This chapter examines the changing representation of ‘Est’emar’, that is, colonisation in school textbooks, and how the ‘Iranian self’ was constructed in relation to the ‘colonial other’ under the Pahlavi and the Islamic Republic. It historicises the emergence of the ‘anti-colonial’ discourse in the post-revolutionary textbooks, in those written in the wake of the oil nationalisation movement (1949–53). In the waning years of Mohammad Reza Shah, the anti-colonial spirit returned to textbooks, which the Islamic Republic drew on and incorporated into its hegemonic narrative construction and identity building. In this, the sanctuary at the British Delegation in Tehran during the constitutional revolution—known as the Bast—fits rather uncomfortably. It contradicts the image of the British as the colonial villain. The chapter analyses and reflects on these challenges and how they impacted the state version of the Bast under the Pahlavi and after the Islamic Revolution of 1979.