Tea at Trianon: Iran's Golden Age

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, March 4, 2026

Iran's Golden Age

From Alexander Muse:

The story of Iran is a story of civilizational brilliance undone. Persia, the land of Cyrus and Darius, stood for centuries as one of the great pillars of human advancement. Its engineers carved rivers through deserts. Its kings issued the first known declaration of human rights. Its physicians established the world’s first university hospital. And its philosophers gathered knowledge from Greece, India, and Babylon into an intellectual engine of progress. By the sixth century, Persia was not only a rival to Rome; it was in many respects its superior. Then came the year 651. Arab armies swept in. Islam took root. And the gears of this astonishing civilization began, slowly and then all at once, to grind to a halt.
Now, let us be clear. The Islamic conquest did not immediately obliterate Persia’s brilliance. For a few generations, Persian scholars thrived within the new Islamic order. But the transformation of Iran from a Zoroastrian, pluralistic, and innovative society into a rigidly Islamic theocracy laid the groundwork for long-term stagnation. Today, nearly 1,400 years later, that stagnation is measurable in everything from economic output to scientific discovery. And the men who just died in those airstrikes were its most ardent custodians.
Begin with the economic case. In 1977, on the eve of the Islamic Revolution, Iran’s per capita GDP stood at approximately $10,980 (in 2025-adjusted dollars). It was a modernizing economy. The Shah’s Iran, for all its flaws, was investing heavily in infrastructure, science, and education. Then, in 1979, came the Ayatollahs. The theocrats promised a return to purity, justice, and dignity. What followed was none of these. By 1990, per capita GDP had collapsed to $6,175. A decade later, it dropped further to $3,196. By 2025, after decades of sanctions and mismanagement, it had clawed back to roughly $5,000. In plain terms, the Iranian economy was cut nearly in half since the mullahs took power, and it has never returned to the heights it reached under secular governance. That is not a failure of the Persian people. It is a failure of a governing theology.
But the problem is not merely economic. It is civilizational. Ancient Persia gave the world qanats, yakhchals, algebraic precursors, windmills, and postal systems. It was a society that respected knowledge and rewarded inquiry. Under the Achaemenids, engineers invented subterranean aqueducts that could irrigate the desert. Under the Sasanians, physicians trained in Gundeshapur, the first known teaching hospital. Kings like Khosrow I welcomed Greek and Indian scholars fleeing persecution, building an empire that fused cultures rather than purged them. This was not incidental to Persian greatness. It was its engine. (Read more.)