We know that Donald Trump does not read books. He is more of a television enthusiast and a Twitter aficionado. His knowledge of international relations and history – Middle East history, in particular – is limited at best. But as we stand on the brink of a war with Iran, with catastrophic repercussions that would dwarf the fallout from the Iraq war, basic knowledge of the history of the country that President Trump almost bombed last month, would serve him, and his supporters, well.
Iran is located in West Asia in the heart of the Islamic world. The key themes that shaped its modern history and informed its political culture broadly overlap with the experiences of other developing societies in the global south.
In his magisterial study, From the Ruins of Empire, Pankaj Mishra reminds us that Western history is not universal history. At the start of his book, he observes that for most of the developing world, the key events of the 20th century were not the two world wars, the Holocaust, the Cold War or the fall of the Berlin Wall. The central political developments that shaped the modern history and identity of millions of Asians and Africans revolved around the struggle for self-determination and independence from Europe.