MAPS
| The Railways of Asiatic Turkey | [Frontispiece] |
| The Chester Concessions | [340] |
TURKEY, THE GREAT POWERS,
AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY
TURKEY, THE GREAT POWERS AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY
A Study in Imperialism
CHAPTER I
AN ANCIENT TRADE ROUTE IS REVIVED
Many a glowing tale has been told of the great Commercial Revolution of the sixteenth century and of the consequent partial abandonment of the trans-Asiatic trade routes to India in favor of the newer routes by water around the Cape of Good Hope. It is sometimes overlooked, however, that a commercial revolution of the nineteenth century, occasioned by the adaptation of the steam engine to land and marine transportation, was of perhaps equal significance. Cheap carriage by the ocean greyhound instead of the stately clipper, by locomotive-drawn trains instead of stage-coach and caravan, made possible the extension of trade to the innermost and outermost parts of the earth and increased the volume of the world’s commerce to undreamed of proportions. This latter commercial revolution led not only to the opening of new avenues of communication, but also to the regeneration of trade-routes which had been dormant or decayed for centuries. During the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth, the medieval trans-Asiatic highways to the East were rediscovered.
The first of these medieval trade-routes to be revived by modern commerce was the so-called southern route. In the fifteenth century curious Oriental craft had brought their wares from eastern Asia across the Indian Ocean and up the Red Sea to some convenient port on the Egyptian shore; here their cargoes were trans-shipped via caravan to Alexandria and Cairo, marts of trade with the European cities of the Mediterranean. The completion of the Suez Canal, in 1869, transformed this route of medieval merchants into an avenue of modern transportation, incidentally realizing the dream of Portuguese and Spanish explorers of centuries before—a short, all-water route to the Indies. Less than forty years later the northern route of medieval commerce—from the “back doors” of China and India to the plains of European Russia—was opened to the twentieth-century locomotive. With the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railway in 1905 the old caravan trails were paralleled with steel rails. The Trans-Siberian system linked Moscow and Petrograd with Vladivostok and Pekin; the Trans-Caspian and Trans-Persian railways stretched almost to the mountain barrier of northern India; the Trans-Caucasian lines provided the link between the Caspian and Black Seas.
The heart of the central route of Eastern trade in the fifteenth century was the Mesopotamian Valley. Oriental sailing vessels brought commodities up the Persian Gulf to Basra and thence up the Shatt-el-Arab and the Tigris to Bagdad. At this point the route divided, one branch following the valley of the Tigris to a point north of Mosul and thence across the desert to Aleppo; another utilizing the valley of the Euphrates for a distance before striking across the desert to the ports of Syria; another crossing the mountains into Persia. From northern Mesopotamia and northern Syria caravans crossed Armenia and Anatolia to Constantinople. This historic highway—the last of the three great medieval trade-routes to be opened to modern transportation—was traversed by the Bagdad Railway. The locomotive provided a new short cut to the East.
That a commercial revolution of the nineteenth century should revive the old avenues of trade with the East was a matter of the utmost importance to all mankind. To the Western World the expansion of European commerce and the extension of Occidental civilization were incalculable, but certain, benefits. Statesmen and soldiers, merchants and missionaries alike might hail the new railways and steamship lines as entitled to a place among the foremost achievements of the age of steel and steam. To the East, also, closer contacts with the West held out high hopes for an economic and cultural renaissance of the former great civilizations of the Orient. Alas, however, the reopening of the medieval trade-routes served to create new arenas of imperial friction, to heighten existing international rivalries, and to widen the gulf of suspicion and hate already hindering cordial relationships between the peoples of Europe and the peoples of Asia. Economic rivalries, military alliances, national pride, strategic maneuvers, religious fanaticism, racial prejudices, secret diplomacy, predatory imperialism—these and other formidable obstacles blocked the road to peaceful progress and promoted wars and rumors of wars. The purchase of the Suez Canal by Disraeli was but the first step in the acquisition of Egypt, an imperial experiment which cost Great Britain thousands of lives, which more than once brought the empire to the verge of war with France, and which colored the whole character of British diplomacy in the Middle East for forty years. No sooner was the Trans-Siberian Railway completed than it involved Russia in a war with Japan. So it was destined to be with the Bagdad Railway. Itself a project of great promise for the economic and political regeneration of the Near East, it became the source of bitter international rivalries which contributed to the outbreak of the Great War. It is one of the tragedies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that the Trans-Siberian Railway, the Suez Canal, and the Bagdad Railway—potent instruments of civilization for the promotion of peaceful progress and material prosperity—could not have been constructed without occasioning imperial friction, political intrigues, military alliances, and armed conflict.
The geographical position of the Ottoman Empire, the enormous potential wealth of its dominions, and the political instability of the Sultan’s Government contributed to make the Bagdad Railway one of the foremost imperial problems of the twentieth century. At the time of the Bagdad Railway concession of 1903 Turkey held dominion over the Asiatic threshold of Europe, Anatolia, and the European threshold of Asia, the Balkan Peninsula. Constantinople, the capital of the empire, was the economic and strategic center of gravity for the Black Sea and eastern Mediterranean basins. By possession of northern Syria and Mesopotamia, the Sultan controlled the “central route” of Eastern trade throughout its entire length from the borders of Austria-Hungary to the shores of the Persian Gulf. The contiguity of Ottoman territory to the Sinai Peninsula and to Persia held out the possibility of a Turkish attack on the Suez and trans-Persian routes to India and the Far East. In fact, the Sultan’s dominions from Macedonia to southern Mesopotamia constituted a broad avenue of communication, an historic world highway, between the Occident and the Orient. To a strong nation, this position would have been a source of strength. To a weak nation it was a source of weakness. As Gibraltar and Suez and Panama were staked out by the empire-builders, so were Constantinople and Smyrna and Koweit. Strategically, the region traversed by the Bagdad Railway is one of the most important in the world.
Turkey-in-Asia, furthermore, was wealthy. It possessed vast resources of some of the most essential materials of modern industry: minerals, fuel, lubricants, abrasives. Its deposits of oil alone were enough to arouse the cupidity of the Great Powers. Irrigation, it was believed, would accomplish wonders in the revival of the ancient fertility of Mesopotamia. By the development of the country’s latent agricultural wealth and the utilization of its industrial potentialities, it was anticipated that the Ottoman Empire would prove a valuable source of essential raw materials, a satisfactory market for finished products, and a rich field for the investment of capital. Economically, the territory served by the Bagdad Railway was one of the most important undeveloped regions of the world.
Neither the geographical position nor the economic wealth of the Ottoman Empire, however, need have been a cause for its exploitation by foreigners. Had the Sultan’s Government been strong—powerful enough to present determined resistance to domestic rebellion and foreign intrigue—Turkey would not have been an imperial problem. But Abdul Hamid and his successors, the Young Turks, showed themselves incapable of governing a vast empire and a heterogeneous population. They were unable to resist the encroachments of foreigners on the administrative independence of their country or to defend its borders against foreign invasion. That the Ottoman Empire, under these circumstances, should fall a prey to the imperialism of the Western nations was to be expected. Its strategic importance was a “problem” of military and naval experts. Its wealth was an irresistible lure to investors. Its political instability was the excuse offered by European nations for intervening in the affairs of the empire on behalf of the financial interests of the business men or the strategic interests of the empire-builders. Diplomatically, then, the region traversed by the Bagdad Railway was an international “danger zone.”
The problem of maintaining stable government in Turkey was complicated by the religious heritage of the Ottoman Empire. It was the homeland of the Jews, the birthplace of Christianity, the cradle of Mohammedanism. European crusaders had waged war to free the Holy Land from Moslem desecrators; the followers of the Prophet had shed their blood in defence of this sacred soil against infidel invaders; the sons of Israel looked forward to a revival of Jewish national life in this, their Zion. It is small wonder that Turkey-in-Asia was a great field for missions—Protestant missions to convert the Mohammedan to the teachings of Christ; Catholic missions to win over, as well, the schismatics; Orthodox missions to retain the loyalty of adherents to the Greek Church. Despite their cultural importance in the development of modern Turkey, the missions presented serious political problems to the Sultan. They hindered the development of Turkish nationalism by teaching foreign languages, by strengthening the separatist spirit of the religious minorities, and by introducing Occidental ideas and customs. They weakened the autocracy by idealizing the democratic institutions of the Western nations. They occasioned international complications, arising out of diplomatic protection of the missionaries themselves and the racial and religious minorities in whose interest the missions were maintained. In no country more than in Turkey have the emissaries of religion proved to be so valuable—however unwittingly—as advance pickets of imperialism.
Complicating and bewildering as the Near Eastern question always has been, the construction of the Anatolian and Bagdad Railways made it the more complicating and bewildering. The development of rail transportation in the Ottoman Empire was certain to raise a new crop of problems: the strategic problem of adjusting military preparations to meet new conditions; the economic problem of exploiting the great natural wealth of Turkey-in-Asia; the political problem of prescribing for a “Sick Man” who was determined to take iron as a tonic. These problems, of course, were international as well as Ottoman in their aspects. The economic and diplomatic advance of Germany in the Near East, the resurgent power of Turkey, the military coöperation between the Governments of the Kaiser and the Sultan were not matters which the other European powers were disposed to overlook. Russia, pursuing her time-honored policy, objected to any bolstering up of the Ottoman Empire. France looked with alarm upon the advent of another power in Turkish financial affairs and, in addition, was desirous of promoting the political ambitions of her ally, Russia. Great Britain became fearful of the safety of her communications with India and Egypt. Thus the Bagdad Railway overstepped the bounds of Turco-German relationships and became an international diplomatic problem. It was a concern of foreign offices as well as counting houses, of statesmen and soldiers as well as engineers and bankers.
The year 1888 ushered in an epoch of three decades during which two cross-currents were at work in Turkey. On the one hand, earnest efforts were made by Turks, old and young, to bring about the political and economic regeneration of their country. On the other, the steady growth of Balkan nationalism, the relentless pressure of European imperialism, and the devastation of the Great War gradually reduced to ruins the once great empire of Suleiman the Magnificent. The history of those three decades is concerned largely with the struggles of European capitalists to acquire profitable concessions in Asiatic Turkey and of European diplomatists to control the finances, the vital routes of communication, and even the administrative powers of the Ottoman Government. The coincidence between the economic motives of the investors and the political and strategical motives of the statesmen, made Turkey one of the world’s foremost areas of imperial friction. Its territories and its natural wealth were “stakes of diplomacy” for which cabinets maneuvered on the diplomatic checkerboard and for which the flower of the world’s manhood fought on the sands of Mesopotamia, the cliffs of Gallipoli, and the plains of Flanders. To tell the story of the Bagdad Railway is to emphasize perhaps the most important single factor in the history of Turkey during the last thirty eventful years.