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

by Edward Mead Earle

Some Few Voices are Raised in Protest

Not all Germans were dazzled by the Oriental glamor of the Bagdad Railway plan. Herr Scheidemann, leader of the Social Democrats in the Reichstag, time and time again sounded warnings against the complications almost certain to result from the construction of the railway. Speaking before the Reichstag in March, 1911, for example, he said: “We are the last to misjudge the great value of this road to civilization. We know its economic significance: we know that it traverses a region which in antiquity was a fabulously fertile country, and we welcome it as a great achievement if the Bagdad Railway opens up that territory. And if, by gigantic irrigation projects, the land can be made into a granary for Europe, as well as a land to which we could look for an abundant supply of raw materials, such as cotton, that would be doubly welcome.” But that is not all, continued Herr Scheidemann. German capitalists would not be able to overlook the military-strategic interests of the line, for only the establishment of a strong centralized government in Turkey “can offer European capitalism the necessary security for the realization of its great capitalistic plans.” This military strengthening of Turkey would be almost certain, he pointed out, to arouse the opposition of Great Britain, Russia, and France. Particularly was he desirous of avoiding any additionally irritating relations with Great Britain, for the traditional friendship with that nation had already been seriously compromised by colonial and naval rivalries.[34] Similar warnings were uttered by other Socialists and anti-imperialists.

Quite different in character was the objection raised to the Bagdad Railway by a certain type of more conservative German. An aggressive policy in the Near East naturally would have been distasteful to the diplomatists of the old school, who were disposed to adhere to the Bismarckian principles of isolating France on the Continent and avoiding commercial and colonial conflicts overseas. According to their point of view, German ventures in the Ottoman Empire were certain to lead to two complications: first, the support of Austrian imperial ambitions in the Balkans; second, a German attempt to maintain a dominant political position at Constantinople. Under such circumstances, of course, it would not be possible to bring about a divorce of the newly married France and Russia, for Russian interests in the Near East would brook no compromise on the part of the Tsar’s Government. In addition, it was feared, the establishment of German ports on the Mediterranean and on the Persian Gulf would strengthen British antipathy to Germany, already augmented by naval and commercial rivalry. The final outcome of such a situation undoubtedly would be the formation of a Franco-British-Russian coalition against the Central Powers.

During the Great War these views were given wide publicity by Prince Lichnowsky, former German ambassador to Great Britain. In a memorandum, written for a few friends but subsequently published broadcast in Europe and America,[35] the Prince vehemently denounced the Drang nach Osten as the greatest of German diplomatic mistakes and as one of the principal causes of the Great War. “We should have abandoned definitely the fatal tradition of pushing the Triple Alliance policies in the Near East,” he said; “we should have realized that it was a mistake to make ourselves solidary with the Turks in the south and with the Austro-Magyars in the north; for the continuance of this policy ... was bound in time, and particularly in case the requisite adroitness should be found wanting in the supreme directing agencies, to lead to the collision with Russia and the World War. Instead of coming to an understanding with Russia on the basis of the independence of the Sultan; ... instead of renouncing military and political interference, confining ourselves to economic interests in the Near East, ... our political ambition was directed to the attainment of a dominant position on the Bosporus. In Russia the opinion arose that the way to Constantinople ran via Berlin.” This was the “fatal mistake, by which Russia, naturally our best friend and neighbor, was driven into the arms of France and England.” Furthermore, maintained the Prince, a policy of Near Eastern expansion is contrary to the best commercial and industrial interests of the empire. “‘Our future lies on the water.’ Quite right”; therefore it does not lie in an overland route to the Orient. The Drang nach Osten “is a reversion to the Holy Roman Empire.... It is the policy of the Plantagenets, not that of Drake and Raleigh.... Berlin-Bagdad is a blind alley and not the way into the open, to unlimited possibilities, to the universal mission of the German nation.”[36]

There may have been another reason for the opposition of Prince Lichnowsky to the Bagdad Railway. As the owner of large Silesian estates he was agrarian in his point of view. If it were true, as was maintained, that after the opening of Mesopotamia to cultivation, the Railway would be able to bring cheap Turkish grain to the German market, the results would not be to the liking of the agricultural interests of the empire. As Herr Scheidemann informed the Reichstag, there was something anomalous in the Conservative support of the Bagdad Railway on this score, because it was “in most violent contrast to their procedure in their own country, where they have artificially raised the cost of the necessaries of life by incredibly high protective tariffs, indirect taxation, and similar methods.”[37] Perhaps Prince Lichnowsky was somewhat more intelligent and far-sighted than his land-owning associates!

There were some Germans who were not opposed to the Bagdad Railway enterprise, but who were opposed to the extravagant claims made for it by some of its friends and protagonists. A typical illustration of this is the following statement of Count zu Reventlow, shortly before the outbreak of the war: “Great Britain, Russia, and France, in order to interpose objections, made use of the expedient of identifying the Deutsche Bank with the German Government. To this there was added the difficult and complicating factor that in Germany itself, in many quarters, the aim and the significance of the railway plan were proclaimed to the world, partly in an inaccurate and grossly exaggerated manner.... In this respect great mistakes were made among us, which it was in no way necessary to make. The more quietly the Railway could have been constructed the better.... That it would be possible to make Turkey a dangerous threat against Egypt and India, after the development of its railway system, was correct, to be sure, but it was imperative not to say anything of that kind as long as Great Britain still had means to hinder and prevent the construction of the railway.” Similar opinions were expressed from time to time on the floor of the Reichstag.[38]

The Bagdad Railway, however, was a triumphant enterprise which would brook no opposition. In the army of its followers marched the stockholders and directors of the Deutsche Bank—such men as Edward B. von Speyer, Wolfgang Kapp, Karl von Siemens, Karl Helfferich, Arthur von Gwinner—good patriots all, with a financial stake in the Railway. Then there came the engineers and contractors who furnished the materials and constructed the line and who shared in the profits of its subsidiary enterprises—mines, oil wells, docks, wharves, irrigation works. Next came the shipping interests—the subsidized services of Herr Ballin and the Hamburg-American Line included—which were at once the feeders and the fed of the Railway. There were also the German traders who sought in the Near East a market for their products and the German manufacturers who looked to this newly opened territory for an uninterrupted supply of raw materials. In the line of march, too, were the missionaries, Catholic and Protestant, who sought to promote a renaissance of the Holy Land through the extension of German influence there. Bringing up the rear, although by no means the least important, were the soldiers and the diplomatic and consular officers, those “parasites” of modern imperialism who almost invariably will be found in cordial support of any movement for political and economic expansion. In the reviewing stand, cheering the marchers, were the great mass of average patriotic citizens who were thrilled with “their” Bagdad Railway and “their” Drang nach Osten. And the chief of the reviewers was His Imperial Majesty, William II.[39]

If there was a preponderance of opinion in Germany favorable to the Bagdad Railway, there was by no means a similar favorable sentiment in the rest of Europe. Statesmen in the other imperial nations were not unaware of the potentialities of railways constructed in the backward nations of the world. They knew that “railways are the iron tentacles of latter-day expanding powers. They are stretched out caressingly at first. But once the iron has, so to say, entered the soul of the weaker nation, the tentacles swell to the dimensions of brawny arms, and the embrace tightens to a crushing grip.”[40] Russia, Great Britain and France, therefore, were gradually led to obstruct the progress of the railway by political and economic means—at least until such time as they could purge the project of its political possibilities or until they could obtain for themselves a larger share of the spoils.

Thus the Bagdad Railway was an imperial enterprise. It became an important concern of the Foreign Office, a matter of national prestige. It was one of the stakes of pre-war diplomacy. Its success was associated with the national honor, to be defended, if need be, by military force and military alliances. The Railway was no longer a railway alone, but a state of mind. Professor Jastrow called it “the spectre of the twentieth century”![41]