Ethnicity, Identity, and the Development of Nationalism in Iran investigatesthe ways in which Armenian minorities in Iran encountered Iranian nationalismand participated in its development over the course of the twentiethcentury. Based primarily on oral interviews, archival documents, personalmemoirs, memorabilia, and photographs, the book examines the lives of agroup of Armenian-Iranians-a truck driver, an army officer, a parliamentaryrepresentative, a civil servant, and a scout leader-and explores thepersonal conflicts and paradoxes attendant upon their layered allegiancesand compound identities. In documenting individual experiences in Iranianindustry, military, government, education, and community organization,the five social biographies detail the various roles of elites and non-elitesin the development of Iranian nationalism and reveal the multiple forcesthat shape the processes of identity formation. Yaghoubian combines theseportraits with theories of nationalism and national identity to answer recurringpivotal questions about how nationalism evolves, why it is appealing,what broad forces and daily activities shape and sustain it, and the role ofethnicity in its development.