran by forcing Bakhtiari nomads to settle, replacing leaders with army officers, and banning traditional clothes for Western suits. This policy ultimately failed due to WWII, but caused immense tribal distress and a 60% livestock loss.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakhtiari_people
187 Upvotes

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84

u/JacobJamesTrowbridge 9h ago

'Forced Modernization' essentially sums up the Pahlavi regime in a nutshell. They were legitimately forward-thinking leaders in a deeply conservative country and advanced many things, but they were also hellbent on maintaining an authoritarian state around themselves. If they'd been willing to liberalise their political system to some extent, and curb their rampant human rights abuses, it would've saved them a lot of trouble in the long run.

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u/emerald6_Shiitake 5h ago edited 5h ago

And there are examples of such previously authoritarian modernizers who successfully democratized their country, such as the KMT of Taiwan or king Juan Carlos of Spain; all of whom relatively quickly developed their economies with pretty good human rights records to boot. There’s no excuse for the shah to be both authoritarian and modern unless he only wanted to maintain the current regime and make it look legit to clueless westerners

14

u/pm_me_github_repos 4h ago

Hmm idk about the KMT’s good human rights record. Even ignoring the anti-communist massacres, they weren’t the first to settle Taiwan

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u/CatPooedInMyShoe 3h ago

I know there was a period of terror in Taiwan under the KMT, similar to the terrors that happened in the Soviet Union, and many innocent people were arrested on trumped up charges and some were executed.

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u/IgnoreMePlz123 2h ago

Who cares? Why would letting the natives run things work?

2

u/RyuNoKami 1h ago

It wouldn't. Anyone thinks otherwise is foolish. "Native Taiwanese" only accounts for a few percent of the population. The Han Chinese had already dominated the island long before the KMT was even thought of.

2

u/yourstruly912 4h ago

Both Spain and Taiwan got the economic boom before democratization

25

u/HotNeighbor420 8h ago

Sounds more like ethnic cleansing

13

u/bombielonia 5h ago

Diaspora iranians will say this is okay, somehow

3

u/m3rc3n4ry 1h ago

Specifically Pahlavists, which are a lot. There are anti-Shah ones too. My friend's family were communists that fled iran.

6

u/KJongsDongUnYourFace 10h ago

The Shah was a brutal monarchy installed by the Western world to continue stealing Iranian oil.

No such modernization exists

41

u/Syndiotactics 10h ago

Installed? Nah. Backed by? Certainly. Would you have preferred the corrupt and weak Qajar regime instead?

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u/[deleted] 9h ago

[deleted]

23

u/Syndiotactics 9h ago

Reza Shah (the one in the title) was the shah between 1925–1941, long before this.

1

u/RealRroseSelavy 7h ago

no. the british were mere advisers the persian cosacs

1

u/VerdugoCortex 5h ago

I wonder if these folks ancestors are the ones who made the Luristan bronzes and that's where they got their name from. Imagine back then each band has summer neighbors and winter neighbors and you all have a ton of little side jobs to get both what you need and extra to trade to the neighbors for things you want. Then you break apart for winter and Grok burns his firepit extra hot one cold night and finds bronze at the bottom. He figures it out, and next summer you come back and Groks tribe has some cool shiny things you want and are willing to trade your goods for. Suddenly Groks tribes PPP just went through the roof. And me get jealous of grok tribe and their fortune to just spend some hours gather rock and make shiny strong things we all want but can't make, grok tribe get all the fortune.