Abbas Amanat

was much more all-embracing.

It was not Islamic in a particular fashion or at all, in a sense.

It started with a kind of a very liberal, Democrat agenda.

which required, which demanded mostly by people who were the veterans of the older generations of Iranian liberal nationalists that were left out in the Pahlavi period.

It's a period of the Shah became increasingly authoritarian.

increasingly suppressive, and therefore basically leaving no space, no political space open for any kind of a give and take, any kind of a conversation or participation.

That was in the 70s.

70s, 70s, particularly in the 70s.

In 1906, there was a period, actually, as you might know, the first decade or so of the 20th century witnessed numerous what we refer to as constitutional revolutions, including Russia in 1905, the first revolution.

including the Chinese Revolution in 19, Constitutional Revolution in 1910, the Young Turks Revolution in 1908, and the Iranian Revolution in 1906.

Very different cultures, but all of them, in a sense, were coming out of regimes that became progressively powerful.

without having any kind of a legal system that would protect the individual vis-a-vis the state.

So the idea of law and the constitution according to which there should be a certain protection, a certain civil society, became very common.

Exactly, it's like 1848, when you would see that there's a whole range of revolutions across Europe.

Or you would see, for instance, the Arab Spring.

You see all these revolutions in the Arab world, which unfortunately, nearly all of them failed.

So yes, these are very contagious ideas that moves across frontiers from one culture to another.

And I presume we can add to that there are two elements which one can say there was a greater communication, there is a greater sense of a world economy.

And the turn of the century witnessed, the first decade of the century witnessed a period of volatility.

particularly in currency.