A great many myths surround the historical development of U.S.-Iranian relations, not least of which is common perception of W. Morgan Shuster, a 34-year-old lawyer, banker, and civil servant from Washington, D.C., as an unlikely hero in the Iranian struggle for democracy and sovereignty at the dawn of the 20th century. This paper aims to deflate, or at the very least contextualize, this perception, instead revealing the hierarchical and colonial assumptions latent in Shuster’s financial reform efforts in Iran, where he served as Treasurer-General in 1911. Contracted by the Iranian government in December 1910, in the midst of the ongoing Constitutional Revolution, Shuster and his small team of American administrators arrived in May of the following year and quickly gained de facto control over the entire Iranian financial administration until forced to resign in December (primarily on account of the imperial machinations of Britain and Russia). Not unlike Howard Baskerville, the American Presbyterian missionary teacher who died defending Tabriz as a constitutionalist volunteer in 1909, Shuster’s actions during these eight months are often held up as a noble counterpoint to the “tragic” later dimensions of U.S. involvement in Iran due to his vocal opposition to foreign encroachments on Iranian sovereignty and for his passionate support for the Iranian constitutional movement. Many of these assessments derive from the favorable accounts of Shuster in the memoirs, letters, and other reflections of his Iranian contemporaries, including those of such renowned statesmen as Hassan Taqizadeh, ‘Abd Allah Mostowfi, and Qavam al-Saltaneh. No doubt Shuster’s own best-selling narrative of the mission, sensationally titled "The Strangling of Persia", has also contributed to this unvarnished image of his Iranian endeavours, presenting the mission’s raison d’être as essentially the benevolent extension of Progressive American practices of fiscal administration to a grateful, underdeveloped nation. Cutting across such narratives both past and present, this paper brings to bear a unique array of recently uncovered archival materials in order to reevaluate Shuster’s activities: including his wife’s letters from Tehran to her family in Kentucky as well as records of the New York financial house clandestinely underwriting the mission. This diverse, highly personalized source base will reveal both the ambiguity of Shuster’s true purposes in Iran and the embeddedness of his financial mission within wider circuits of American empire during the early 20th century.