Legal positivism in the pre-constitutional era of late nineteenth-century Iran

Abstract

The Iranian constitutional movement (1906–1911) occurred at a time when revolution was in the air in a number of peripheral nations. In that period of the early twentieth century, a series of uprisings occurred in the third world countries including the Indian nationalist movement of 1905– 1908 against the British, the Maji Maji uprising in Tanganyika in 1905–1907 against German rule, the Bambata (Zulu) Rebellion of 1906 in South Africa against the British, the Young Turks Revolution of 1908, the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and the Chinese Revolution of 1911–1912. While the essence of the Indian and African movements was anti-colonial, pro-democracy ideas were dominant in the latter three (Ottoman Empire, Mexico and China) alongside the Russian (1905), Iranian (1906) and the Portuguese (1910) movements/revolutions. A satirical Iranian journal (Journal of Despotism) at the time remarkably referred to these democratic movements around the world as “siblings”.