'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

100 years ago: An American Martyr

Today marks the 100th Anniversary of the death of Howard Baskerville, a 24 year-old American who literally gave his life for Iran. Even now, his name is remembered fondly among Iranians, as their "American martyr."

Baskerville's story ought to be better known in the US, for in it Americans will learn of Iranian struggles for freedom and of a still lingering reservoir of goodwill for Americans. For starters, I recommend the essay in the Princeton Alumni Weekly by Mark Bernstein. Ironically, it's also available in Persian, courtesy the US State Department web site here.

The short version begins when Baskerville, a Nebraska native and a fresh 1907 Princeton graduate, took his first post as a teacher at the American school in Tabriz, run by Presbyterian missionaries. Iran, or Persia as it was then known, was in the throes of its Constitutional Revolution era. Sustained protests had forced the reigning shah to permit the election of Iran's first parliament (majlis) which in turn wrote the first constitution anywhere in the region.

But by mid 1908, a new Shah, Muhammad Ali Shah was colluding with Russians and British imperialists to crush the constitutional reformers. (a reason why Iranians to this day remain intensely suspicious of British intentions) Tabriz, then Iran's second largest city and located in northwestern Iran, was the heart of reformist resistance. Baskerville's students included the best from leading Tabriz families, and as he learned more of their struggle, he in turn shared his understanding of America's own rebellion from imperial control and its constitutional liberties, a subject he had learned directly from no less an authority than a Princeton professor by the name of Woodrow Wilson.

When royalist forces put Tabriz under seige, Baskerville felt he could not stand by while the strangled city was reduced to starvation, much to the consternation of the US consul and to his Presbyterian mission. Baskerville took up the sword, and in March 1909, organized 150 of his students to help defend the city. The story does not end well for Baskerville, as he was killed while on a desperate mission to lead a small force through the siege lines to retrieve food.

Yet Baskerville's sacrifice was neither in vain, nor forgotten.

His funeral galvanized a national outpouring of mourning, and his death, and the cause, were reported around the world. In part due to the publicity, the Russians and British pressured the Shah to lift the siege. And while the spark of constitutionalism was nearly smothered during the past century, the flame remains lit, and constitutional democracy remains deeply ingrained as a core legitimate norm within Iran's political culture.

Baskerville echoes:

The name Baskerville first caught my attention, as a 24 year old student in Professor R.K. Ramazani's seminar at the University of Virginia's Woodrow Wilson Department of Government & Foreign Affairs. Even though though that seminar focused on the bitter legacies of the the CIA supported coup in 1953 against another Iranian nationalist movement, I also learned why Baskerville was among the many reasons why Iranians retain a hope for America, that America at its best stands for something other than the language of force.

Soon after his death, Baskerville's parents received a telegram:

Persia much regrets honorable loss of your dear son in the cause of liberty, and we give our parole that future Persia will always revere his name in her history like Lafayette and will respect his venerable tomb.

100 years later, as noted in a recent New York Times oped, "Baskerville is still revered and honored as a symbol of American ideals and principles" in Iran. In part perhaps, yet he is also remembered as an American who could also understand and respect Iranian aspirations and hopes -- and in them, see mirrors of his own country.

As Baskerville is said to have remarked,

“The only difference between me and these people is my place of birth, and that is not a big difference.”

I recently came across the curious suggestion that Baskerville somehow inspired Ernest Hemingway's tragic figure in his classic For Whom the Bell Tolls. Hemingway's chief character therein, a Robert Jordan, was a young American teaching school amid Spain's civil war, who takes up arms and also dies battling perceived tyranny. The Baskerville story was widely reported in the American media in 1909, and Hemingway was an impressionable 10 years old then. Intriguing.

I visited Tabriz myself in 1993 and was enchanted by the Eden-like panoramas from nearby ridges. I didn't make it to Baskerville's grave; too many other things to learn that trip. Next time, I hope to see Iran's Constitutional House Museum in Tabriz, where former reformist President Mohammad Khatami unveiled a bust of Baskerville in 2005.

If I get to Baskerville's grave marker, I'll bring a yellow rose.

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Update:

I just learned that the US State Department is hosting a "global web chat" to commemorate Baskerville, at 11:00 a.m. EST, with independent scholar Thomas M. Ricks. Here's the direct link for the chat. (Transcript should be available later)

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Update #2:

I have posted an edited version of Dr. Ricks' comments in a separate entry here. (special thanks to DOS/BIIS)