Political Interests Come to the Fore
It was asserted times without number that the Bagdad Railway was an independent financial enterprise, unconnected with the political aims of the German Government in Turkey and in no sense associated with an imperialist policy in the Near East. At the time the concession of 1903 was granted Dr. Rohrbach expressed the belief that political and diplomatic considerations were quite outside the plans and purposes of the promoters of the Railway.[1] Herr Bassermann, leader of the National Liberal Party, announced to the Reichstag that, although German capital was predominant in the Railway, there was no intent on the part of the owners or on the part of the Government to build with any political arrière-pensée. Baron von Schoen, Imperial Secretary for Foreign Affairs, reiterated this idea with emphasis. He pointed out that the Bagdad convention of 1903 was not a treaty between Germany and Turkey, but a contract between the Ottoman Government and the Anatolian Railway Company. He maintained that if the railway were considered, properly, as a purely economic enterprise, “all the fantastic schemes that are from time to time being attached to it would evaporate.”[2] A British journalist wrote in 1913: “Gwinner, it may be assumed, is not building the Bagdad Railway for the purposes of the German General Staff. What chiefly keeps him awake of nights is how to extract dividends from it for the Deutsche Bank and how best to promote the golden opportunities which await the strategists of the German trading army in the Near East.”[3]
The German Government, nevertheless, had been interested in the Bagdad plan almost from its inception. The visits of the Emperor to Constantinople and Palestine; the appointment of German military and consular officers to the technical commission which surveyed the line in 1899; the enthusiastic support of the German ambassador all contributed to the success of the enterprise. In fact, the German Government was almost too solicitous of the welfare of the concessionaires; assistance, it was said, bordered upon interference. During the early stages of the negotiations of 1898–1899 Dr. von Siemens complained that the German embassy was jeopardizing the success of the project by insisting that the issuance of the concessions should be considered a diplomatic, as well as a business, triumph. Dr. von Gwinner, also, was discontented with the tendency of the German Government to urge strategic, rather than purely economic, considerations. There was a widespread belief in Germany, as well as elsewhere in Europe, that the Imperial Foreign Office nurtured the Bagdad Railway and its affiliated enterprises with a full realization that “the skirmishes of the political advance guard are fought on financial ground, although the selection of the time and the enemy, as well as the manner in which these skirmishes are to be fought, depends upon those responsible for our foreign policy. Much more than ever before Germans will have to bear in mind that industrial contracts, commercial enterprises, and capital investments are conveying from one country to another not only capital and labor, but also political influence.”[4]
Had the German Government been disposed to pursue a different policy in the Near East, had it refused to link its political power with the economic interests of its nationals, it would have been standing out against an accepted practice of the Great Powers. Lord Lansdowne, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, informed the House of Lords, in May, 1903, that it was impossible for the Foreign Office to dissociate commercial and political interests. He doubted whether British success in the Middle and Far East could have been achieved without careful diplomatic promotion of British economic interests in those regions.[5] Through financial control Russia and Great Britain effectually throttled Persian reform and nationalist aspirations. The pioneer activities of French capital in Tunis and Morocco are outstanding instances of modern imperial procedure. Such also is the use by the Government of the French Republic of its power to deny listings on the Paris Bourse for the purpose of forcing political concessions—a procedure which a French banker described to the author as “a species of international blackmail.”[6] A prominent historian and economist has described the Franco-Russian alliance as a “bankers’ creation.”[7] What other powers had been doing it was to be expected that Germany would do. The ownership and operation of the Bagdad Railway by a predominantly German company was an important factor in a notable expansion of German commercial and financial activities in the Near East. In an age of keen competition for economic influence in the so-called backward areas of the world, this growth of German interests in Turkey was almost certain to influence the diplomatic policy of Germany toward the Ottoman Empire. The political aspirations of the diplomatists were reënforced by the economic interests of the bankers.
Had the German Government not voluntarily taken the Bagdad enterprise under its wing, it might have been compelled to do so. Popular dissatisfaction with a “weak” policy toward investments in backward countries may force the hand of an unwilling government. Whether this dissatisfaction be spontaneous or created by an interested press or both, it is certain to be powerful, for there are few governments which can resist for long the clamor for vigorous fostering of the nation’s interests and rights abroad. And there was no lack of popular enthusiasm in Germany for the Bagdad Railway. The fact that French capital had been invested in the undertaking was usually forgotten. The grand design came to be referred to, affectionately, as unser Bagdad and, somewhat flamboyantly, as the “B. B. B.” (Berlin-Byzantium-Bagdad). German publicists of imperial inclinations contemplated the Railway with reverent amazement, as though hypnotized. The project speedily became an integral part of the national Weltanschauung—a means of enabling Germans to compete for the rich commerce of the Orient, to appropriate some of its enormous wealth, to develop some of its apparently boundless possibilities. As a branch of Weltpolitik it held out alluring inducements for the exercise of political influence in the East—an influence which would serve at once to discomfit the Continental rivals of Germany and to promote the Drang nach Osten of her Habsburg ally.
The political aims of the German Empire in Turkey, however, were not concerned with colonization or conquest. It was not proposed, for example, to encourage German colonization of the regions traversed by the Bagdad Railway. During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, it is true, attempts had been made to stimulate German settlements in Syria and Mesopotamia. But later, when the problem of German oversea migration had become less acute, all proposals for German colonization in the Near East were abandoned.[8]
The difficulties in the way of European settlement of Asiatic Turkey were almost insurmountable. Mesopotamia is unbearably hot during the summer and is totally unfit for colonization by Europeans. During July and August the thermometer registers between 100 and 120 almost every day, and the heat is particularly oppressive because of the relatively high humidity. The total number of Europeans resident in Mesopotamia before the War was not in excess of 200, who were almost all missionaries, engineers, consuls, or archæologists. Palestine is more suitable as a place of residence, but the country is not particularly alluring; a few German agricultural colonies, chiefly Jewish, were established there, but they were comparatively unimportant in size, wealth, and political influence. In Anatolia the climate is tolerable, but not healthful for western Europeans. The plateau is subject to sudden and extreme changes in temperature in both winter and summer, and, consequently, pneumonia and malaria are almost epidemic among foreigners. To the German who was considering leaving the Fatherland to seek his fortune abroad, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Anatolia were by no means as attractive as Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Dakotas. Turkey offered few inducements to compare with the lure of the United States or of South America.[9]
In addition to these natural difficulties, there existed the pronounced opposition of the Turks to foreign colonization of their homeland. This opposition was so deep-rooted that General von der Goltz warned his fellow countrymen not to migrate to the Near East if friendly relations were to be maintained with the Ottoman Empire. Paul Rohrbach said that colonization of Turkey-in-Asia by Europeans was quite out of the question. H. F. B. Lynch, of the English firm of Lynch Brothers, one of the most pronounced opponents of the Bagdad Railway, declared that fear of German settlement of Asia Minor was sheer nonsense, that no such plan was in contemplation by the promoters of the Bagdad enterprise, and that the reports of such intentions were the work of ignorant chauvinists. It will be recalled, also, that a secret annex to the concession of 1903 pledged the Deutsche Bank not to encourage German or other foreign immigration into Turkey.[10]
Germans denied, likewise, that they had any intention of utilizing the Bagdad Railway as a means of acquiring an exclusive sphere of economic interest in the Ottoman Empire. Attention was continually directed to Articles 24 and 25 of the Specifications of 1903, which decreed that rates must be applicable to all travelers and consignors without discrimination, and which prohibited the concessionaires from entering into any contract whatever with the object of granting preferential treatment to any one. Arthur von Gwinner, President of the Bagdad Railway, stated that his company had loyally abided by its announced policy of equality of treatment for all, regardless of nationality or other considerations, and he challenged the critics of the enterprise to cite a single instance in which the contrary had been the case. Dr. Rohrbach wrote, in 1903, that it was “unthinkable that Germans should seek to monopolize the territories of the Turkish Empire for the purposes of economic exploitation.” Somewhat later he again stressed this point: “Germany’s political attitude to Turkey is unlike that of all other European powers because, in all sincerity, we ask not a single foot of Turkish territory in Europe, Asia, or Africa, but have only the wish and the interest to find in Turkey—whether its domination be in future restricted to Asia or not—a market and a source of raw materials for our industry; and in this respect we advance no claim on other nations than that of the unconditional open door.” Baron von Schoen pledged the Government to a policy of equal and unqualified opportunity for all in the regions to be opened up by the Railway.[11]
Furthermore, there is little reason to believe that the Germans had any intention of establishing a protectorate over Asiatic Turkey. Their determination to respect the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire was due, of course, not to magnanimity on their part as much as to expediency. Protectorates are expensive. For the same reason it may be doubted that there was any intention of maintaining an extensive military control over Turkey. German aims were to be served by the economic, military, and political renaissance of Turkey-in-Asia. A strong Turkey economically would be a Turkey so much the better able to increase the production of raw materials for the German market as well as to provide an ever more prosperous market for the products of German factories. A powerful Turkish military machine might strike some telling blows, in alliance with German arms, in a general European war; in the event of a Near Eastern conflict it might be utilized to menace the southern frontier of Russia or to strike at British communications with India. A politically strong Ottoman Empire might offer serious resistance to the Russian advance in the Middle East and might menace Britain’s hold on her Mohammedan possessions.