In this episode, Belle interviews James Gustafson, Associate Professor of History at Indiana State University, about his new book, The Lion and the Sun: Environmental History and the Formation of Modern Iran (I.B. Tauris, 2025). 

In The Lion and the Sun (and our podcast episode), Gustafson presents an overview of Iran’s environmental history from the Safavid Empire (1501-1722) to the rise of Reza Khan in the 1920s. Weaving together threads of local history alongside and within regional and global  trajectories and environmental trends, he illustrates how the environment shaped histories of labor, revolution, and empire. He argues that the relationship between people and place that emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries shapes what we know as Iran today.