The Shah's Imperial Celebrations of 1971 (Hardcover)

Robert Steele
 9781838604172
1-83860-417-0

In October 1971 Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, held a celebration to commemorate the 2500th anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire by Cyrus the Great. The event was designed as an elaborate.

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and magnificent piece of political theatre and at centre stage was the Shah himself. He was presented to Iran and the world as a great king, at once traditional and modern; the heir and defender of a 2,500 year-old monarchical tradition and a modernising revolutionary. In this book, Robert Steele removes the celebrations from the narrative of the revolution, putting them in the context of the Shah's rise, rather than his fall, and the book questions what the regime aimed to achieve by holding the event. It also examines the material gain by encouraging foreign investment and tourism. The first serious study on this subject, this book reveals the extent of the success or failure of the celebrations in their own historical context.