Turkey, the Great Powers, and the Bagdad Railway: A study in imperialism

TURKISH RAILWAYS IN 1918
TURKEY, THE GREAT POWERS, AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS · ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA · MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO
A Study in Imperialism BY EDWARD MEAD EARLE, Ph.D. ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1924 All rights reserved
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Copyright, 1923, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published July, 1923. Reprinted July, 1924 Press of J. J. Little & Ives Company New York, U. S. A.
“When the history of the latter part of the nineteenth century will come to be written, one event will be singled out above all others for its intrinsic importance and for its far-reaching results; namely, the conventions of 1899 and of 1902 between His Imperial Majesty the Sultan of Turkey and the German Company of the Anatolian Railways.”—Charles Sarolea, The Bagdad Railway and German Expansion as a Factor in European Politics (Edinburgh, 1907), p. 3.
“The Turkish Government, I know, have been accused of being corrupt. I venture to submit that it has not been for want of encouragement from Europeans that the Turks have been corrupt. The sinister—I think it is not going too far to use that word—effect of European financiers on Turkey has had more to do with the misgovernment than any Turk, young or old.”—Sir Mark Sykes, in the House of Commons, March 18, 1914.

The Chester concessions and the Anglo-American controversy regarding the Mesopotamian oilfields are but two conspicuous instances of the rapid development of American activity in the Near East. Turkey, already an important market for American goods, gives promise of becoming a valuable source of raw materials for American factories and a fertile field for the investment of American capital. Thus American religious interests in the Holy Land, American educational interests in Anatolia and Syria, and American humanitarian interests in Armenia, are now supplemented by substantial American economic interests in the natural resources of Asia Minor. Political stability and economic progress in Turkey no longer are matters of indifference to business men and politicians in the United States; therefore the Eastern Question—so often a cause of war—assumes a new importance to Americans. This book will have served a useful purpose if—in discussing the conflicting political, cultural, and economic policies of the Great Powers in the Near East during the past three decades—it contributes to a sympathetic understanding of a very complicated problem and suggests to the reader some dangers which American statesmanship would do well to avoid. Students of history and international relations will find in the story of the Bagdad Railway a laboratory full of rich materials for an analysis of modern economic imperialism and its far-reaching consequences.