ABSTRACT
In the two decades between the coup d’état of 1921 and the abdication of Riza Shah, Iran underwent a profound transformation. Some aspects of this transformation are well known. A new state of considerable apparent strength was constructed, capable of asserting its power, if not always its legitimacy, throughout the country and over the entire population. This new state developed as an agent of change, implementing and enforcing the agenda of the nationalist elite without the help, and sometimes against the wishes, of traditional intermediary layers such as the ulama, the guilds and the tribal khans and aghas, and incubating a society Europeanized in appearance and modern in modes of cultural and intellectual expression and discourse.
