The First World War had a profound effect on the history of many non-European nations. Indeed, the dominant Eurocentric approach to historiography regarding this period, with a specific focus on the trench wars in Western Europe, ignores how the Great War influenced nation state building in Turkey and Iran after the disintegration of the Ottoman and Persian Empires. The First World War led to the overthrow of the Qajar regime and its replacement by Reza Shah, which was central to the development of modern Iran.
Iran became a front for many of the imperial powers and was therefore subjected to British, Russian, Ottoman and German invasions. It is true that this chaotic situation eventually allowed Reza Shah, to centralise his power in a society that the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci would term as being in a state of passive revolution; lacking a hegemonic group allowing Ceasarism to flourish. Nevertheless, the lack of any social or political hegemony from any one group allowed a heterogeneous nationalist movement to develop, influenced by both ethnic and ideological allegiances to maintain Iran’s sovereignty from foreign invasion.
