Vejdani’s study of Iranian historical writing and history making from the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries works largely with the traditional toolbox of historians. It engages in deep analysis of texts and their meanings, contextualizes sources, and examines conceptual changes over time. Although this study fits squarely within the discipline of history, its methodology and conclusions offer certain interdisciplinary ramifications.
Building on social theorists like Pierre Bourdieu and Jürgen Habermas, the book explores how Iranian historians “operated within a field of historiographical production in which their position within institutions and in relation to dominant discourses” shaped their understanding of the past (9). Moreover, Vejdani documents how historians worked within and shaped a modern public sphere of Iranian writers and readers, functioning with relative autonomy from the modern state. Thus were they able to create “new forms of historical writing insofar as a broad spectrum of political and social movements...