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Edinburgh Historical Studies of Iran and the Persian World

Sovereignty in IranChallenges to Eurocentrism from Ancient Iran to the Islamic Republic

By Shabnam J. Holliday

Format

£100.00

About this book

First comprehensive exploration of sovereignty that considers many aspects of Iran

  • Explores sovereignty from ancient Iran to the Islamic Republic including the Woman, Life, Freedom protests
  • Provides an inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary approach that moves beyond periodised understandings of history contributes to better understanding Eurocentrism

This book is a multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary collaborative project examining sovereignties as a plural concept through the case of Iran. In so doing it challenges Eurocentric assumptions in the Humanities and Social Sciences and covers sovereignty from ancient Iran to the Islamic Republic including the Woman, Life, Freedom protests.

Part One explores sovereignty in ancient Iran by looking at the Elamites through a theoretical lens, the Achaemenids, and the Parthians and Sasanians. Part Two explores how territory relates to sovereignty alongside other dynamics in the Safavid, Second World War, Pahlavi and Islamic Republic periods. Part Three then focuses on competing and co-existing sovereignties in the southern Persian Gulf at the beginning of the twentieth century in Kurdistan and its relationships with Iranian governments during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as well as in the Woman, Life, Freedom protests. A non-Eurocentric framework requires the reader to think about co-existing and competing sovereignties with an ‘Area Studies’ lens. This approach moves beyond periodised understandings of history and not only contributes to better understanding Eurocentrism but also enables a greater appreciation of contexts, complexities and agencies.

Reviews

Through a historical overview from the ancient Iran to the present, this timely and original contribution offers a non-Eurocentric approach. It presents many interesting insights into the complexity and relationality of sovereignties, both internal and external. As social construction, sovereignties, ranging from the state to women’s bodies and agencies, as well as their markers, are navigated, enforced and contested.
Seldom does theoretical and empirical inquiry intersect in such a sophisticated and intellectually rigorous manner. This is a collection of essays that warrants attention.
This book promises to stimulate discourse beyond academic confines, addressing a younger generation eager to comprehend Iran’s intricacies. Crucially, the book refrains from offering prescriptive solutions, which is advantageous; it provides a meticulous, articulate, and precise academic examination of the current situation while inviting readers to engage thoughtfully in the discourse. This approach encourages a nuanced understanding of sovereignty, which the book shows is a complex issue that challenges outdated paradigms that have lost their relevance over time.
Table of contents

List of Figures
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements
Note on Transliteration

Preface: 1919
Ali Ansari

Introduction: Writing Iran into Debates on Sovereignty
Shabnam J. Holliday

I. Sovereignties and Ancient Iran

1. Of Mountain and Plain: Sovereignty, Resilience, and Diversity in Elam
Brieg Powel

2. ‘Created’, ‘Seized’, and ‘Held’: Concepts of Sovereignty in the Old Persian Inscriptions of Darius I
Lloyd Llewelyn-Jones

3. From Earth and Water to Spandarmaz and Anahita: Women as Archetypal Agents of Emancipation and Sovereignty in Iranian Myths and Folktales
Saeed Talajooy

4. Sovereignty and the Parthian and Sasanian Kings
Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis

II. Navigating Territorial Sovereignties

5. The Safavids: An Argument for the Retention of Sovereignty on the Domestic and International Scenes
Andrew Newman

6. A Subjugated State or Member of the United Nations: How Sovereignty was Envisioned during the Occupation Years, 1941 – 1946
Rowena Abdul Razak

7. Sovereignty and the Pahlavi ‘Empire State’
Robert Steele

8. Seeking Spiritual Security: The Religion and Sovereignty Nexus in Iranian Foreign Policy during the Islamic Republic Era
Edward Wastnidge

III. Competing Sovereignties

9. Banning and Belonging: Sovereignty and Ethnicity in Bahrain and the Persian Gulf Coast, 1900-1941
Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet

10. The Clash of Sovereignties in Iran: Kurdistan and (Semi)sovereignty,
Marouf Cabi

11. Multiplicities of Sovereignty: Gender, State, and Intersectionality in Iran’s Woman, Life, Freedom Uprising
Asma Abdi and Shabnam J. Holliday

Conclusion: Towards a Non-Eurocentric Approach to Sovereignty through Iran: Appreciating Complexity, Contingency and Agency
Shabnam J. Holliday

Index

About the author

Shabnam J. Holliday

Dr Shabnam J. Holliday is Associate Professor in International Relations at the University of Plymouth, UK. She is also Research Director of the British Institute of Persian Studies (part of the British Academy). Her research interests are around Iran and world orders, and decentring International Relations (IR). She is author of several peer-reviewed articles including (with Edward Wastnidge) ‘Towards a Post-imperial and Global IR?: Revisiting Khatami’s Dialogue among Civilisations’, Review of International Studies (2025) and ‘Beyond Hegemony, World Order as Domination: Iran’s Green Movement and the Nuclear Sanctions Regimes’, International Relations (2023). She is co-editor (with Philip Leech) of Political Identities and Popular Uprisings in the Middle East (Bloomsbury, 2016) and author of Defining Iran: Politics of Resistance (Routledge, 2011).

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