An American in Tehran.

• Author: Molavi, Afshin
• Position: W. Morgan Shuster in 1911 Iran - Brief Article

Britain and Russia cooked up ways to end the Iranian constitutional experiment. Britain had come to realize that one king came to heel more easily than eighty parliamentarians with their own opinions and agendas. Into this uncertain environment another American entered the Iranian political scene and left his mark on the Constitutional Revolution: W. Morgan Shuster, a New York banker whom the Iranian Parliament retained to reorder Iran's finances. He proved to be, like the young [Howard] Baskerville, an idealist who believed in the cause of Iranian independence and self-representative government. He had read [E.G.] Browne's dramatic

and sympathetic account of the Constitutional Revolution and arrived in Tehran in May 1911 suffused with romantic visions of Iran's yearnings for freedom.

Shuster's politics did not recommend him kindly to the British and Russian legations. Early on he rankled the...