From Berlin to Bagdad and Babylon

by J. A. Zahm

During many years thereafter this new route between Asia and Europe so absorbed public attention that the Euphrates Railway was almost forgotten. But towards the end of the century numerous projects for constructing the road were taken up by several groups of promoters and financiers of different nationalities.

Among these was the project of an Italian, Sig. A. Tonietti, who, acting in behalf of a company of Italian and English financiers, sought a concession for the construction of a line which should start from Alexandretta on the Mediterranean and which, following the Euphrates to Bagdad and Basra, should terminate at a point on the Persian Gulf. He also sought a concession for building a number of branch lines, one of which was to extend to Khanikin on the Persian frontier. In addition to this he asked for authorization to cultivate the unoccupied government lands along the course of the railroad during the term of the concession. In return for this authorization he agreed to establish an irrigation system which should restore the Euphrates valley to its pristine fertility.

There was also a French group of financiers who, headed by M. Cottard, a distinguished railroad engineer in Turkey, endeavored by all means in their power to secure a concession for building a railway which was to be a prolongation of the Anatolian line to Bagdad and Basra and to follow essentially the same course along the Euphrates as the projected road of Sig. Tonietti.

In addition to the two projects just mentioned was that of the Russian Count Kapist, who proposed to build a line which should start from Tripoli, in Syria, and, passing Bagdad, should terminate at Koweit on the Persian Gulf. Count Kapist and his associates pretended that they were assured of the eventual coöperation not only of English capitalists but also of the British Government.[154]

The applicants for these divers concessions were, however, all doomed to disappointment. Never before had so many, so antagonistic, and so powerful interests made so long and so strenuous efforts to secure the coveted privilege of building a railroad in foreign territory. Never were diplomats more active in Constantinople, never was intrigue more complicated, and never was greater pressure brought to bear upon the Sublime Porte by the rival nations of Europe. France wished to safeguard her interests in the Levant and extend her sphere of influence in the Near East. Russia desired to tighten her hold on Transcaucasia and to prepare for the eventual dismemberment of the Turkish Empire of which she fondly hoped to secure the lion’s share. England, although she had control of the Suez Canal, saw in the Bagdad Railway a menace to her Indian possessions and determined to nullify the danger before it was too late.

France had been on the friendliest terms with the Ottoman Government since the time of Francis I and her financiers naturally felt that the much coveted concession should be awarded to them as citizens of the most favored nation. English capitalists put forward claims which they regarded as deserving greater consideration than those of their competitors.

But French and English as well as Italian and Russian claims were ignored, their projects for connecting the Mediterranean with the Persian Gulf were rejected and the long and eagerly sought concession was awarded to a group of German capitalists, alias the Deutsche Bank, alias, their opponents contend, the German Government.

What the Germans call Drang nach Osten—Trend towards the East—dates from the time of Alexander the Great. It drove the legions of the Cæsars to the Euphrates and the Tigris and impelled the hosts of the Crusaders to seek glory on the desert wastes of Syria and Mesopotamia. It urged Napoleon to undertake his famous campaign in Egypt and was at the bottom of his alliance with the Czar Alexander I—an alliance that was to carry the combined armies of France and Russia to the heart of India.

As to the Germans, they have never ceased “to dream of the Morgenland since the epic of Barbarossa’s crusade and the legendary disappearance of that great figure of Teutonic battle and romance in the Cilician stream.” When von Moltke, 1835–1839, was assisting the Sultan Mahmud II to reorganize the Ottoman army on the German plan he was greatly impressed with the possibilities offered by Asia Minor as a field for German commerce and enterprise. Others of his countrymen thought it would be good policy to divert the current of German emigration from America to Asia Minor. And, although the Porte had always been opposed to all schemes of German colonization in Turkey, there was reason to believe that the Ottoman Government, after the completion of the Bagdad Railway, would consent to German colonists settling in certain places in Anatolia and Mesopotamia. For, several decades before the Germans had secured the concession to build the Bagdad Railroad, the friendliest relations had existed between Constantinople and Berlin. This was particularly true after the defeat of France in 1870, when Germany was reorganized as the first military power in the world. For thenceforward Turkey not only maintained a goodly number of military students in Germany, but also had many German officers in her army, among whom was the distinguished Field Marshal Goltz Pasha.

It was, however, more than a half century before von Moltke’s idea of developing Anatolia and Mesopotamia was given practical consideration. It was then taken up by Dr. George von Siemens, the distinguished president of the Deutsche Bank, who, like so many of his countrymen, had come under the spell of Germany’s Weltpolitik and, like them, had been caught in the current of the Drang nach Osten.