Abbas Amanat

So many of the countries of the world, particularly non-West, suffered, and particularly the businesses suffered.

And not surprisingly, the business class were in the forefront of many of these constitutional movements requiring the state

to give the kind of a, created the right kind of institutions to listen to their voices, to their concerns and the creation of a democratic system, parliamentary and system in which there would be representation.

popular representation, proper elections, and so forth, and constitutions.

And this very much is a kind of a French idea of the constitution going back all the way perhaps to 1789 revolution.

Montesquieu, all this kind of philosophes were greatly appreciated, particularly the French system.

So what were the ideas in the 1906 Iranian Constitution?

They precisely the same.

They were demanding a creation of a legal system with division of power between the three, executive, legislative, and the judiciary, not unlike the American system.

And they requested basically a certain public space to be created between the two sources of power.

The state, which had this kind of a control over the, if you like, the secular aspect of life in the society, and the religious establishment that had a...

full control over the religious aspects.

And both of them, from the perspective of the Constitution, it is considered as repressive.

And therefore, there has to be a new space open between these two.

And that was the idea of a constitutional revolution.

By its very nature, it was an idea of modernity.

They wanted a modern society.

They wanted a better material life.

They wanted more representation and so forth.

The constitutional revolution, as I always would say, is much more of an innocent revolution.