An American Martyr in Persia

August 29, 2022
Bestseller Aslan (God: A Human History) delivers an intriguing account of the life and death of Howard Baskerville, an early 20th-century Presbyterian missionary to Persia who joined the country’s revolt against its autocratic shah. Largely unknown in the U.S., Baskerville was the son and grandson of Presbyterian preachers and embraced a vision of global democracy under the tutelage of Woodrow Wilson at Princeton University. Arriving in Tabriz in 1907, Baskerville taught English at the American Memorial School, where many of his students were involved in the fight against the shah’s attempts to invalidate the country’s fledgling constitution. Over his superiors’ objections—both the Presbyterian church and the U.S. government insisted on neutrality—Baskerville took up arms and died fighting with the revolutionaries in March 1909. Aslan, a fierce advocate for democracy in present-day Iran, forcefully rejects the idea that Baskerville was a naïve “white savior.” “Democracy,” he writes, “was either inalienable or it wasn’t.... The U.S. government may have believed the latter. But not Howard Baskerville.” Replete with fascinating asides into the revolutionary politics of the era and the complex dynamics between Russia, England, and Persia, this is a provocative portrait of an unsung American hero.