4. Russian Gains and the Disadvantages Of English Policy.
In order thoroughly to understand the misconceptions of English politicians concerning their Russian rivals, it is necessary for us to consider all the advantages which the latter always enjoyed, and still enjoy, on the field of action. In Europe, we are wont to look with amazement on Russia's gigantic empire in Asia; and yet nobody thinks of the means which have rendered essential service towards the acquisition of it. The Russians are Asiatics, not so much in consequence of their descent as of their geographical position and their social relations; and it is only because with the Asiatic laisser-aller they combine the steadfastness and resolution of Europeans, that they have mostly been a match for the Asiatic races. In their contact with Chinese, Tartars, Persians, Circassians and Turks, they have always shown themselves as Chinese, Tartar, Persian, and so forth, according to circumstances. An English historian says, pretty correctly, if not without ill-will, that the Russians moved forward like a tiger. "At first, creeping cautiously and gliding stealthily through the dust, until the favourable moment admits of its taking the fatal spring. With smiles of peace and friendship, with soft smooth words on their emissaries' part, have they often averted every fear, every precaution, until the certain success of their schemes made all fears profitless, and baffled every precaution. Blind, therefore, and ill-advised must every government be, which can go to sleep over Russian advances towards its frontiers, be those never so slow, or the interval between the conqueror and the goal of his endeavours be never so great!" As Asiatics, they are wont to hold out less rudely against their neighbours in manners, customs, and modes of thought, than the English, for whom, on account of their higher culture, such a renunciation would be a great sacrifice, incompatible with their efforts after civilisation. They seldom offend against the national ways of thinking, and easily conform to them when their interests require it. In England the Government has hitherto disdained to place itself in direct correspondence with the Ameer of Bokhara, for what the chief city in Zarif-Khan obtained up to this date from the British cabinet was always enjoyed through the Governor-General of India. In Russia they think differently; and even the haughty Nicholas, that stern autocrat, who long shrank from calling the French emperor "mon frère," behaves, in presence of the Tartar princes of Central Asia, not as Emperor of all the Russias, but as a Khan on the Neva. As a result of such procedure, we find the nations all along the Russian frontier of Asia, whether nomad or settled, Boodhist or Mohamedan, in such a state of intimacy at this moment, if not of actual friendship, with the Russians, as happens nowhere else in the foreign possessions of a European power.
These advantages, however, of Asiatic modes of thought, which might properly be specified as excessive slyness and craftiness, are, even in political intercourse, far more profitable than the open and upright language employed on principle by Englishmen from of old. It is only Great Britain's foes in Europe, only the enviers of her power, who can find fault with the English in India; and yet whoever is sufficiently informed as to their political dealings with native princes and neighbours on the border, whoever is thoroughly conversant with Asiatic character, will, in the utter absence of this very defect, discover the one great fault of English statesmen.
From the largest province on the Amoor, to the smallest of the possessions latest won by Russia on Asiatic ground, may we always find one same procedure of intrigues and wiles,—a scattering of the seeds of discord, bribery and corruption, through the vilest means,—all serving as forerunners of invasion. Men come first through commercial relations in contact with foreign elements; then the slightest differences come to be readily employed as casus belli; failing these, the ground will be undermined by emissaries, the chiefs bribed by presents, or bemuddled with lavish draughts of vodki (Russian brandy), and drawn on into the dangerous magic circle. A well-founded cause of war and of invasion would nowhere be easy to discover; and certainly the gigantic empire of the House of Romanoff has been builded up more through the wiles of its Asiatic statesmen than by the might of its arms. Moreover, in consequence of the qualities lately named, Russia is more conversant with the relations of Asiatic peoples, far better informed of all that is passing in the border-states, than the English and other Europeans. To the great watchfulness of her emissaries, to the unwearied zeal of her diplomatists, is she indebted for the fact that her cabinet is often more quickly and fully informed of the most private doings of her neighbours, than the particular native government itself. Passing over the fact that, in Petersburg, a company of the cleverest men can make money out of their experiences through the different parts of Asia, there is here and there a Kirghis, a Buryat, a Circassian, or a Mongol, who, after being trained in Russian learning and modes of thought, becomes a most serviceable tool against the wholly or half-subjected land of his birth.
In England we meet everywhere with the sharpest contrasts.
Whoever is aware of the great ignorance of public opinion in England about events in India, about the relations between those great possessions and the neighbouring States; whoever in the course of a year has noted down those absurd and ridiculous news, those telegraphic despatches in the English papers, which reach Europe and England through Bombay and Calcutta; whoever is aware of the very small number of English statesmen who are so carefully informed on Asiatic relations, that they can pass a sound judgement on questions of Eastern policy;—such a one must surely be amazed at the way in which Great Britain founded her foreign possessions, to say nothing of her being able to hold them until now.
And just as even those among the English public who have lived any time in India have kept aloof from the natives, in accordance with their national character, and are but seldom conversant with their language and manners,—so, too, can the English Government entrust to naturalized Levantines, and not to Englishmen, the Dragomanate, that necessary organ of mutual intercourse, in such important embassies as that, for instance, of Constantinople. While Russia, France and Austria, have long had Oriental academies for diplomatic beginners; in England, with her rich dower of colleges, schools, and universities, no one has ever thought of such an institution. And so again in the legislative body as well as in the ministry, where the smallest questions often have a special advocate, there are but very few men competent to discuss the important relations in Asia; and even these, on account of the prevailing nepotism, are but seldom allowed to turn their experiences to account.
This indifference must surprise all foreigners. Still more amazed will they be to hear men of the liberal party say: "What does Asia concern us; what the swarm of barbarous races that cause us more trouble than profit; what the wealth of India, whose income has long ceased to cover her expenditure, to say nothing about the costs of the conquest?" I have often heard remarks of this kind from the most famous leaders of this party. The sincerity of their confession defies questioning; and yet they have always left me without an answer, when I have asked them how they would make up for the loss of that political influence which springs from a great colonial empire. People seem wholly to forget that a large number of young Englishmen, of all ranks, are pursuing military and political careers in India; they seem to be unaware how many sons of clergymen and officers, to whom no sphere of action offers itself within their island home, earn wealth in lucrative offices on the Ganges and the Indus, with the view of spending at home in a calm old age the outcome of their earlier years. They seem to leave entirely out of their reckoning the enormous number of merchants dwelling in their great Asiatic dominions amidst the most extensive commercial interests, through whose hands English capital multiplies by millions. Those liberals are very short-sighted, who deem the possession of such a colony as India an indifferent or superfluous matter. That they should wish to see the greatness of their fatherland founded on the flourishing condition of inland manufactures, and not on their dominion over foreign peoples, can no longer be regarded as a view generally valid in England, now that more than sixty millions pounds sterling are laid out in Indian railway undertakings alone; for that neither manufacturing industry nor the enterprising spirit of English merchants can succeed, to any great extent, without the supporting hand of English rule, is amply shown by the circumstances of British trade in Algiers, Central Asia, and other non-British territories.
It is faulty views like these which neutralise all the advantages of English individualism in the presence of Russian policy, which always acts with steadfast consistency. To these errors may be ascribed the fact that Russia, having grown up into a powerful rival in a space of time incredibly short, is treading so close on the Achilles-heel of Great Britain. With the position she holds on the Aral and the Caspian Seas, after conquering the whole of the Caucasus, after her enormous successes in Central Asia, it would now be useless to try and force back that giant power. What might with no great trouble have been attained twenty years ago, it is now far too late to attempt; but if England would avoid the usual lot of commercial states,—the doom of Carthage, Venice, Genoa, Holland, and Portugal,—there is but one way left to her: a policy of stern watchfulness, a swift grasp of the measures still at her command.