Compare And Contrast Iranian Revolutions

In this essay i will be comparing and contrasting both revolutions that took place in England in 1640 and the Iran in 1976. I will asses the causes, problems that arose, similarities and how they ended. This will lead to me evaluating the differences both revolutions and which were more effective and efficient. This way there will be a lot to learn about these specific revolutions and revolutions in general.
Revolutions raise important questions about how far the political forms and ideas informing them are created before and after the experience of a revolution (Walter, J. 2006).

The English revolution in 1640 started as a civil war. The intention at first was not to overthrow the monarchy however the conflict between Royal authority and
religion brought a series of events that led to the civil war. Charles I believed said he ruled with the Divine Right of Kings. This is the belief that the king is by the will of god and he is the highest power in the land. However there were vast amounts of people whom opposed his view and believed that there should be a limit to Royal authority. They believed that the people and therefore parliament should have a greater say in how the country is governed. This then caused major conflict with the Church of England and religion in England in general.
This then meant that Religion was the first and main cause of the civil war and therefore the revolution. Protestants were angry with King Charles methods of governing due him leaning more towards Catholicism. It is hard to give a breakdown supporters, generally the nobility, landowners and Anglicans supported Charles I, and the regular people supported Parliament. This is just a general view.

1644 was the year Charles lost control of the north of England due to a major defeat in the Battle of Marston Moor. The combined armies of Parliament and the Scots easily defeated the Royalist army. The battle that defeated Charles was in June 1645 when Cromwell’s New Model Army defeated the king’s army at the Battle of Naseby. This then led to Charles surrendering in 1646. However he surrendered to the scots and not parliament as he wished to take advantage of the fragile alliance between the Scottish and Parliament. Nevertheless it was the Scots whom took advantage of Charles and sold him to Parliament for a big sum in 1647.

Charles aided the uncertainty of his punishment by escaping captivity in 1647. The supporters of the king were defeated again in the short civil war that occurred in 1648 and Charles and found guilty which led to his execution on January 30th, 1649. After these events the English Republic was born.

The Iranian revolution of 1978-79 stunned the world.
A large portion of subsequent analyses have a located the origins of the revolution as the mistakes of the shah and of the West, although some scholarly works have come to a conclusion that the cause was due to major socio-economic problems in the area. Iran’s "Islamic revolution" in 1979 has a small ideological resemblance to Iran's "constitutional revolution" of 1905-11 or to revolutions in the West such as England's. Western revolutions such as England's tend to, especially in their phase of extremity, shift left and head more towards a secular system. This is even if religious ideology is dominant, as in the English Civil War of the 1640s. The 1979 uprisings were to get rid of the Pahlavi Dynasty whom have had 2 kings through out their reign; Reza Shah and Mohammed Reza Shah. Before the their dynasty, Iran was ruled by the Qajars, and before that it was the Safavids. These two dynasties were responsible for 2 very important aspects of Iran: The Safavids made Shia Islam the official state religion in Iran and the Qajars gave the muslim clergy political
power.

There are both Shia and Sunni muslims in Iran. A major difference between them is that Shias believed that Ali should've been the first Caliph, however Sunnis think that Abu Bakr was rightly chosen. There has been many other differences such as doctrinal differences. This therefore shows that since the very beginning Shia muslims saw themselves as the party of the oppressed people who were standing up against the wealthy and powerful. This connection between religious faith and social justice was extremely important to Iranian revolutions in general.
In the lead up to the revolution the Shah got rid of Iran’s two political parties in 1975 and replaced them both with the Resurgence party, which was the shahs party.
There was a major censorship and arrests and torture of political prisoners showing that autocracy was in Iran to stay.

One of the reasons for the occurrence of the Iranian revolution was due to Iran's Economy. Around 1962 and 1975, economic and social measures in Iran saw huge improvements. This was due to the Shah implementing what he called a ‘White Revolution’ this was a top-down modernisation scheme led by the monarchy. It led to a rise in Oil revenues from $555 million in 1964 to $20 billion in 1976. And the Shah’s government invested a lot of that money in infrastructure and education. The population grew and infant mortality fell. A new professional middle class
arose.

However the White Revolution wasn’t universally popular. For instance, it was opposed by one particular Shia cleric, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. He spoke out against the White Revolution. There was also the scandal in which Mohammed Reza Palavi spent 100 million dollars US celebrating Irans monarchy (Katouzian, H. 2010). This ludicrous spending caused major upset within the people of Iran, who's economy hadn't improved much since the World War. One of the major reasons for the revolution was due to the politics and economics of Iran where the people were not happy with the very high levels of poverty in certain areas and the extreme gap between rich and poor in the country (Keddie & Richard, 2006). Therefore this absurd act by Reza tipped was a direct stimulant for the revolution. One of Khomeini’s main problems with the shahs government was, quote: “the rigging of elections and other constitutional abuses, neglect of the poor and the sale of oil to Israel.”
Also in general, Khomeini felt that a king’s power was not at all Islamic. That noted about Khomeini, the 1979 revolution didn’t start out to create an Islamic state - like the English revolution not starting off with the thought of overthrowing the monarch.

Due to the oil-fueled economic growth, many Iranians weren’t a part of the economic success, Universities were turning out more graduates than there were jobs and the system of agriculture had the predictable result of displacing farmers. Even the capital city of Tehran did not have enough jobs for its population.
Therefore it’s unfair to come to the conclusion that a majority of the demonstrators who took to the streets in late 1978 were motivated by a fundamentalist vision of Islam. The majority were dissatisfied with economic inequality and political repression and a corrupt regime and this was the main cause of the Iranian revolution in 1979.

The initial demonstrations were small, but when the government officials and army forces starting firing on demonstrators, leading to some deaths, the protests grew and repeated its self. Each time marchers protested against the violent treatment of demonstrators. It was on January 16, 1979 that the Shah left Iran. The government that eventually replaced the monarchy was the second, and in many ways much more revolutionary revolution.

The new Islamic Republic of Iran was based on Khomeini’s idea; there would be a legislature and a president and a prime minister, but any of their decisions could be overturned by the supreme leader who from 1979 was Khomeini. This mean that the ultimate authority is not the will of the people but is god, who is then represented by Khomeini. This mean that Khomeini had extensive power. Such as appointment powers of the heads of the armed services, the Revolutionary Guard, and media representatives. Therefore structurally the system in place looked like a western perception but was not exactly the same. This is also backed up due to life in the Iran having perceptions of being highly repressive. One example is the law that authorises the execution of certain criminals. However it is not also purely repressive or a dictatorship due to the freedoms given to the people of Iran.

One big similarity between English and Iranian revolution was that both Nations consisted of a monarchy pre revolution. Also the main similarity is that both of the major causes for the uprisings were due to religious reasons.