Mellī Sāzī-yi Īrān: Farhang, Qodrat va Dowlat (1320–1350) Persian 2025

The book “Nationalizing Iran” by Afshin Marashi is a profound study of one of the most sensitive periods in Iranian history—a time when the modern state, new ideologies, and emerging cultural institutions sought to construct an image of the “nation” and of “Iran.” The book details how a complex network of power and meaning formed among the state, intellectuals, educational institutions, and social currents, ultimately producing a modern national identity.

Marashi, adopting a historical and cultural approach, demonstrates that the “nation” in Iran was not a natural or spontaneous phenomenon, but the result of decades of efforts in education, historiography, archaeology, cultural policy, and conceptual reconstruction. Shahrbanoo Saremi’s clear and precise translation renders this scholarly work accessible and engaging for readers.

The book spans roughly seventy years, from the late Qajar period to the end of Reza Shah’s reign—a period when Iran was transitioning from a longstanding past to a new world.

New schools, newspapers, universities, museums, archaeology, and the official language were not merely educational tools; they were political institutions used to construct a form of “collective memory” and “shared identity.”

Marashi shows that the state aimed to create a unified Iranian identity—an Iran that understood its past in a new way and imagined its future through this cultural reconstruction.

In this framework, nationalism was not simply an ideology but a cultural project that intertwined countless threads with politics, everyday life, and the vision of development.

The book addresses the fundamental question:

“How did Iran achieve a modern national identity?”

Instead of offering simple answers, Marashi illustrates a gradual process in which the past was reconstructed, narratives rewritten, and institutions transformed into instruments of meaning-making.

For this reason, Nationalizing Iran is not merely a political history; it is a cultural history of thinking about “us.”