Beyond the Bosporus lay a country rich in oils and metals; a country capable of supplying German textile mills with cotton of superior quality; a country which in ancient times was fabulously wealthy in agricultural products; a country which gave promise of developing into a rich market for western commodities. Communication with this wonderland was to be established by a German-controlled railway upon which service could be maintained in time of war, as in time of peace, without the aid of naval power. What greater inducements could have been offered to German imperialists, living in an imperialist world? Turkey was destined to fall within the economic orbit of an industrialized Germany!
A distinguished German publicist said in 1903, “From the German point of view, it would be unparalleled stupidity if we did not most energetically do our part to acquire a share in the revival of the ancient civilization of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Babylonia. What we do not do others will surely do—be they British, French, or Russian; and the increased economic advantage which, through the Bagdad Railway, will accrue to us in the Nearer East would otherwise not only fail to be ours, but would serve to strengthen our rivals in diplomacy and business.”[38] Some years later, in the midst of the Great War, an American writer expressed much the same point of view: “Hemmed in on the west by Great Britain and France and on the east by Russia, born too late to extend their political sovereignty over vast colonial domains, and unable (if only for lack of coaling stations) to develop sea power greater than that of their rivals, nothing was more natural than the German and Austro-Hungarian conception of a Drang nach Osten through the Balkan Peninsula, over the bridge of Constantinople, into the markets of Asia. The geographical position of the Central European states made as inevitable a penetration policy into the Balkans and Turkey as the geographical position of England made inevitable the development of an overseas empire.”[39] Karl Helfferich has said that “it was neither accident nor deliberate purpose, as much as it was the course of German economic development, which led Germany to take an active interest in Turkey.”[40]
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
[1] The Annual Register, 1888, pp. 44, 310.
[2] Good general statements of the transportation problem of Turkey during the two decades 1880–1900 are Verney and Dambmann, op. cit., Part III; J. Courau, La locomotive en Turquie d’Asie (Brussels, 1895), pp. 18–47; Corps de droit ottoman, Volume IV, pp. 117 et seq.
[3] Corps de droit ottoman, Volume IV, pp. 202–223, 237–242, etc.
[4] Bulletin de la Chambre de Commerce française de Constantinople, August 31, 1888, p. 10; September 30, 1888, p. 31. Cf., also a prospectus issued by a banker, Mr. W. J. Alt, “Heads of a Convention for the extension of the Haidar Pasha-Ismid Railway” (London, 1886), a copy of which was loaned to the author by Mr. Ernest Rechnitzer.
[5] The story of these negotiations is well told in a new book by Dr. Karl Helfferich, Georg von Siemens—ein Lebensbild (Leipzig, 1923), the proofs of which I have had the privilege of reading. For an official copy of the convention and by-laws of the Anatolian Railway Company (Firman Impérial de concession et statuts de la Société du Chemin de Fer Ottomane d’Anatolie, Constantinople, 1889), I am indebted to Dr. Arthur von Gwinner, of the Deutsche Bank. Cf., also, Administration de la dette publique ottomane—Rapport sur les opérations de l’année 1888 (Constantinople, 1889); Report of the Anatolian Railway Company, 1889, pp. 1–2; Corps de droit ottoman, Volume IV, pp. 120–142.
[6] Helfferich, op. cit., Part V; A. P. Brüning, Die Entwicklung des ausländischen, speciell des überseeischen deutschen Bankwesens (Berlin, 1907), pp. 14 et seq.; Report of the Anatolian Railway Company, 1889, p. 3; Report of the Deutsche Bank, 1892, p. 4, 1890, p. 4.
[7] Report of the Anatolian Railway Company, 1891, p. 20, 1892, pp. 16, 23.