From the White Revolution to the Islamic Revolution

The present article is an attempt to study social, economic reasons for the White Revolution, particularly the land forms, on the one hand and to go through the viewpoints of the Iranian and non-Iranian thinkers about the same revolution on the other. Referring to the pressures exerted on the Shah’s regime to carry out reforms, the author discusses that the decision to carry out reforms was basically an extrinsic one, that is, the foundations of the idea of reform came from without the Shah’s regime. One of the thrusts of the present article is to study the Iranian agrarian society before the reforms in order to analyze the impact of the land reforms on various social strata, particularly the rural areas.Overall the land reforms led to the formation of new social classes who played a drastic role in the later developments of the Iranian society. The land reforms put an end to the patrimonial authority, but later in the ’70s led to the formation of a coalition of new revolutionary classes that finally toppled the Shah’s regime.