The Persian Revolution of 1905-1909

"Many dangers and many anxious days lie before the new Persia." Almost a century later, Edward Browne's fears and hopes have a special resonance in the minds of contemporary readers. The Persian Revolution of 1905-1909, has maintained its relevance and freshness, even after the occurrence of a revolution more intense and all-embracing than the Constitutional Revolution. Furthermore, the aspirations of the Islamic Revolution of 1979 were a distant protest against the failure of that earlier revolution. Edward Browne was a professor of Persian studies at Cambridge University who had written A Year Amongst the Persians and the four-volume Literary History of Persia. What he primarily intended to achieve in The Persian Revolution was to demonstrate to his readers that the tumultuous events they were witnessing in Iran, often with suspicion if not disdain, were in fact no less than a genuine struggle by an oppressed and impoverished nation to establish a constitutional order despite the overwhelming odds of domestic tyranny, foreign intervention, and ideological divisions. He strove to serve as a voice in the West for the Persian Constitutionalists. The Persian Revolution was more than a simple record of a revolution, for it influenced the very course of events it covered in its pages. This new edition of the book first published in 1910 features an introduction by Abbas Amanat, a professor of History at Yale University, as well as a section featuring Browne's correspondences and contemporary reviews of the book. Also included are 56 period photographs. This is an essential volume for anyone attempting to understand Persia's past and present.