The Development of "The People"

In my course entitled "Modern Iran" there was sentence that read, " Modernity, or at least its outward form, had at last reached Tehran"(Abrahamian, p57). the Chapter essentially tied the development of intelligentsia and establishment of a cohesive middle class to the interaction with the West, whether on a philosophical level or simply on an economic one. This modernity came from the West. Ironically, it created spiraling inflation and large amounts of discontent among the people. It was a modernity that was entangled with Western interest. Nevertheless, what I found most interesting was history, for the intelligentsia--those exposed to Western arts and education--"history was neither the revelation of God's will...nor the cyclic rise and fall of dynasties...but rather the continual march of human progress". But this leads me to ask, is the march a straight line, a path to the "proper" modernity? I think language and meaning can alter the answer to that question.