Colonialism Never Left Iran
Understanding the Unique Violence of European Colonialism
[TLDR: Let’s talk about why modern colonialism, or the European Colonial Knowledge System, is different than the form of conquest that preceded it. As an aside, when you hear me talk about knowledge systems, I am referencing work done by Immanuel Wallerstein, Samir Amin, Salimah Valiani and many more. Special gratitude is owed to my supervisor Prof. Rasigan Maharajh who walked me through the journey.]
A hundred years ago it was perfectly acceptable to be pro-colonisation. Gandhi and Churchill are two famous names who were not only pro-colonisation but pro-empire in the 1920s. But in 2025 the only moral position one can have is some form of anti-colonialism.
Or at least, that is my view. I assumed it was an uncontroversial view. But a career debating officials from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) taught me otherwise. Colonialism has its defenders. One of the arguments made by such defenders is as follows: “Colonisers have always existed; ancient history is full of them. Opposing colonialism just means you resent the strong for doing what anyone would do if they had the power.”
Before considering its merits, it is worth noting that this position rarely stated but often assumed to be true. To give one example Jared Diamond, author of the famous Guns, Germs and Steel among other books, tells the story how and why he came to write his first book. As an anthropologist he had spent much time with communities in Papua New Guinea (PNG). One person asked him why white people have so many things (“cargo” to use the local term) while people from PNG have so few.
In response he wrote a book about how African smallpox, Chinese gunpowder and West Asian steel helped Europeans conquer the world.
But Diamond’s response - which he has by now reiterated in countless books, articles and interviews - begs the question. Why did Europeans feel the need to not only conquer, but to take everything from those whom they conquered? Why did they destroy knowledge systems, religions and languages wherever they went? Even in PNG there are conflicts between communities. But when one tribe is defeated, they don’t suddenly lose all of their material possessions, access to resources, ability to work for who they like, etc. European colonialism is distinct from traditional warfare.
To give another celebrated example, by the end of the 13th century CE the descendants of Genghis Khan controlled China, the Arab peninsula including what is today Iran, Iraq and Syria, and Eastern Europe, including some parts of what is today Germany.
“So,” the defender of colonialism might say, “colonialism existed long before the modern era. Genghis Khan killed a lot of people in his conquests and his children and grandchildren continued the tradition.”
There’s no doubt that conflict between various groups of humans is old, perhaps as old as humanity itself. But what Europeans did to most of the world was something else entirely from the Mongol conquests.
My anthropological research focussed on the community known as the “Khoi-San” here in Southern Africa. I had the opportunity to meet Katrina Essau as part of that research. At roughly 90 years of age, Essau is the last living native speaker of the N|uu language. Within 100 years, European colonists were able to wipe this language, this culture, this knowledge system, from the face of the earth. In its place are the languages Europeans favoured - Afrikaans mostly, and perhaps some English. The way of living - Katrina Essau still refers to herself as a “bushman” - effectively no longer exists. When she tells her own story, we learn that she had to learn a new culture - complete with Afrikaans swear words - in order to survive in Apartheid South Africa. Now the places of her youth would be completely unrecognisable - linguistically, culturally and socially - to a person from that era.
By contrast, what happened to the people that Kublai Khan (grandson of Genghis Khan and founder of the Yuan Dynasty in China) conquered in the 13th century? For one thing, they kept their language. In order to be accepted by the Chinese population, the Mongols went out of their way to uphold the importance of the Han Chinese language. We also know that there were multiple languages spoken in the Yuan Dynasty court, including Tibetan. Tibetan Buddhism became a favoured religion during the period of Mongol rule in China. Buddhism was not the religion of Mongolia at the time, where Tengrism (a form of Shamanism) was still popular. Even though Buddhism was favoured by the court, other religions still flourished during this period, including Confucianism, Taoism, Islam and Christianity. (See this book listing on ResearchGate for further reading.) In this way the Yuan dynasty represented a syncretic and limited change in Chinese culture at every level. Yes it was distinct from the previous dynasty, but if someone had been in a coma for a few years and had not lived through the transition, they would have still recognised the new court as a continuation of the old, pre-Mongol court. The same could not be said for someone familiar with the ways of the Inca court or the Aztec court or the Yoruba court or the Zulu court before and after their respective conquests by European powers. That change represented a complete break with the past, usually a very bloody break with the past.
From a World Systems perspective, a key distinction between European colonialism and whatever was going on in China in the 13th century can be understood by the “core-periphery” dichotomy. Europe was always the core for the European colonial system - everyone else in the periphery serviced the core. You could conquer a place, even a very big place like India, but the purpose was always to enrich business interests “at home”. The spread of Christianity was often the pretext for colonial ventures that were about empowering the already rich and powerful within Europe. Syncretism did exist (see William Dalrymple’s White Moguls for a fascinating example of syncretism) but it often existed despite the colonial system, not because of it.
And the purpose of this was something quite different to founding a new dynasty in an old empire. The purpose was enrichment of the European “core” (plunder, theft, or whatever you want to call it) and cultural homogenisation - “we” weren’t going to learn “their” language and culture, so “they” had better learn “ours”.
The result is an entire world whose fundamental purpose is to enrich colonial Europe, even today. We have a term for this - “the global economy”. When a country is fulfilling its role of enriching neocolonial interests in Greater Europe (including the United States) it is referred to as a functioning part of “the global economy”; when it is doing something else - trying to end poverty for example - it is referred to as “dysfunctional”.
The twentieth century is littered with examples of countries that made the transition from functioning to dysfunctional and therefore faced the wrath of Greater Europe. As I write these words, the United States has just joined in the bombing of Iran, so perhaps it is worth considering that case above others at this moment.
In the case of Iran, the dates tell a story: In 1908 the company that would later be known as BP discovered oil in Iran. At the time Iran was already being divided up into spheres of influence between Russia (what would soon become the Soviet Union) and the British. The discovery of oil changed the equation and made control of Iran’s oil reserves a key component of Anglo-USA foreign policy in the 20th century.
In 1921, the Qajar dynasty ended with the coming to power of Reza Shah Pahlavi in a military coup. The Shah tried to stay neutral during World War 2, leaning towards support for Germany when neutrality seemed no longer possible. (Given that the UK and the USSR were in the process of dividing Iran’s resources between each other, this might have been an understandable position.) When the Germans lost the war, the Shah was forced to abdicate in favour of his son, Shah Mohammad Reza, the Shah everybody knows about. That Shah had to leave power when he clashed with the more democratically minded Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, who was ousted in a CIA and MI6 backed coup in 1953. The result of all of that was the continued reign of an increasingly brutal and despotic Shah, ended only in the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
After 1979 the USA and its European vassals have continued to do everything possible to destabilise the Iranian regime. They began by ordering Saddam Hussein to invade in what would be known as the Iran-Iraq war, then trying to isolate the Iranian regime from the international community and finally through attacking the government’s efforts to launch a civilian nuclear energy program.
In order to understand the importance of the current moment, it’s worth going back to 1953. What was Mosaddegh’s biggest crime? He was not an Islamist; none of the propaganda currently used to denigrate the Iranian state would apply to him. But he also believed that Iranian resources should belong to the Iranian people. He nationalised the oil and threatened to leave BP out, or at least renegotiate contracts that he saw as illegitimate.
Why has the USA been in conflict with Iran since 1979? Those who say it is because of their hardline Islamist regime need a reality check. The US has been funding various factions within what can broadly be called “Islamism” as a counterweight to pan-Arab and pan-African socialism since the 1960s.
This is not about ideology. It’s about a simple question. Colonialism asks “Are you willing to play your role in the global economic system or not?” That role is to allow Greater Europe to control and exploit your resources. Sometimes they might sell those resources back, for a profit. But if you want something else, an economy based on principles of fairness and equity, for example, then it’s regime change time.
In imperial China, before after and during the Yuan dynasty, vassal states knew what was expected. You paid your tribute to the emperor. Some years that tribute might increase. Other years it might decrease. But never did the emperor ask for everything, for he knew that such a price could never be paid. Even if unreasonable demands led to war and conquest, the conquered people were now imperial subjects who couldn’t be asked to give up everything to enrich the crown. They had to love the emperor now too, for they too were the subjects of the emperor.
In the colonial system the views of the people don’t matter. They have a role to play. Their humanity is irrelevant.