[Illustration: TURKISH RAILWAYS IN 1918]
TURKEY, THE GREAT POWERS,
AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY
[Illustration: ·The MM C^o·]
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
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TORONTO
Turkey, The Great Powers,
and
The Bagdad Railway
_A Study in Imperialism_
BY
EDWARD MEAD EARLE, PH.D.
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1924
_All rights reserved_
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
COPYRIGHT, 1923,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published July, 1923.
_Reprinted_ _July, 1924_
Press of
J. J. Little & Ives Company
New York, U. S. A.
“When the history of the latter part of the nineteenth century will
come to be written, one event will be singled out above all others for
its intrinsic importance and for its far-reaching results; namely, the
conventions of 1899 and of 1902 between His Imperial Majesty the Sultan
of Turkey and the German Company of the Anatolian Railways.”—Charles
Sarolea, _The Bagdad Railway and German Expansion as a Factor in
European Politics_ (Edinburgh, 1907), p. 3.
“The Turkish Government, I know, have been accused of being corrupt. I
venture to submit that it has not been for want of encouragement from
Europeans that the Turks have been corrupt. The sinister—I think it is
not going too far to use that word—effect of European financiers on
Turkey has had more to do with the misgovernment than any Turk, young
or old.”—Sir Mark Sykes, in the House of Commons, March 18, 1914.
PREFACE
The Chester concessions and the Anglo-American controversy regarding
the Mesopotamian oilfields are but two conspicuous instances of the
rapid development of American activity in the Near East. Turkey,
already an important market for American goods, gives promise of
becoming a valuable source of raw materials for American factories
and a fertile field for the investment of American capital. Thus
American religious interests in the Holy Land, American educational
interests in Anatolia and Syria, and American humanitarian interests
in Armenia, are now supplemented by substantial American economic
interests in the natural resources of Asia Minor. Political stability
and economic progress in Turkey no longer are matters of indifference
to business men and politicians in the United States; therefore the
Eastern Question—so often a cause of war—assumes a new importance to
Americans. This book will have served a useful purpose if—in discussing
the conflicting political, cultural, and economic policies of the Great
Powers in the Near East during the past three decades—it contributes to
a sympathetic understanding of a very complicated problem and suggests
to the reader some dangers which American statesmanship would do well
to avoid. Students of history and international relations will find in
the story of the Bagdad Railway a laboratory full of rich materials
for an analysis of modern economic imperialism and its far-reaching
consequences.
The assistance of many persons who have been intimately associated
with the Bagdad Railway has enabled the author to examine records
and documents not heretofore available to the historian. To these
persons the author is glad to assign a large measure of any credit
which may accrue to this book as an authoritative and definitive
account of German railway enterprises in the Near East. He wishes
especially to mention: Dr. Arthur von Gwinner, of the _Deutsche Bank_,
president of the Anatolian and Bagdad Railway Companies; Dr. Karl
Helfferich, formerly Imperial German Minister of Finance, erstwhile
managing director of the _Deutsche Bank_, and at present a member of
the Reichstag; Sir Henry Babington Smith, an associate of the late
Sir Ernest Cassel, a director of the Bank of England, president of
the National Bank of Turkey, and at one time representative of the
British bondholders on the Ottoman Public Debt Administration; Djavid
Bey, Ottoman Minister of Finance during the régime of the Young Turks,
an economic expert at the first Lausanne Conference, and at present
Turkish representative on the Ottoman Public Debt Administration; Mr.
Ernest Rechnitzer, a banker of Paris and London, a competitor for the
Bagdad Railway concession in 1898–1899; Rear Admiral Colby M. Chester,
of the United States Navy (retired), beneficiary of the “Chester
concessions.”
Valuable assistance in the collection and preparation of material has
been rendered, also, by the following persons, to whom the author
expresses his grateful appreciation: Sir Charles P. Lucas, director,
and Mr. Evans Lewin, librarian, of the Royal Colonial Institute; Sir
John Cadman, director of His Majesty’s Petroleum Department; Professor
George Young, of the University of London, formerly attaché of the
British embassy at Constantinople; Mr. Charles V. Sheehan, sub-manager
in London of the National City Bank of New York; Mr. M. Zekeria,
chief of the Turkish Information Service in the United States; Mr.
René A. Wormser, an American attorney who assisted the author in
research work in Germany during the summer of 1922. Dr. Gottlieb Betz,
of Columbia University, and Dr. John Mez, American correspondent of
the _Frankfurter Zeitung_, have aided in the translation of important
documents.
Professors Carlton J. H. Hayes and William R. Shepherd, of Columbia
University, have been patient advisers and judicious critics of the
author during the preparation of his manuscript. To them he owes much,
as teachers who stimulated his interest in international relations,
and as colleagues who cheerfully coöperate in any useful enterprise.
Professor Parker Thomas Moon, of Columbia University, also has read the
manuscript and offered many valuable suggestions.
EDWARD MEAD EARLE
Columbia University
June, 1923
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I AN ANCIENT TRADE ROUTE IS REVIVED 1
II BACKWARD TURKEY INVITES ECONOMIC EXPLOITATION 9
Turkish Sovereignty is a Polite Formality 9
The Natural Wealth of Asiatic Turkey Offers Alluring
Opportunities 13
Forces Are at Work for Regeneration 17
III GERMANS BECOME INTERESTED IN THE NEAR EAST 29
The First Rails Are Laid 29
The Traders Follow the Investors 35
The German Government Becomes Interested 38
German Economic Interests Make for Near Eastern
Imperialism 45
IV THE SULTAN MORTGAGES HIS EMPIRE 58
The Germans Overcome Competition 58
The Bagdad Railway Concession is Granted 67
The Locomotive is to Supplant the Camel 71
The Sultan Loosens the Purse-Strings 75
Some Turkish Rights Are Safeguarded 81
V PEACEFUL PENETRATION PROGRESSES 92
The Financiers Get Their First Profits 92
The Bankers’ Interests Become More Extensive 97
Broader Business Interests Develop 101
Sea Communications Are Established 107
VI THE BAGDAD RAILWAY BECOMES AN IMPERIAL ENTERPRISE 120
Political Interests Come to the Fore 120
Religious and Cultural Interests Reënforce Political
and Economic Motives 131
Some Few Voices Are Raised in Protest 137
VII RUSSIA RESISTS AND FRANCE IS UNCERTAIN 147
Russia Voices Her Displeasure 147
The French Government Hesitates 153
French Interests Are Believed to be Menaced 157
The Bagdad Railway Claims French Supporters 165
VIII GREAT BRITAIN BLOCKS THE WAY 176
Early British Opinions Are Favorable 176
The British Government Yields to Pressure 180
Vested Interests Come to the Fore 189
Imperial Defence Becomes the Primary Concern 195
British Resistance is Stiffened by the Entente 202
IX THE YOUNG TURKS ARE WON OVER 217
A Golden Opportunity Presents Itself to the Entente
Powers 217
The Germans Achieve a Diplomatic Triumph 222
The German Railways Justify Their Existence 229
The Young Turks Have Some Mental Reservations 235
X BARGAINS ARE STRUCK 239
The Kaiser and the Tsar Agree at Potsdam 239
French Capitalists Share in the Spoils 244
The Young Turks Conciliate Great Britain 252
British Imperial Interests Are Further Safeguarded 258
Diplomatic Bargaining Fails to Preserve Peace 266
XI TURKEY, CRUSHED TO EARTH, RISES AGAIN 275
Nationalism and Militarism Triumph at Constantinople 275
Asiatic Turkey Becomes One of the Stakes of the War 279
Germany Wins Temporary Domination of the Near East 287
“Berlin to Bagdad” Becomes but a Memory 292
To the Victors Belong the Spoils 300
“The Ottoman Empire is Dead. Long Live Turkey!” 303
XII THE STRUGGLE FOR THE BAGDAD RAILWAY IS RESUMED 314
Germany is Eliminated and Russia Withdraws 314
France Steals a March and is Accompanied by Italy 318
British Interests Acquire a Claim to the Bagdad
Railway 327
America Embarks on an Uncharted Sea 336
INDEX 355
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.
CHAPTER II
BACKWARD TURKEY INVITES ECONOMIC EXPLOITATION
TURKISH SOVEREIGNTY IS A POLITE FORMALITY
The reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid II (1876–1909) began with a disastrous
foreign war; it terminated in the turmoil of revolution. And during the
intervening three decades of his régime the Ottoman Empire was forced
to wage a fight for its very existence—a fight against disintegration
from within and against dismemberment from without.
One of the principal problems of Abdul Hamid was the government of his
vast empire in spite of domestic dissension and foreign interference.
His subjects were a polyglot collection of peoples, bound together
by few, if any, common ties, obedient to the Sultan’s will only when
overawed by military force. In Turkey-in-Asia alone, Turks, Arabs,
Armenians, Kurds, Jews, Greeks combined to form a conglomerate
population, professing a variety of religious faiths, speaking a
diversity of languages and dialects, and adhering to their own
peculiar social customs. Of these, the Armenians were receiving the
sympathy, support, and encouragement of Russia; the Kurds were living
by banditry, terrorizing peasants and traders alike; the Arabs were in
open revolt.[1]
Nature seemed to make more difficult the task of bringing these
dissentient peoples under subjection. The mountainous relief of the
Anatolian plateau lent itself to the success of guerrilla bands
against the gendarmerie; a high mountain barrier separated Anatolia,
the homeland of the Turks, from the hills and deserts of Syria and
Mesopotamia, the strongholds of the Arabs. The vast extent of the
empire—it is as far from Constantinople to Mocha as it is from New
York to San Francisco—still further complicated an already tangled
problem, for there were not even the poorest means of communication.
Under these circumstances the authority of the Sultan was as often
disregarded as obeyed. To police the country from the Adriatic to
the Indian Ocean, from the borders of Persia to the eastern coast of
the Mediterranean, was a physical impossibility. Universal military
service was enforced only in the less rebellious provinces. It was
almost out of the question to mobilize the military strength of the
empire for defence against foreign invasion or for the suppression of
domestic insurrection. Efforts to build up effective administration
from Constantinople were paralyzed by incompetent, insubordinate, and
corrupt officials.[2]
To these problems of maintaining peace and order at home there was
added the equally difficult problem of preventing the extension of
foreign interference and control in Ottoman affairs. The integrity
of Turkey already was seriously compromised by the hold which the
Great Powers possessed on Turkish governmental functions. Under the
Capitulations foreigners occupied a special and privileged position
within the Ottoman Empire. Nationals of the European nations and the
United States were practically exempt from taxation; they could be
tried for civil and criminal offences only under the laws of their own
country and in courts under the jurisdiction of their own diplomatic
and consular officials; in fact, they enjoyed favors comparable to
diplomatic immunity. By virtue of treaties with the Sultan the Powers
exercised numerous extra-territorial rights in Turkey, such, for
example, as the maintenance of their own postal systems.[3]
The finances of Turkey, furthermore, were under the control of
the Ottoman Public Debt Administration, composed almost entirely
of representatives of foreign bondholders and responsible only to
them. The Council of Administration of the Public Debt—composed of
one representative each from the United Kingdom, France, Germany,
Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Turkey—had complete control of assessment,
collection, and expenditure of certain designated revenues. In fact,
it controlled Ottoman financial policy and exercised its control in
the interest of European bankers and investors. Customs duties of
the Sultan’s dominions might be increased only with the consent of
the Great Powers. Almost all administrative and financial questions
in Turkey were directly or indirectly subject to the sanction of
foreigners.[4]
European governments were not content to interfere in the affairs of
the Ottoman Empire. They sought to destroy it. Their zeal in this
latter respect was limited only by their jealousies as to who should
become the heir of the Sick Man. Russia encouraged the Balkan and
Transcaucasian peoples to resist Turkish domination; France acquired
control of Tunis and built up a sphere of interest in Syria; Great
Britain occupied Egypt; Italy cast longing glances at Tripoli and
finally seized it; Greece fomented insurrection in Crete. Germany and
Austria-Hungary sought to bring all of Turkey into the economic and
political orbit of Central Europe. The Powers rendered lip-service to
the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire,
but they never allowed their solemn professions to interfere with their
imperial practices. At best Turkish sovereignty was a polite fiction—it
was always a fiction, if not always polite.
The economic backwardness of Turkey emphasized the existing political
confusion and instability. From one end of the empire to the other,
it seemed, obstacle was piled on obstacle to prevent the modernizing
of the nation. Brigandage made trade hazardous; there were almost no
roads; the rivers of Anatolia and Cilicia were not navigable; the
mineral resources of the country had been neglected; internal and
foreign customs duties were the last straws to break the camel’s
back—business was taxed to death. Agriculture, the occupation of the
great majority of the people, was in a state of stagnation. The absence
of systems of drainage and irrigation made the countryside the victim
of alternate floods and droughts. Methods of cultivation were archaic:
the wooden plow, used by the Hittites centuries before, was among the
most advanced types of agricultural implements in use in Anatolia and
Syria; harvesting and threshing were performed in the most antiquated
manner; fertilization and cultivation were practically unknown. Markets
were inaccessible; the peasant could not dispose of a surplus if he
had it; therefore, production was limited to the needs of the family,
and the Turkish peasant acquired a widespread reputation for inherent
laziness.
Industrially, the Ottoman Empire had back of it a great past. The
fine and dainty fabrics of Mosul; the famous mosque lamps, wonder-art
of the glass-workers of Mesopotamia; the master workmanship of the
coppersmiths of Diarbekr; the tiles of Erzerum; the steel work and the
enamels of Damascus—all of these had been far-famed articles of world
commerce for centuries. But Turkey in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries was, industrially as well as politically, a “backward
nation.” Her manufactures were conducted under the time-honored
handicraft system, which long since had been discarded by her European
neighbors. In other words, Turkey had not experienced the Industrial
Revolution which was the modern foundation of Western society and
civilization. But Turkey was victimized by the Industrial Revolution.
Her manufactures—with the exception of some luxuries of incomparable
craftsmanship—produced by outworn methods, found it increasingly
difficult to compete even in the markets of the Ottoman Empire with the
cheaper machine-made goods of Europe. The pitiless competition of the
industrialized West eliminated the cottage spinner and weaver, the town
tailor and cobbler. And yet for Turkey to adopt European methods—to
introduce the machine, the factory, and the factory town—was for a time
impracticable. There was no mobile fund of capital for the purpose,
and even Young Turks were not in a position to furnish the necessary
technical skill. As for foreign capital and foreign directing genius,
they could be obtained only under promises and guarantees which might
still further jeopardize the independence of the Ottoman Empire.[5]
THE NATURAL WEALTH OF ASIATIC TURKEY OFFERS ALLURING OPPORTUNITIES
It was not because of a lack of natural resources that Turkey was a
“backward nation.” The Sultan’s Asiatic dominions were rich in raw
materials, in fuel, and in agricultural possibilities. Anatolia, for
example, is a great storehouse of important metals. A fine quality of
chrome ore is to be found in the region directly south of the Sea
of Marmora and in Cilicia, constituting sources of supply which were
sufficient to assure Turkey first position among the chrome-producing
nations until 1900, when exports from Russia and Rhodesia offered
serious competition. There are valuable deposits of antimony in the
vilayets of Brusa and Smyrna, as well as commercially profitable lead
and zinc mines near Brusa, Ismid, and Konia. These metals, particularly
chrome and antimony, are not only valuable for peace-time industry, but
are almost indispensable in the manufacture of armor-plate, shells and
shrapnel, guns, and armor-piercing projectiles.[6]
In the vicinity of Diarbekr there are mines, which, although not
entirely surveyed, promise to yield large supplies of copper.
Southern Anatolia is the world’s greatest source of emery and other
similar abrasives. The famous meerschaum mines near Eski Shehr enjoy
practically a universal monopoly. Boracite, mercury, nickel, iron,
manganese, sulphur, and other minerals are to be found in Anatolia,
although there is some question of the commercial possibilities of the
deposits.[7]
Although Anatolia is not ranked among the principal fuel-producing
countries of the world, its coal deposits are not inconsiderable.
Operation of the chief of the coalfields, in the vicinity of Heraclea,
was begun in 1896 by a French corporation, _La Société française
d’Héraclée_, which invested in the enterprise during the succeeding
seven years more than a million francs. The venture proved to be
profitable, for by 1910 the mines were producing in excess of half a
million tons of coal annually. In addition to coal, Anatolia possesses
large deposits of lignite which, mixed with coal, is suitable fuel for
ships, locomotives, gasworks, and factories.[8]
Oil exists in large quantities in Mesopotamia and in smaller quantities
in Syria. The deposits are said to be part of a vast petroliferous area
stretching from the shores of the Caspian Sea to the coast of Burma.
As early as 1871 a commission of experts visited the valleys of the
Tigris and the Euphrates for the purpose of studying the possibility
of immediate exploitation of the petroleum wells in that region. They
reported that although there was a plentiful supply of petroleum of
good quality, difficulties of transportation made it extremely doubtful
if the Mesopotamian fields could compete with the Russian and American
at that time. The oil supply was then being exploited on a small scale
by the Arabs and proved to be of sufficient local importance, as well
as of sufficient profit, to warrant its being taken over by the Ottoman
Civil List, in 1888, as a government monopoly.[9]
In 1901 a favorable report by a German technical commission on
Mesopotamian petroleum resources stated that the region was a veritable
“lake of petroleum” of almost inexhaustible supply. It would be
advisable, it was pointed out, to develop these oilfields if for no
other purpose than to break the grip of the “omnipotent Standard,”
which, in combination with Russian interests, might speedily monopolize
the world’s supply.[10] Shortly afterward, Dr. Paul Rohrbach, a
celebrated German publicist, visited the Mesopotamian valley and
wrote that the district seemed to be “virtually soaked with bitumen,
naphtha, and gaseous hydrocarbons.” He was of the opinion that the oil
resources of the region offered far greater opportunity for profitable
development than had the Russian Transcaucasian fields.[11] In 1904
the _Deutsche Bank_, of Berlin, promoters of the Bagdad Railway,
obtained the privilege of making a thorough survey of the oilfields
of the Tigris and Euphrates valleys, with the option within one year
of entering into a contract with the Ottoman Government for their
exploitation.[12] Shortly thereafter Rear Admiral Colby M. Chester, of
the United States Navy, became interested in the development of the oil
industry in Asiatic Turkey.[13]
The Near East possesses not only mineral wealth but potential
agricultural wealth as well. Mesopotamia, for example, gives promise
of becoming one of the world’s chief cotton-growing regions. In
antiquity the Land of the Two Rivers was an important center of cotton
production, and recent experiments have held out great inducements for
a revival of cotton culture there. The climate of Mesopotamia is ideal
for such a purpose. The length of the summer season is from six to
seven months, with a constantly rising temperature, as contrasted with
a shorter season and variable temperatures in America and Egypt. Frost
is almost unknown. Rainfall is plentiful during the early part of the
year and scarce, as it should be, during the growing period. The soil
contains a good percentage of the essential phosphorus, potash, and
nitrogen. It is believed that Mesopotamia can grow cotton as good as
the best Egyptian and better than the best American product and at a
considerably higher yield per acre.[14]
Extravagant prophecies have been made regarding the rôle of irrigation
in bringing about an agricultural renaissance in Turkey-in-Asia. A
writer in the Vienna _Zeit_ of August 31, 1901, predicted that as
soon as the economic effects of irrigation and of the Bagdad Railway
should be fully realized, “Anatolia, northern Syria, Mesopotamia, and
Irak together will export at least as much grain as all of Russia
exports to-day.” Dr. Rohrbach claimed that this probably would prove
to be an exaggeration, but that certainly Mesopotamia would become
one of the great granaries of the world.[15] Sir William Willcocks,
the distinguished English engineer who had planned and supervised the
construction of the famous irrigation works of the Nile, was no less
enthusiastic about the prospects of Mesopotamia. “With the Euphrates
and Tigris floods really controlled,” he wrote, “the delta of the two
rivers would attain a fertility of which history has no record; and we
should see men coming from the West, as well as from the East, making
the Plain of Shinar a rival of the land of Egypt. The flaming swords
of inundation and drought would have been taken out of the hands of
the offended Seraphim, and the Garden of Eden would have again been
planted.... Speaking in less poetical language we might say that the
value of every acre in the joint delta of the two rivers would be
immediately trebled before the irrigation works were carried out,
and again increased many fold more the day the works were completed.
Every town and hamlet in the valley from Bagdad to Basra would find
itself freed from the danger, expense, and intolerable nuisance of
flooding, and the resurrection of this ancient land would have been an
accomplished fact.”[16]
Here in the Near East, then, was a great empire awaiting exploitation
by Western capital and Western technical skill. No man could adequately
predict its ultimate contributions in raw materials to Western
industry, or accurately foretell its ultimate capacity in consumption
of the products of Western factories, or confidently prophesy its
final rôle in the promotion of Western commerce. But a trained and
intelligent observer, surveying the situation at the opening of the
twentieth century, could have said with a certain amount of assurance
that there were two essential conditions to even a partial realization
of the economic possibilities of the Ottoman Empire: the provision of
adequate railway communications and the establishment of political
security. The former of these conditions was met, in part, during
the régime of Abdul Hamid and his successors, the Young Turks. The
second, in spite of earnest efforts by loyal Ottomans, has not yet been
satisfied.
FORCES ARE AT WORK FOR REGENERATION
Probably there was no group of men more fully aware of the needs of
Turkey than the members of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration.
They were concerned, it is true, solely with obtaining prompt payment
of interest and principal of Ottoman bonds and with improving Ottoman
credit in European financial markets. But the accomplishment of this
purpose, they realized, was altogether out of the question in the
continued presence of political instability and economic stagnation.
One must feed the goose which lays the golden eggs. They sought some
means, therefore, of establishing domestic order in the Ottoman Empire,
of lessening the constant danger of foreign invasion, and of providing
a tonic for the economic life of the nation. All of these purposes,
it was believed, would be served by the encouragement of railway
construction in Turkey.
The interest and imagination of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration
were stimulated by the plans of the eminent German railway engineer
Wilhelm von Pressel, one of the Sultan’s technical advisers. Von
Pressel had established an international reputation because of his
services in the construction of important railways in Switzerland
and the Tyrol. In 1872 he was retained by the Ottoman Government to
develop plans for railways in Turkey, and a few years later he assumed
a prominent part in the construction of the trans-Balkan lines of the
Oriental Railways Company. No one knew more than von Pressel of the
railway problems of Turkey; few were more enthusiastic about the rôle
which rail communications might play in a renaissance of the Near East.
Von Pressel foresaw the possibility of establishing a great system of
Ottoman railways extending from the borders of Austria-Hungary to the
shores of the Persian Gulf. In this manner the far-flung territories
of the empire would be brought into communication with one another
and with the capital, and an era would be begun of unprecedented
development in agriculture, mining, and commerce. A market would be
provided for the crops of the peasantry; the hinterland of the ports
of Constantinople, Smyrna, Mersina, Alexandretta, and Basra would
be opened up; heretofore inaccessible mineral resources would be
exploited. Foreign commerce might be restored to the prosperity it had
once enjoyed before the Commercial Revolution of the sixteenth century
replaced the caravan routes of the Near East by the new sea routes to
the Indies. Mesopotamia might be transformed into a veritable economic
paradise. The railways also would insure political stability, for rapid
mobilization and transportation of the gendarmerie to danger points
would enable the Sultan’s Government to suppress rebellions of the
turbulent tribesmen of Kurdistan, Mesopotamia, and Arabia. Peace and
prosperity were goals within easy reach, thought von Pressel, if Turkey
could be provided with a comprehensive system of railways.[17]
To the Ottoman Public Debt Administration peace and prosperity were
means to reaching another goal—a full treasury. Greater income for
the Turkish farmer, miner, artisan, and trader would mean greater
opportunities for the extension of tax levies. And the greater the tax
receipts the greater would be the payments to the European bondholders
and the greater the value of the bonds themselves. Obviously, railway
construction would improve Turkish credit in the financial centers
of the world. But, for the time, the Ottoman Government had at its
disposal neither the capital nor the technical skill to carry into
execution the plans for an ambitious program of railway building, and
private enterprise showed no disposition to interest itself without
substantial guarantees. It was under these circumstances, therefore,
that the Ottoman Public Debt Administration recommended to the Sultan
that certain revenues of his empire should be set aside for the
payment of subsidies to railway companies.[18]
The Public Debt Administration were not unaware that the payment of
railway subsidies would materially increase the amount of the imperial
debt and mortgage certain of the imperial revenues. But they were
confident that railways would be a powerful stimulant to economic
prosperity in Turkey and would ultimately increase the revenues of the
Government by an amount in excess of the amount of the subsidies. They
believed that generous initial expenditures in a worth-while enterprise
might yield generous final returns. As an instance of this they could
point to the development of sericulture in Turkey. Under the auspices
of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration tens of thousands of dollars
were expended in the reclamation of more than 130,000 acres of land and
the planting thereon of over sixty million mulberry trees. As a result,
the silk crop increased more than tenfold during the years 1890–1910,
with a result that there was a corresponding increase in the 10% levy
(or tithe) on agricultural products in the regions affected. If the
Public Debt Administration were actuated by self-interest, at least it
was intelligent and far-sighted self-interest.[19]
But Sultan Abdul Hamid was no less interested than foreign bondholders
in the extension of railway construction in his empire. Railways could
be utilized, he believed, to serve his dynastic and imperial ambitions.
Effective transportation was essential to the solution of at least
three vexatious political problems: first, the problem of exercising
real, as well as nominal, authority over rebellious and indifferent
subjects in Syria, Mesopotamia, Kurdistan, Arabia, and other outlying
provinces; second, the problem of compelling these provinces, by
military force if necessary, to contribute their share of blood and
treasure to the defence of the empire;[20] third, the problem of
perfecting a plan of mobilization for war, on whatever front it might
be necessary to conduct hostilities. The maintenance of order, the
enforcement of universal military service, the collection of taxes in
all provinces of the empire, and defence against foreign invasion—all
of these policies would be seriously handicapped, if not paralyzed, by
the absence of adequate railway communications.
For strategic reasons, if for no other, Abdul Hamid would have
especially favored the Bagdad Railway. For strategic reasons, also,
he supplemented the Bagdad system with the famous Hedjaz Railway—from
Damascus to the holy cities of Medina and Mecca—one of the achievements
of which the wily old Sultan was most proud.[21] The completion of
these two railways would have extended Turkish military power from the
Black Sea to the Persian Gulf, from the Bosporus to the Persian Gulf.
General von der Goltz epitomized their military importance in the
following terms: “The great distance dividing the southern provinces
from the rest of the empire was not the only difficulty in holding
them in control; it made Turkey unable to concentrate her strength in
case of great danger in the north. It must not be forgotten that the
Osmanlie Empire in all former wars on the Danube and in the Balkans has
only been able to utilize half her forces. Not only did the far-off
provinces not contribute men, but, on the contrary, they necessitated
strong reënforcements to prevent the danger of their being tempted into
rebellion. This will be quite changed when the railroads to the Persian
Gulf and the Red Sea are completed. The empire will then be rejuvenated
and have renewed strength.”[22] The General might have added that the
new railways might conceivably be utilized for the transportation to
the Sinai Peninsula of an army intended to threaten the Suez Canal and
Egypt.[23]
The Ottoman Government made it plain from the very start that the
Bagdad Railway, in particular, was intended to serve military, as
well as purely economic, purposes. The concession of 1903 contained a
number of explicit provisions regarding official commandeering of the
lines for the objects of suppressing rebellion, conducting military
maneuvers, or mobilizing in the event of war. Furthermore, the Ottoman
military authorities insisted that strategic considerations be taken
into account when the railway was constructed. For example, the
sections of the Bagdad line from Adana to Aleppo were carried through
the Amanus Mountains, in spite of formidable engineering difficulties
and enormous expense, although the railway could have been carried
along the Mediterranean coast with greater ease and economy. The latter
course, however, would have exposed to the guns of a hostile fleet the
jugular vein of Turkish rail communications. From an economic point of
view the Amanus tunnels were the most expensive and most unremunerative
part of the Bagdad Railway; strategically, they were indispensable.
This point was emphasized in 1908, when the Ottoman General Staff
refused to consider a proposal to divert the line from the mountain
passes to the shore.[24]
One of the most frequent criticisms of Turkish railway enterprises in
general, and of the Bagdad Railway in particular, is that they were
military as well as economic in character. Such criticisms, however,
must be discounted, for potentially every railway is of military value.
And in the European countries few railways were constructed without
frank consideration of their adaptability to military purposes in time
of war. Railways, in fact, were one of the most important branches of
Europe’s “preparedness” for war. Which European nation, therefore,
was in a position to cast a stone at Turkey for adopting this lesson
from the civilized Occident? If the Ottoman Empire had a right to
prepare for defence against invasion, it had the right to make that
defence effective—at least until such time as its neighbors, Russia and
Austria, should abandon military measures of potential menace to Turkey.
Germans and Turkish Nationalists contended that there was a certain
amount of cant in the righteous indignation of the Powers that Turkey
should become militaristic. Was Russia, they said, as much interested
in the welfare of Turkey as she was angered at the active measures
of the Sultan to prevent a Russian drive at Constantinople via the
southern shore of the Black Sea? Was France as much concerned with the
safety of Turkey as she was solicitous of the imperial interests of her
ally? Was Great Britain engaged in preserving the peace of the Near
East, or was she fearful of a stiffened Turkish defence of Mesopotamia
or of a Turkish thrust at Egypt?[25] For the Sultan to have admitted
that foreign powers had the right to dictate what measures he might
or might not take for the defence of his territories would have been
equivalent to a surrender of the last vestige of his sovereignty.
Obviously this was an admission he could not afford to make.
Whatever else Abdul Hamid may have been, he was no fool. To assume
that this shrewd and unscrupulous autocrat walked into a German trap
when he granted the Bagdad Railway concession is naïve and absurd.
Abdul Hamid was not in the habit of giving things away, if he could
avoid it, without adequate compensation for himself and his empire.
As Lord Curzon said, there was no axiom dearer to the Sultan’s heart
than that charity not only begins, but stays, at home.[26] Abdul Hamid
knew that the granting of railway subsidies would mortgage his empire.
He knew that mortgages have their disadvantages, not the least of
which is foreclosure. But mortgages also have their advantages. Abdul
Hamid granted extensive railway concessions, carrying with them heavy
subsidies, because he hoped the new railways would strengthen his
authority within the Ottoman Empire and improve the political position
of Turkey in the Near East.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
[1] Count L. Ostrorog, _The Turkish Problem_ (Paris, 1915, English
translation, London, 1919), Chapter II; Leon Dominian, _The Frontiers
of Language and Nationality in Europe_ (London, 1917); V. Bérard, _Le
Sultan, l’Islam, et les puissances_ (Paris, 1907), pp. 15 _et seq._;
E. Fazy, _Les Turcs d’aujourd’hui_ (Paris, 1898); A. Vamberry, _Das
Türkenvolk_ (Leipzig, 1885); A. Geiger, _Judaism and Islam_ (London,
1899). Regarding Arab nationalism, in particular, _cf._ N. Azoury, _Le
réveil de la nation arabe_ (Paris, 1905); E. Jung, _Les puissances
devant la révolte arabe_ (Paris, 1906). A fascinating tale of the
Arab separatist movement during the Great War is that of L. Thomas,
“Lawrence: the Soul of the Arabian Revolution,” in _Asia_ (New York),
April, May, June, 1920. _Cf._, also, H. S. Philby, _The Heart of
Arabia_ (2 volumes, New York, 1923).
[2] There is a wealth of material upon the problems of the Ottoman
Empire during the reign of Abdul Hamid. In particular, consult the
following: A. Vamberry, _La Turquie d’aujourd’hui et d’avant quarante
ans_ (Paris, 1898); C. Hecquard, _La Turquie sous Abdul Hamid_ (Paris,
1901); G. Dory, _Abdul Hamid Intime_ (Paris, 1901); Sir Edwin Pears,
_The Life of Abdul Hamid_ (London, 1917); W. Miller, _The Ottoman
Empire, 1801–1913_ (Cambridge, 1913), Chapters XVI-XVIII; N. Verney and
G. Dambmann, _Les puissances étrangères dans le Levant, en Syrie, et
en Palestine_ (Paris, 1900); Baron von Oppenheim, _Von Mittelmeer zum
persischen Golfe_ (2 volumes, Berlin, 1899–1900); Lavisse and Rambaud,
_Histoire Générale_ (12 volumes, 1894–1901), Volume XI, Chapter XV;
Volume XII, Chapter XIV; R. Davey, _The Sultan and His Subjects_
(London, 1897); V. Cardashian, _The Ottoman Empire of the Twentieth
Century_ (Albany, N. Y., 1908).
[3] The texts of the various treaties of capitulation may be found in
G. E. Noradounghian (ed.), _Recueil d’actes internationaux de l’Empire
ottoman, 1300–1902_ (4 volumes, Paris, 1897–1903), Volume I, documents
numbers 153, 170, 196, 201, etc., _ad lib._, Volume II, numbers 499,
593, etc., _ad lib._; also _Recueil des traités de la Porte ottomane
avec les puissances étrangères, 1536–1901_ (10 volumes, Paris,
1864–1901), _passim_; E. A. Van Dyck, _Report on the Capitulations of
the Ottoman Empire_, Forty-seventh Congress, Special Session, Senate
Executive Document No. 3, First Session, Senate Executive Document
No. 87 (Washington, 1881–1882); G. Pelissie du Rausas, _Le régime des
capitulations dans l’Empire ottoman_ (2 volumes, Paris, 1902–1905); A.
R. von Overbeck, _Die Kapitulationen des osmanischen Reiches_ (Breslau,
1917); W. Lehman, _Die Kapitulationen_ (Weimar, 1917); P. M. Brown,
_Foreigners in Turkey, Their Juridical Status_ (Princeton, 1914).
[4] For an account of the establishment, functions, and operation
of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration, _cf._ George Young
(ed.), _Corps de droit ottoman—Recueil des codes, lois, réglements,
ordonnances, et actes les plus importants du droit intérieur, et
d’études sur le droit coutumier de l’Empire ottoman_ (7 volumes,
Oxford, 1905–1906), Volume V, Chapter LXXXV; A. Heidborn, _Manuel de
droit public et administratif de l’Empire ottoman_ (2 volumes, Vienna,
1912), Volume II; C. Morawitz, _Les finances de Turquie_ (Paris, 1902);
A. du Velay, _Essai sur l’histoire financière de la Turquie_ (Paris,
1903), Parts V and VI; L. Delaygue, _Essai sur les finances ottomanes_
(Paris, 1911).
[5] There were a few factories erected in Turkey by foreign
capitalists, notably those of the Oriental Carpet Manufacturers,
Ltd., the American Tobacco Company, and the _Deutsche-Levantischen
Baumwollgesellschaft_. In general, however, the factory and the factory
town were not common phenomena in Asiatic Turkey. An interesting
account of the effects of the Industrial Revolution upon economic
conditions in Turkey is that of Talcott Williams, _Turkey a World
Problem of Today_ (Garden City, 1921), pp. 268 _et seq._; W. S.
Monroe, _Turkey and the Turks: an Account of the Lands, Peoples and
Institutions of the Ottoman Empire_ (London, 1909), Chapter X; M. J.
Garnett, _Turkish Life in Town and Country_ (London, 1904).
[6] J. E. Spurr (ed.), _Political and Commercial Geology_ (New York,
1921), pp. 109, 115–116, 172–173, 184–185; _Anatolia_, No. 17 in a
series of handbooks published by the Historical Section of the Foreign
Office (London, 1920), pp. 88–90.
[7] Spurr, _op. cit._, pp. 358–359; _Armenia and Kurdistan_, No. 62 of
the Foreign Office Handbooks, p. 60; L. Dominian, “The Mineral Wealth
of Asia Minor,” in _The Near East_, May 26, 1916, p. 91; E. Banse,
_Auf den Spuren der Bagdadbahn_ (Weimar, 1913), pp. 140–145; L. de
Launay, _La Géologie et les richesses minerales de l’Asie_ (Paris,
1911); R. Fitzner, _Anatolien, Wirtschaftsgeographie_ (Berlin, 1902);
P. Rohrbach, _Die wirtschaftliche Bedeutung Westasiens_ (Halle, 1902);
G. Carles, _La Turquie économique_ (Paris, 1906); E. Mygind, “Anatolien
und seine wirtschaftliche Bedeutung,” in _Die Balkan Revue_, Volume 4
(1917), pp. 1–6.
[8] L. Dominian, “Fuel in Turkey: an Analysis of Coal Deposits,” in
_The Near East_, June 23, 1916, pp. 186–187; J. Kirsopp, “The Coal
Resources of the Near East,” _ibid._, October 10, 1919, pp. 393–394.
[9] F. Maunsell, “The Mesopotamian Petroleum Field,” in the
_Geographical Journal_, Volume IX (1897), pp. 523–532; L. Dominian,
“Fuel in Turkey: Petroleum,” in _The Near East_, July 14, 1917;
_Mesopotamia_, No. 63 of the Foreign Office Handbooks, pp. 34, 85–86;
_Syria and Palestine_, No. 60 of the Foreign Office Handbooks, p. 111.
[10] _Parliamentary Papers_, 1921, Cmd. 675; _The Near East_, October
26, 1917, p. 516.
[11] _Die Bagdadbahn_ (1903), pp. 26–28.
[12] _Parliamentary Papers_, 1921, Cmd. 675. For some reason or other
this option was allowed to lapse.
[13] H. Woodhouse, “American Oil Claims in Turkey,” in _Current
History_ (New York), Volume XV (1922), pp. 953–959.
[14] _Report of the Department of Agriculture in Mesopotamia, 1920_
(Bagdad, 1921); _The Cultivation of Cotton in Mesopotamia_ (Bagdad,
1922); “Cotton Growing in Mesopotamia,” in the _Bulletin of the
Imperial Institute_, Volume 18 (1920), pp. 73–82.
[15] Rohrbach, _op. cit._, pp. 30–46.
[16] Quoted in _The Near East_, October 6, 1916, pp. 545–546. For an
elaboration of the views of Sir William Willcocks see the following
of his books and articles: _The Recreation of Chaldea_ (Cairo, 1903);
_The Irrigation of Mesopotamia_ (London, 1905, and Constantinople,
1911); “Mesopotamia, Past, Present and Future,” in the _Geographical
Journal_, January, 1910, pp. 1–18. For further works on the economic
resources of Turkey-in-Asia consult, also, the following: K. H. Müller,
_Die wirtschaftliche Bedeutung der Bagdadbahn_ (Hamburg, 1917); L.
Blanckenhorn, _Syrien und die deutsche Arbeit_ (Weimar, 1916); L.
Schulmann, _Zur türkischen Agrarfrage_ (Weimar, 1916); A. Ruppin,
_Syrien als Wirtschaftsgebiet_ (Berlin, 1917).
[17] W. von Pressel, _Les chemins de fer en Turquie d’Asie_ (Zurich,
1902), pp. 4–5, 52–59, etc. _ad lib._ For statements of the importance
of von Pressel in the development of railways in Turkey _cf._ André
Chéradame, _La question d’Orient: la Macédoine, le chemin de fer
de Bagdad_ (Paris, 1903), pp. 25 _et seq._; C. A. Schaefer, _Die
Entwicklung der Bagdadbahnpolitik_ (Weimar, 1916), p. 13.
[18] _Corps de droit ottoman_, Volume IV, pp. 62–64.
[19] Sir H. P. Caillard, Article “Turkey” in the _Encyclopedia
Britannica_, eleventh edition, Volume 27, p. 439; _Reports of the
Ottoman Public Debt_ (London, 1884 _et seq._), _passim._
[20] In Turkey all Mussulmans over 20 years of age were liable to
military service for a period of 20 years, 4 of which were with the
colors in the regular army. Residents in the outlying territories,
notably the Arabs and the Kurds, constantly avoided military service
and went unpunished because of the inability of the Government to send
punitive expeditions into these regions. Railways would have produced
satisfactory bases of operations for such expeditions and would have
shortened their lines of communication. _The Statesman’s Year Book_,
1903, pp. 1168–1170.
[21] The Hedjaz Railway was a great national enterprise which indicated
the strength of Moslem feeling in Turkey and which proved the desire of
the Ottoman Government to construct national railways as far as capital
and technical skill could be obtained. So far as Abdul Hamid was
concerned, the railway was an attempt to gain prestige for his claim to
the Caliphate, as well as a move to strengthen his political position
in Syria and the Hedjaz. In April, 1900, the Sultan announced to the
Faithful his determination to construct a railway from Damascus to the
holy cities of Medina and Mecca. An appeal was issued to Mohammedans
the world over for funds to carry out the work. The Sultan headed the
list with a subscription of about a quarter of a million dollars, and
by 1904 over three and a half million dollars had been collected. The
only compulsory contributions were the levies of 10% on the salary
of every official in the civil and military service of the empire.
It is estimated that the contributions eventually amounted to almost
fifteen million dollars. The engineers in charge of the construction
were Italians, although the great bulk of the work was done by the army
and the peasantry. Nearly seven hundred thousand persons were employed
on the construction work at one time or another, the non-Moslems
being replaced as quickly as Mussulmans could be trained to take
their places. On August 31, 1908, the thirty-second anniversary of
the accession of Abdul Hamid, the railway was completed to Medina,
where construction was halted temporarily because of the Young
Turk Revolution and the international complications which followed
it. _Corps de droit ottoman_, Volume IV, pp. 242–244; A. Hamilton,
_Problems of the Middle East_ (London, 1909), pp. 273–292; _Annual
Register_, 1908, pp. 328–329.
[22] Quoted by Hamilton, _op. cit._, pp. 274–275.
[23] _Via_ the Bagdad Railway and the Syrian system Turkish troops
could have been transported to a point less than 200 miles from Suez. A
successful attack on the Canal, of course, would have severed British
communications with the East. In addition, it would have given the
Sultan an opportunity to attack, and assert his suzerainty over, Egypt.
Dr. Rohrbach made a great point of this alleged menace to the British
position in Egypt. _Cf._ _Die Bagdadbahn_, pp. 18–19; _German World
Policies_, pp. 165–167. This program, however, would have been an
altogether too ambitious one for the military strength of the Ottoman
Empire, which had such far-flung frontiers to defend. In any event,
British statesmen seemed to realize that the Sinai Peninsula was a
formidable natural defence against an attack on the Suez Canal and that
such an expedition would be merely a pin-prick in the imperial flesh.
_Parliamentary Debates, House of Lords_, fifth series, Volume 7 (1911),
pp. 601 _et seq._ The termination in a fiasco of the Turkish drive of
1914–1915 against the Canal confirmed this prophecy.
[24] _Infra_, p. 83; Kurt Wiedenfeld, _Die deutsch-türkische
Wirtschaftsbeziehungen_ (Leipzig, 1915), p. 23; _Report of the Bagdad
Railway Company_, 1908, pp. 4–5.
[25] _Cf._, _e.g._, K. Helfferich, _Die deutsche Türkenpolitik_, p. 22.
[26] _Persia and the Persian Question_, Volume I, p. 634.
CHAPTER III
GERMANS BECOME INTERESTED IN THE NEAR EAST
THE FIRST RAILS ARE LAID
During the summer of 1888 the Oriental Railways—from the Austrian
frontier, across the Balkan Peninsula _via_ Belgrade, Nish, Sofia, and
Adrianople, to Constantinople—were opened to traffic. Connections with
the railways of Austria-Hungary and other European countries placed the
Ottoman capital in direct communication with Vienna, Paris, Berlin,
and London (_via_ Calais). The arrival at the Golden Horn, August 12,
1888, of the first through express from Paris and Vienna was made
the occasion of great rejoicing in Constantinople and was generally
hailed by the European press as marking the beginning of a new era in
the history of the Ottoman Empire. To thoughtful Turks, however, it
was apparent that the opening of satisfactory rail communications in
European Turkey but emphasized the inadequacy of such communications
in the Asiatic provinces. Anatolia, the homeland of the Turks,
possessed only a few hundred kilometres of railways; the vast areas
of Syria, Mesopotamia, and the Hedjaz possessed none at all. Almost
immediately after the completion of the Oriental Railways, therefore,
the Sultan, with the advice and assistance of the Ottoman Public Debt
Administration, launched a program for the construction of an elaborate
system of railway lines in Asiatic Turkey.[1]
The existing railways in Asia Minor were owned, in 1888, entirely
by French and British financiers, with British capital decidedly in
the predominance. The oldest and most important railway in Anatolia,
the Smyrna-Aidin line—authorized in 1856, opened to traffic in 1866,
and extended at various times until in 1888 it was 270 kilometres in
length—was owned by an English company. British capitalists also owned
the short, but valuable, Mersina-Adana Railway, in Cilicia, and held
the lease of the Haidar Pasha-Ismid Railway. French interests were in
control of the Smyrna-Cassaba Railway, which operated 168 kilometres
of rails extending north and east from the port of Smyrna. It was not
until the autumn of 1888 that Germans had any interest whatever in the
railways of Asiatic Turkey.[2]
The first move of the Sultan in his plan to develop railway
communication in his Asiatic provinces was to authorize important
extensions to the existing railways of Anatolia. The French owners
of the Smyrna-Cassaba line were granted a concession for a branch
from Manissa to Soma, a distance of almost 100 kilometres, under
substantial subsidies from the Ottoman Treasury. The British-controlled
Smyrna-Aidin Railway was authorized to build extensions and branches
totalling 240 kilometres, almost doubling the length of its line. A
Franco-Belgian syndicate in October, 1888, received permission to
construct a steam tramway from Jaffa, a port on the Mediterranean, to
Jerusalem—an unpretentious line which proved to be the first of an
important group of Syrian railways constructed by French and Belgian
promoters. Shortly afterward the concession for a railway from Beirut
to Damascus was awarded to French interests.[3]
But the great dream of Abdul Hamid was the great dream of Wilhelm von
Pressel: the vision of a trunk line from the Bosporus to the Persian
Gulf, which, in connection with the existing railways of Anatolia and
the new railways of Syria, would link Constantinople with Smyrna,
Aleppo, Damascus, Beirut, Mosul, and Bagdad. As early as 1886 the
Ottoman Ministry of Public Works had suggested to the lessees of the
Haidar Pasha-Ismid Railway that they undertake the extension of that
line to Angora, with a view to an eventual extension to Bagdad. The
proposal was renewed in 1888, with the understanding that the Sultan
was prepared to pay a substantial subsidy to assure adequate returns
on the capital to be invested. The lessees of the Haidar Pasha-Ismid
line, however, were unable to interest investors in the enterprise
and were compelled to withdraw altogether from railway projects in
Turkey-in-Asia. Thereupon Sir Vincent Caillard, Chairman of the Ottoman
Public Debt Administration, endeavored to form an Anglo-American
syndicate to undertake the construction of a Constantinople-Bagdad
railway, but he met with no success.[4]
The opportunity which British capitalists neglected German financiers
seized. Dr. Alfred von Kaulla, of the _Württembergische Vereinsbank_
of Stuttgart, who was in Constantinople selling Mauser rifles to the
Ottoman Minister of War, became interested in the possibilities of
railway development in Turkey. With the coöperation of Dr. George von
Siemens, Managing Director of the _Deutsche Bank_, a German syndicate
was formed to take over the existing railway from Haidar Pasha to
Ismid and to construct an extension thereof to Angora. On October
6, 1888, this syndicate was awarded a concession for the railway to
Angora and was given to understand that it was the intention of the
Ottoman Government to extend that railway to Bagdad _via_ Samsun,
Sivas, and Diarbekr. The Sultan guaranteed the Angora line a minimum
annual revenue of 15,000 francs per kilometre, for the payment of which
he assigned to the Ottoman Public Debt Administration the taxes of
certain districts through which the railway was to pass. Thus came into
existence the Anatolian Railway Company (_La Société du Chemin de Fer
Ottomane d’Anatolie_), the first of the German railway enterprises in
Turkey.[5]
The German concessionaires were not slow to realize the possibilities
of their concession. They elected Sir Vincent Caillard to the board
of directors of their Company, in order that they might receive the
enthusiastic coöperation of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration and
in order that they might interest British capitalists in their project.
With the assistance of Swiss bankers they incorporated at Zurich the
_Bank für orientalischen Eisenbahnen_, which floated in the European
securities markets the first Anatolian Railways loan of eighty million
francs—more than one fourth of the loan being underwritten in England.
Shortly thereafter this same financial group, under the leadership
of the _Deutsche Bank_, acquired a controlling interest in more than
1500 kilometres of railways in the Balkan Peninsula, by purchasing the
holdings of Baron Hirsch in the Oriental Railways Company. The _Bank
für orientalischen Eisenbahnen_ became a holding company for all of the
_Deutsche Bank’s_ railway enterprises in the Near East.[6]
Under the direction of German engineers, in the meantime, construction
of the Anatolian Railway proceeded at so rapid a rate that the 485
kilometres of rails were laid and trains were in operation to Angora
by January, 1893. About the same time a German engineering commission,
assisted by two technical experts representing the Ottoman Ministry of
Public Works and by two Turkish army officers, submitted a report on
their preliminary survey of the proposed railway to Bagdad. This was
enthusiastically received by the Sultan, who reiterated his intention
of constructing a line into Mesopotamia at the earliest practicable
date.[7]
In 1887 there was no German capital represented in the railways
of Asiatic Turkey. Five years later the _Deutsche Bank_ and
its collaborators controlled the railways of Turkey from the
Austro-Hungarian border to Constantinople; they had constructed a line
from the Asiatic shore of the Straits to Angora; they were projecting a
railway from Angora across the hills of Anatolia into the Mesopotamian
valley. In coöperation with the Austrian and German state railways they
could establish through service from the Baltic to the Bosporus and,
by ferry and railway, into hitherto inaccessible parts of Asia Minor.
Almost overnight, as history goes, Turkey had become an important
sphere of German economic interest. Thus was born the idea of a series
of German-controlled railways from Berlin to Bagdad, from Hamburg to
the Persian Gulf!
The Ottoman Government apparently was well pleased with the energetic
action of the German concessionaires in the promotion of their
railway enterprises in Turkey. In any event, a tangible evidence of
appreciation was extended the Anatolian Railway Company by an imperial
_iradé_ of February 15, 1893, which authorized the construction of a
branch line of 444 kilometres from Eski Shehr (a town about midway
between Ismid and Angora) to Konia. The new line, like its predecessor,
was guaranteed a minimum annual return of 15,000 francs per kilometre,
payments to be made under the supervision of the Ottoman Public Debt
Administration. The obvious advantages of developing the potentially
rich regions of southern Anatolia, and of providing improved
communication between Constantinople and the interior of Asia Minor,
led the Anatolian Company to hasten construction, with the result that
service to Konia was inaugurated in 1896.[8]
Simultaneously with the granting of the second Anatolian concession
the Sultan authorized an important extension to the French-owned
Smyrna-Cassaba Railway. The existing line was to be prolonged a
distance of 252 kilometres from Alashehr to Afiun Karahissar, at which
latter town a junction was to be effected with the Anatolian Railway.
Another French company was awarded a concession for the construction
of the Damascus-Homs-Aleppo railway, in Syria, under substantial
financial guarantees from the Ottoman Treasury. It was said that these
concessions to French financiers were “compensatory” in character and
were granted upon the urgent representations of the French ambassador
in Constantinople.[9]
Between 1896 and 1899 no further definite steps were taken to extend
the Anatolian Railway beyond Angora, as had been provided by the
original concession. In the latter year, however, largely because of
Russian objections to the further development of railways in northern
Asia Minor, the Sultan took under consideration the advisability of
projecting and building, instead, a line from Konia to Bagdad _via_
Aleppo and Mosul. Early in 1899 a German commission left Constantinople
to make a thorough survey of the economic and strategic possibilities
of such a line. Included in the commission were Dr. Mackensen, Director
of the Prussian State Railways; Dr. von Kapp, Surveyor for the State
Railways of Württemberg; Herr Stemrich, the German Consul-General at
Constantinople; Major Morgen, German military attaché; representatives
of the Ottoman Ministry of Public Works. It was this commission that
finally decided upon the route of the Bagdad Railway.[10]
At the close of the nineteenth century, therefore, the sceptre of
railway power in the Near East was passing from the hands of Frenchmen
and Englishmen into the hands of Germans. In a period of about ten
years the German-owned Anatolian Railway Company had constructed
almost one thousand kilometres of railway lines in Asia Minor. A
German mission was blazing a trail through Syria and Mesopotamia for
the extension of the Anatolian Railway to the valley of the Tigris
River and the head of the Persian Gulf. German prestige seemed to be
in the ascendancy: the Directors of the Anatolian Company reported to
the stockholders in 1897 that, “as in former years, our Company has
concerned itself continuously with the development of trade, industry,
and agriculture in the region served by the Railway. As a result our
enterprise has enjoyed in every sense the whole-hearted support and the
powerful protection of His Majesty the Sultan. Our relationships with
the Imperial Ottoman Government, the local authorities, and all classes
of the people themselves are more cordial than ever.”[11]
The system of railways thus founded had been conceived by a German
railway genius; it had been constructed by German engineers with
materials made by German workers in German factories; it had
been financed by German bankers; it was being operated under the
supervision of German directors. In the minds of nineteenth-century
neo-mercantilists this was a matter for national pride. A Pan-German
organ hailed the Anatolian Railways and the proposed Bagdad enterprise
in glowing terms: “The idea of this railway was conceived by German
intelligence; Germans made the preliminary studies; Germans overcame
all the serious obstacles which stood in the way of its execution. We
should be all the more pleased with this success because the Russians
and the English busied themselves at the Golden Horn endeavoring to
block the German project.”[12]
THE TRADERS FOLLOW THE INVESTORS
The construction of the Anatolian Railways by German capitalists was
accompanied by a considerable expansion of German economic interests in
the Near East. In 1889, for example, a group of Hamburg entrepreneurs
established the _Deutsche Levante Linie_, which inaugurated a direct
steamship service between Hamburg, Bremen, Antwerp, and Constantinople.
It was the expectation of the owners of this line that the construction
of the Anatolian railways would materially increase the volume of
German trade with Turkey—an expectation which was justified by
subsequent developments. In 1888, the year of the original railway
concession to the _Deutsche Bank_, exports from Germany to Turkey were
valued at 11,700,000 marks; by 1893, when the line was completed to
Angora, they mounted to a valuation of 40,900,000 marks, an increase
of about 350%. Imports into Germany from Turkey during the same period
rose from 2,300,000 marks to 16,500,000 marks, showing an increase of
over 700%. No small proportion of the phenomenal increase in the volume
of German exports to Turkey can be attributed to the use of German
materials on the Ismid-Angora railway. In any event, there was no
further substantial development of this export trade between 1895 and
1900, although imports into Germany from Turkey reached the high figure
of 28,900,000 marks at the close of the century.[13]
That German traders should follow German financiers into the Ottoman
Empire was to be expected. The _Deutsche Bank_—sponsor of the Anatolian
Railways—had been notably active in the promotion of German foreign
commerce. From its very inception it had devoted itself energetically
to the promotion of industrial and commercial activity abroad, thus
carrying out the object announced in its charter “of fostering and
facilitating commercial relations between Germany, other European
countries, and oversea markets.” By the establishment of foreign
branches, by the liberal financing of import and export shipments, by
the introduction of German bills of exchange in the four corners of
the earth, and by other similar methods, this great bank was largely
responsible for the emancipation of German traders from their former
dependence upon British banking facilities. The Anatolian Railways
concessions marked the initial efforts of the _Deutsche Bank_ at
Constantinople. What it had done elsewhere it could be expected to do
in the interests of German business men operating in Turkey.[14]
The London _Times_ of October 28, 1898, contained a significant review
of the status of German enterprise in the Ottoman Empire during the
decade immediately preceding. Whereas ten years before, the finance
and trade of Turkey were practically monopolized by France and
Great Britain, the Germans were now by far the most active group in
Constantinople and in Asia Minor. Hundreds of German salesmen were
traveling in Turkey, vigorously pushing their wares and studiously
canvassing the markets to learn the wants of the people. The
Krupp-owned Germania Shipbuilding Company was furnishing torpedoes to
the Turkish navy; Ludwig Loewe and Company, of Berlin, was equipping
the Sultan’s military machine with small arms; Krupp, of Essen, was
sharing with Armstrong the orders for artillery. German bicycles were
replacing American-made machines. There was a noticeable increase
of German trade with Palestine and Syria. In 1899 a group of German
financiers founded the _Deutsche Palästina Bank_, which proceeded to
establish branches at Beirut, Damascus, Gaza, Haifa, Jaffa, Jerusalem,
Nablus, Nazareth, and Tripoli-in-Syria.
Promoters, bankers, traders, engineers, munitions manufacturers,
ship-owners, and railway builders all were playing their parts in
laying a substantial foundation for a further expansion of German
economic interests in the Ottoman Empire.[15]
THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT BECOMES INTERESTED
In a sense, German diplomacy had paved the way for the Anatolian
Railway concessions. For numerous reasons, which need not be
discussed here, French and British influence at the Sublime Porte
gradually declined during the decades of 1870–1890. British prestige,
in particular, waned after the occupation of Egypt in 1882. The
German ambassador at Constantinople during most of this period was
Count Hatzfeld, an unusually shrewd diplomatist, who perceived the
extraordinary opportunity which then existed to increase German
prestige in the Near East. His place in the counsels of the Sultan
became increasingly important, as he missed no chance to seize
privileges surrendered by France or Great Britain.[16]
An instance of Count Hatzfeld’s activity was the appointment of a
German military mission to Turkey. Until 1870 there had been a French
mission in Constantinople, with almost complete control over the
training and equipment of the Ottoman army. At the outbreak of the
Franco-German War, however, the mission was recalled because of the
crying need for French officers at the front. After the termination
of hostilities, and again after the collapse of the Turkish defence
against Russia in 1877, the Sultan requested the reappointment of the
mission, but the French Government politely declined the invitation.
The German ambassador seized upon this neglected opportunity and, in
1883, persuaded Abdul Hamid to invite the Kaiser to designate a group
of German officers to serve with the Ottoman General Staff.[17]
In command of the German military mission despatched to Turkey in
response to this invitation was General von der Goltz. This brilliant
officer—who, appropriately enough, was to die in the Caucasus campaign
of 1916—remained in Turkey twelve years, reorganizing the Turkish army,
forming a competent general staff, establishing a military academy
for young officers, and formulating plans for an adequate system of
reserves. So great was his success that he won the lasting respect
of Turkish military and civil officials; time and time again he was
invited to return to Turkey as military adviser extraordinary; in 1909
he answered the call of the Young Turks and lent his ripened judgment
to the solution of their distracting problems; he was granted the
coveted title of Pasha. The personal prestige of von der Goltz was of
no small importance in brightening Germany’s rising star in the Near
East.[18]
Another event of first rate importance in the history of German
ventures in the Ottoman Empire was the accession, in 1888, of Emperor
William II. During the three decades of his reign the economic
foundations of German imperialism were strengthened and broadened; the
superstructure of German imperialism was both reared and destroyed.
During his régime the German industrial revolution reached its height,
and the empire, it seemed, became one enormous factory consuming
great quantities of raw materials and producing a prodigious volume
of manufactured commodities for the home and foreign markets.
Simultaneously there was developed a German merchant marine which
carried the imperial flag to the seven seas. A normal concomitant of
this industrial and commercial progress was the expansion of political
and economic interests abroad—renewed activity in the acquisition of
a colonial empire; marked success in the further conquest of foreign
markets; the creation of a great navy; the phenomenal increase of
German investments in Turkey. It is no insignificant coincidence that
German financiers received their first Ottoman railway concession
in the year of the accession of William II and that the capture of
Aleppo—ending once and for all the plan for a German-controlled railway
from Berlin to Bagdad—occurred just a few days before his abdication.
From the first the Kaiser evinced a keen interest in the Ottoman
Empire as a sphere in which his personal influence might be exerted
on behalf of German economic expansion and German political prestige.
He was quick to recognize the opportunities for German enterprise in
a country where much went by favor, and where political influence
could be effectually exerted for the furtherance of commercial
interests. In one of a round of royal visits following his accession,
the young Emperor, in November, 1889, paid his respects to the Sultan
Abdul Hamid. Upon the arrival in the Bosporus of the imperial yacht
_Hohenzollern_, the Kaiser and Kaiserin received an ostentatious
welcome from the Sultan and cordial greetings from the diplomatic
corps. It was suggested at the time that there was more than formal
significance in this visit of the German sovereigns, coming, as it
did, when prominent German financiers were engaged in constructing the
first kilometres of an important Anatolian railway. This impression was
confirmed when, shortly after the Emperor’s return to the Fatherland,
a favorable commercial treaty was negotiated by the German ambassador
at Constantinople and ratified by the German and Ottoman Governments in
1890.[19]
The expansion of German economic interests and political prestige in
the Ottoman Empire was not looked upon with favor by Bismarck. The
Great Chancellor was primarily interested in isolating France on the
continent and in avoiding commercial and colonial conflicts overseas.
In particular he had no desire to become involved in the complicated
Near Eastern question—toward which at various times he had expressed
total indifference and contempt—for fear of a clash with Russian
ambitions at Constantinople. He realized that German investments in
Turkey might lead to pressure on the German Government to adopt an
imperial policy in Asia Minor, as, indeed, German investments in Africa
had forced him to enter colonial competition in the Dark Continent.[20]
When the _Deutsche Bank_ first called the Chancellor’s attention
to its Anatolian enterprises, therefore, Bismarck frankly stated
his misgivings about the situation. In a letter to Dr. von Siemens,
Managing Director of the _Deutsche Bank_, dated at the Foreign Office,
September 2, 1888, he wrote:[21]
“With reference to the inquiry of the _Deutsche Bank_ of the 15
ultimo, I beg to reply that no diplomatic objections exist to an
application for a concession for railway construction in Asia Minor.
The Imperial Embassy at Constantinople has been authorized to lend
support to German applicants for such concessions—particularly to the
designated representative of the _Deutsche Bank_ in Constantinople—in
their respective endeavors in this matter.
The Board of Directors in its inquiry has correctly given expression
to the assumption that any official endorsement of its plans, in the
present state of affairs, would neither extend beyond the life of the
concession nor apply to the execution and operation of the enterprise.
As a matter of fact, German entrepreneurs assume a risk in capital
investments in railway construction in Anatolia—a risk which lies,
first, in the difficulties encountered in the enforcement of the law
in the East, and, second, in the increase of such difficulties through
war or other complications.
_The danger involved therein for German entrepreneurs must be assumed
exclusively by the entrepreneurs, and the latter must not count upon
the protection of the German Empire against eventualities connected
with precarious enterprises in foreign countries._”[22]
Bismarck disapproved of the visit of William II to Turkey in 1889.
Failing to persuade the young Emperor to abandon the trip to
Constantinople, the Chancellor did what he could to allay Russian
suspicions of the purposes of the journey. Describing an interview
which he had with the Tsar, in October, 1889, Bismarck wrote, in
a memorandum recently taken from the files of the Foreign Office:
“As to the approaching journey of the Kaiser to the Orient, I said
that the reason for the visit to Constantinople lay only in the wish
of our Majesties not to come home from Athens without having seen
Constantinople; Germany had no political interests in the Black Sea and
the Mediterranean; and it was accordingly impossible that the visit of
our Majesties should take on a political complexion. The admission of
Turkey into the Triple Alliance was not possible for us; we could not
lay on the German people the obligation to fight Russia for the future
of Bagdad.”[23] In 1890, however, Prince Bismarck was dismissed, and
the chief obstacle to the Emperor’s Turkish policy was removed.
During the succeeding decade the German diplomatic and consular
representatives in the Ottoman Empire rendered yeoman service in
furthering investment, trade, and commerce by Germans in the Near
East. It became proverbial among foreign business men in Turkey that
no service was too menial, no request too exacting, to receive the
courteous and efficient attention of the German governmental services.
German consular officers were held up as models for others to pattern
themselves after. The British Consul General at Constantinople, for
example, informed British business men that his staff was at their
disposal for any service designed to expedite British trade and
investments in Turkey. “If,” he wrote, “any merchant should come to
this consulate and say, ‘The German consulate gives such and such
assistance to German traders, do the same for me,’ his suggestion would
be welcomed and, if possible, acted on at once.”[24]
A judicious appointment served to reinforce the already strong position
of the Germans in Turkey. In 1897 Baron von Wangenheim was replaced
as ambassador to Constantinople by Baron Marschall von Bieberstein
(1842–1912), a former Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Baron
Marschall was one of the most capable of German bureaucrats. The
Kaiser was glad to have him at Constantinople because his training
and experience made him an admirable person for developing imperial
interests there; his political opponents considered his appointment to
the Sublime Porte a convenient method of removing him from domestic
politics. The new ambassador’s political views were well known: he
was a frank believer in a world-policy for Germany; he was an ardent
supporter of colonialism, if not of Pan-Germanism; he was a bitter
opponent of Great Britain; he espoused the cause of a strong political
and economic alliance between the German and Ottoman Empires. What
Baron Marschall did he did well. Occupying what appeared, at first, to
be an obscure post, he became the foremost of the Kaiser’s diplomatists
and for fifteen years lent his powerful personality and his practical
experience to the furthering of German enterprise in Turkey.[25]
In 1898 William II made his second pilgrimage to the Land of Promise.
Every detail of this trip was arranged with an eye to the theatrical:
the enthusiastic reception at Constantinople; the “personally
conducted” Cook’s tour to the Holy Land; the triumphal entry into the
Holy City through a breach in the walls made by the infidel Turk; the
dedication of a Lutheran Church at Jerusalem; the hoisting of the
imperial standard on Mount Zion; the gift of hallowed land to the
Roman Catholic Church; the visit to the grave of Saladin at Damascus
and the speech by which the Mohammedans of the world were assured
of the eternal friendship of the German Emperor.[26] The dramatic
aspects of the royal visit were not sufficient, however, to obscure its
practical purpose. It was generally supposed in western Europe that the
Kaiser’s trip to Turkey was closely connected with the application of
the Anatolian Railways for the proposed Bagdad Railway concessions.[27]
But little objection was raised by the British and French press. Paris
laughed at the obvious absurdity of a Cook’s tour for a crowned head
and his entourage; London took comfort in the discomfiture which the
incident would cause Russia. But there was no talk then of a great
Teutonic conspiracy to spread a “net” from Hamburg to the Persian
Gulf.[28]
The true significance of this royal pilgrimage of 1898 cannot be
appreciated without some reference to its background of contemporary
events. For the preceding four years the Ottoman Government had
permitted, if not actually incited, a series of ruthless massacres
of Christians in Macedonia and Armenia. European public opinion was
unanimous in condemnation of the intolerance, brutality, and corruption
of Abdul Hamid’s régime; the very name of the “Red Sultan” was
anathema. Under these circumstances any demonstration of friendship
and respect for the Turkish sovereign would be considered flagrant
flaunting of public morality.[29] By Abdul Hamid, on the other hand, it
would be welcomed as needed support in time of trouble. With the Kaiser
the exigencies of practical politics triumphed!
It was appropriate, furthermore, that the year 1898 should be marked
by some definite step forward in German imperialist progress in
Turkey, for during that year notable advances had been made by German
imperialism in other fields. On March 5 there was forcibly wrung from
China a century-long lease of Kiao-chau and of certain privileges in
the Shantung Peninsula, thus assuring to German enterprise a prominent
position in the Far East. Two weeks later was passed the great German
naval law of 1898, laying the foundation of a fleet that later was to
challenge British supremacy of the seas. German diplomacy had developed
interests in eastern Asia; it was developing interests on the seas
and in western Asia; it had abandoned a purely Continental policy. No
further signs were needed that a new era was dawning in German foreign
affairs—unless, perhaps, it be mentioned that the great Prince Bismarck
quietly passed away at Friedrichsruh on July 30 of that momentous year!
GERMAN ECONOMIC INTERESTS MAKE FOR NEAR EASTERN IMPERIALISM
Bismarck’s policy of aloofness in the Near East, however desirable
it may have been from the political point of view, could not have
appealed to those statesmen and soldiers and business men who believed
that diplomatic policies should be determined in large part by the
economic situation of the German Empire. The interest of William II
in Turkey was enthusiastically supported by all those who sought to
have German foreign affairs conducted with full recognition of the
needs of industrialized Germany in raw materials and foodstuffs, of
the importance of richer and more numerous foreign markets for the
products of German factories, and of the exigencies of economic, as
well as military, preparation for war. The great natural wealth of
the Ottoman Empire in valuable raw materials, the possibilities of
developing the Near East as a market for manufactured articles, and the
geographical situation of Turkey all help to explain why the economic
exploitation of the Sultan’s dominions was a matter of more vital
concern to Germany than to any other European power. To make this clear
it will be necessary to digress, for a time, to consider the nature of
the imperial problems of an industrial state and, in particular, the
problems of industrial Germany.
Under modern conditions the needs of an industrial state are imperious.
Such a state is dependent for its very existence upon an uninterrupted
supply of foodstuffs for the workers of its cities and of raw materials
for the machines of its factories. As its population increases—unless
it be one of those few fortunate nations which, like the United
States, are practically self-sufficient—its importations of foodstuffs
mount higher and higher. As its industries expand, the demand for
raw materials becomes greater and more diversified—cotton, rubber,
copper, nitrates, petroleum come to be considered the very life-blood
of the nation’s industry. It is considered one of the functions of the
government of an industrial state—whether that government be autocratic
and dynastic or representative and democratic—to interest itself in
securing and conserving sources of these essential commodities, as
well as to defend and maintain the routes of communication by which
they are transported to the domestic market. The securing of sources
of raw materials may involve the acquisition of a colonial empire; it
may require the establishment of a protectorate over, or a “sphere
of interest” in, an economically backward or a politically weak
nation; or it may necessitate nothing more than the maintenance of
friendly relations with other states. Protection of vital routes of
communication may demand the construction of a fleet of battleships;
it may be the _raison d’être_ for a large standing army; it may
necessitate only diplomatic support of capitalists in their foreign
investments. Methods will be dictated by circumstances, but the impulse
usually is the same.[30]
The German Empire was an industrial state, and its needs were
imperious. In the face of a rapidly increasing population the nation
became more and more dependent upon importations of foreign foodstuffs.
Herculean efforts were made to keep agricultural production abreast of
the domestic demand for grain: transient laborers were imported from
Russia and Italy to replace those German peasants who had migrated to
the industrial cities; machinery was introduced and scientific methods
were applied; high protective tariffs were imposed upon imported
foodstuffs to stimulate production within the empire. These measures,
however, were insufficient to meet the situation; the greatest
intensive development of the agricultural resources of the nation could
not forestall the necessity of feeding some ten millions of Germans on
foreign grain.[31]
German manufacturers, as well, were unable to obtain from domestic
sources the necessary raw materials for their industrial plants. Many
essential commodities were not produced at all in Germany and in only
insignificant quantities in the colonies. Some German industries were
almost wholly dependent upon foreign sources of supply for their
raw materials. The most striking example of this was the textile
manufactures, which had to obtain from abroad more than nine tenths
of their raw cotton, jute, silk, and similar essential supplies.[32]
Interruption of the flow of these or other indispensable goods would
have brought upon German industrial centers the same paralysis which
afflicted the British cotton manufactures during the American Civil War.
The German Empire had to pay for its imported foodstuffs and raw
materials with the products of its mines and factories, with the
services of its citizens and its ships, with the use of its surplus
funds, or capital.[33] The development of a German export trade was the
natural outcome of the development of German industry. And as German
industries expanded, the demand for imported raw materials increased,
thus rendering more necessary the extension of the export trade. The
German industrial revolution of the late nineteenth century was at once
the cause and the effect of the growing dependence of German economic
prosperity upon foreign markets.[34]
But foreign commerce is not concerned with the sale of manufactured
articles only. In its export trade, German industry was closely allied
with German shipping and German finance. The services rendered German
trade by the German merchant marine need not be reiterated; they
are sufficiently well known. The relationship between the policies
of German industry and the policies of German finance was no less
important. The export of goods by German factories was supplemented by
the so-called “export of capital” by German banks. Sometimes the German
trader followed the German investor; sometimes the investor followed
the trader. But whichever the order, the services rendered by the
investor were to develop the purchasing power and the prosperity of the
market, as well as to oil the mechanism of international exchange.[35]
The industrial export policy and the financial export policy went hand
in hand. Certainly this was the case in the Near East.
The German Empire depended for its welfare, if not for its existence,
upon an uninterrupted supply of food for its workers and of raw
materials for its machines. But this supply, in turn, was conditional
upon the maintenance and development of a thriving export trade. The
allies of this export trade were a great merchant marine and a vigorous
policy of international finance and investment. Thus the nation which
in 1871 was economically almost self-sufficient, by 1900 had extended
its interests to the four corners of the earth. This could not have
been without its effects upon German international policy. “The
strength of the nation,” said Prince von Bülow, “rejuvenated by the
political reorganization, as it grew, burst the bounds of its old home,
and its policy was dictated by new interests and needs. In proportion
as our national life has become international, the policy of the
German Empire has become international.... Industry, commerce, and the
shipping trade have transformed the old industrial life of Germany into
one of international industry, and this has also carried the Empire in
political matters beyond the limits which Prince Bismarck set to German
statecraft.”[36]
From the German point of view, the call to German imperialism was
clearly urgent, but the resources of German imperialism were seriously
limited. The colonial ventures of the Empire had culminated in no
outstanding successes and in some outstanding failures. Entering the
lists late, the Germans had found the spoils of colonial rivalry
almost completely appropriated by those other knights errant of white
civilization, French, British, and Russian empire-builders. The
few African and Asiatic territories which the Germans did succeed
in acquiring were extensive in size, but unpromising in many other
respects. With the exception of German East Africa the colonies were
comparatively poor in the valuable raw materials so much desired
by the factories of the mother country; they were unimportant as
producers of foodstuffs. Attempts to induce Germans to settle in these
overseas possessions were singularly unsuccessful. On the other hand,
colonial enterprises had involved the empire in enormous expenditures
aggregating over a billion marks; had precipitated a series of wars
and military expeditions costing the nation thousands of lives and
creating a host of international misunderstandings; had won for Germans
widespread notoriety as poor colonizers, as tactless and autocratic
officials, as ruthless overlords of the natives. It was no wonder that
the German people seemed to be thoroughly discouraged and discontented
with their colonial ventures.
However, even had the German colonies been richer than they were, they,
alone, could not have solved the imperial problem of an industrialized
Germany. German colonial trade was possessed of the same inherent
weakness as German overseas commerce—it would be dependent, in the
event of a general European war, upon British sea power. German
industry could be effectually crippled by interruption of the flow of
essential raw materials, such as cotton and copper, or by the cutting
of communications with her foreign markets. It was questionable whether
the German navy could be relied upon to keep the seas open.
Blockades, furthermore, exist not only in time of war, but in time of
peace as well. European nations were surrounded by tariff barriers
which seriously restricted the development of international trade
and served to promote a system of national economic exclusiveness—a
condition of affairs which harmonized only too well with the existing
colossal military establishments. In this respect, of course, Germany
was more sinner than sinned against. But in such an age it behooved
every nation to build its industries, as well as its armies, with some
view to the contingencies of war.
German statesmen and economists were by no means backward in
understanding the situation. Although they had no disposition to
overlook the development of the merchant marine and the navy, they
believed this was not enough. They sought to build up in Central Europe
a system of economic alliances, as they previously had effected a
formidable military alliance. Thus might Germany and her allies become
an economically self-sufficient unit, freed from dependence upon
British sea power.[37] And into this alliance could be incorporated
the Near East!
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.
[8] _Actes de la concession du chemin de fer Eski Shehr-Konia_
(Constantinople, 1893); _Report of the Anatolian Railway Company_,
1896, pp. 4, 9.
[9] _Corps de droit ottoman_, Volume IV, pp. 191–197. The junction of
the two systems at Afiun Karahissar did not immediately materialize.
The distance from that town to Constantinople is longer by sixty-six
kilometres than the distance to Smyrna; the latter port, therefore, is
the better natural outlet for the products of Anatolia. This diversion
of traffic to Smyrna the Anatolia Railway sought to avoid, it is
said, by granting discriminatory rates in favor of through freight
to Constantinople over its own lines. A rate war ensued between the
Anatolian and Smyrna-Cassaba systems, and neither was willing to permit
an actual joining of the tracks at Afiun Karahissar, with the result
that for years the rails of the two roads lay a comparatively few yards
apart. This absurd situation, so obviously detrimental to the interests
of the two roads, was remedied by an agreement of 1899. _Infra_, pp.
59–60. _Cf._, also R. LeCoq, _Un chemin de fer en Asie Mineure_ (Paris,
1907), pp. 23–24; _Report of the Anatolian Railway Company_, 1899, p. 3.
[10] A summary of the report of the Commission is to be found in
_Diplomatic and Consular Reports_, No. 3140 (London, 1903), pp. 26
_et seq._ A statement of its membership and purposes is given in the
_Report of the Anatolian Railway Company_, 1899, p. 9.
[11] _Report of the Anatolian Railway Company_, 1897, p. 3.
[12] _Alldeutsche Blätter_, December 17, 1899. It should be borne in
mind, however, that until the Bagdad Railway concession was granted
French financiers held the lead in the number of kilometres of railway
in operation or contracted for. The situation in 1898 was as follows:
_British_ Kiloms. Smyrna-Aidin 373 Mersina-Adana 67 —- Total 440
_French_ Kiloms. Smyrna-Cassaba 512 Jaffa-Jerusalem 87 Beirut-Damascus
247 Damascus-Aleppo 420 ——- Total 1,266
_German_ Kiloms. Haidar Pasha-Ismid 91 Ismid-Angora 485 Eski
Shehr-Konia 444 ——- Total 1,020
All of the British and German lines were in operation in 1898, whereas
the French Syrian Railways were only partially completed.
[13] _Statistisches Handbuch für das deutsche Reich_, Volume 2, pp.
506, 510; _Diplomatic and Consular Reports_, No. 2950 (1902), pp. 5,
23; _Turkey in Europe_, No. 16 of the Foreign Office Handbooks, pp.
86–87.
[14] J. Riesser, _Die deutschen Grossbanken und ihre Konzentration im
Zusammenhang mit der Entwicklung der Gesamtwirtschaft in Deutschland_
(third edition, Jena, 1909); translated into English and published as
Senate Document No. 593, Sixty-first Congress, Second Session, 1911.
References here given are to the translation. In this connection _cf._
“The Oversea and Foreign Business of the German Credit Banks,” pp. 420
_et seq._
[15] _Syria and Palestine_, p. 126; _The Times_, October 28, 1898,
August 2 and 16, 1899.
[16] Karl Helfferich, _Die deutsche Türkenpolitik_ (Berlin, 1921), pp.
10 _et seq._; J. A. R. Marriot, _The Eastern Question_ (Oxford, 1917),
pp. 347 _et seq._
[17] L. Ostrorog, _The Turkish Problem_ (London, 1919), pp. 52–53; E.
Dutemple, _En Turquie d’Asie_ (Paris, 1883), pp. 131 _et seq._
[18] For a biographical account of General von der Goltz (1843–1916)
_cf._ F. W. Wile, _Men Around the Kaiser_ (Philadelphia, 1913),
Chapter XXVI. Bismarck consented to the appointment of von der Goltz’s
military mission—which was not in accord with his general Eastern
policy—as a sort of insurance against the possibility that chauvinism,
Pan-Slavism, and anti-German elements in Russia should gain the
ascendancy at the court of the Tsar. In such an event it might be
possible to utilize Turkish bayonets and Turkish artillery, especially
if they had been trained by Prussian officers. _Memoirs of Prince
Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst_ (English translation, New York, 1906),
Volume II, p. 268.
[19] _Recueil d’actes internationaux de l’Empire Ottoman_, Volume IV
(1903), Document No. 960.
[20] Mary E. Townsend, _Origins of Modern German Colonialism_ (New
York, 1921), Chapters V-VII; Prince Bismarck, _Reflections and
Reminiscences_ (New York, 1899), Volume II, pp. 233 _et seq._
[21] For this letter, hitherto unpublished, I am indebted to Dr. Karl
Helfferich, son-in-law of the late George von Siemens.
[22] The italics are mine.
[23] _Die grosse Politik der europäischen Kabinette, 1871–1914_
(Berlin, 1922 _et seq._), Volume VI, pp. 360–361. (A compilation
of documents from the files of the Foreign Office, edited by a
non-partisan commission appointed by the Government of the German
Republic.) Of Bismarck’s policy in the Near East the Ex-Kaiser writes,
“Bismarck spoke quite disdainfully of Turkey, of the men in high
position there, and of conditions in that land.– I thought I might
inspire him in part with essentially more favorable opinions, but my
efforts were of little avail.... Prince Bismarck was never favorably
inclined toward Turkey and never agreed with me in my Turkish policy.”
W. von Hohenzollern, _My Memoirs, 1878–1918_ (New York, 1922), p. 27.
[24] _Diplomatic and Consular Reports_, No. 2950 (1902), p. 20.
[25] For information regarding the appointment of Baron Marschall to
Constantinople the author is indebted to Dr. Arthur von Gwinner, who
believes that the Baron was being sentenced to political exile when he
was detailed to the Sublime Porte, but that his opponents overlooked
the possibilities of the embassy at the Ottoman capital. Wile, _op.
cit._, Chapter XVIII, gives a short biographical account of Baron
Marschall.
[26] _Cf._ E. Lamy, “La France du Levant: Voyage de l’Empereur
Guillaume II,” in _Revue des deux mondes_, Volume 150 (1898), pp.
880–911, Volume 151 (1899), pp. 315–348; E. Lewin, _The German Road
to the East_ (New York, 1917), pp. 105 _et seq._; C. S. Hurgronje,
_The Holy War, Made in Germany_ (New York, 1915), pp. 70–71; _The All
Highest Goes to Jerusalem_, being an English translation of a series of
articles published in _Le Rire_ (Paris) during 1898 (New York, 1917).
In Germany the royal pilgrimage was intended to be taken seriously.
Herr Heine, of the Munich _Simplicissimus_, was convicted of _lèse
majesté_ and imprisoned for six months for having published humorous
cartoons of the Kaiser and his party on their travels. _The Annual
Register_, 1898, pp. 255–258.
[27] The author found some difference of opinion in Germany regarding
the connection between the Kaiser’s visit and the pending Anatolian
and Bagdad concessions. Dr. von Gwinner denies that there was any such
purpose behind the Emperor’s trip to the East—or, at least, if there
was, that it was unsolicited by the promoters and not looked upon with
favor by them. Dr. Helfferich, on the other hand, is convinced that
His Majesty was directly concerned with the desirability of obtaining
additional railway concessions for German financiers. The Kaiser
himself agrees with Dr. Helfferich. _Cf._, _My Memoirs, 1878–1918_, p.
86.
[28] _Cf._ foreign correspondence in _The Times_ (London), October 25,
1898, and days immediately thereafter.
[29] For an analysis of this situation see _The Manchester Guardian_,
July 31, 1899, which took the stand that “for no sort of mercantile
gain would a nation be justified in making friendly advances to the
blood-stained tyrant of Armenia.”
[30] In this connection see Leonard Woolf, _Economic Imperialism_
(London and New York, 1920), Chapter I; Ramsay Muir, _The Expansion of
Europe_ (New York, 1917), Chapter I; J. E. Spurr (editor), _Political
and Commercial Geology_ (New York, 1920), Chapter XXXII, entitled
“Who Owns the Earth?”; Aspi-Fleurimont, “La Question du coton,”
in _Questions diplomatiques et coloniales_, Volume 15 (1903), pp.
429–432; J. A. B. Scherer, _Cotton as a World Power_ (New York, 1922).
In addition, for the wider aspects of imperialism, consult H. N.
Brailsford, _The War of Steel and Gold_ (New edition, London, 1915),
Chapter II; F. C. Howe, _Why War?_ (New York, 1916), _passim_; Walter
Lippman, _The Stakes of Diplomacy_ (New York, 1915); J. A. Hobson,
_Imperialism: A Study_ (London, 1902).
[31] W. H. Dawson, _The Evolution of Modern Germany_ (New York, 1908),
Chapter XII. P. Rohrbach, _Deutschland unter den Weltvölkern_, p. 17.
[32] Riesser, _op. cit._, pp. 110, 121.
[33] It should be remarked here that the author is not unaware of the
fallacy of speaking of “German trade” and “German industry.” He is
cognizant of the fact that trade takes place not between countries, but
between individuals. If he anthropomorphizes the German Empire for the
purposes of this description, it is not because of either ignorance or
malice, but for convenience.
[34] For further consideration of German economic progress during the
late nineteenth century see: Dawson, _op. cit._, Chapters III, IV,
XII, XVI; E. D. Howard, _The Cause and Extent of the Recent Industrial
Progress of Germany_ (New York, 1907); T. B. Veblen, _Imperial Germany
and the Industrial Revolution_ (New York, 1915); W. H. Dawson,
_Industrial Germany_ (London, 1913); Karl Helfferich, _Germany’s
Economic Progress and National Wealth_ (New York, 1913); G. Blondel,
_L’Essor industriel et commercial du peuple allemand_ (Paris, 1900).
[35] Paul Dehn, _Weltwirtschaftliche Neubildungen_ (Berlin, 1904),
_passim_.
[36] Bernhard von Bülow, _Imperial Germany_ (English translation, New
York, 1914), pp. 17, 18–20.
[37] The extent of German economic control of central and eastern
Europe before the War is indicated by Mr. J. M. Keynes, in his book
_The Economic Consequences of the Peace_ (New York, 1920), pp. 17–18:
“Germany not only furnished these countries with trade, but in the case
of some of them supplied a great part of the capital needed for their
own development. Of Germany’s pre-war foreign investments, amounting
in all to about six and a half billion dollars, not far short of two
and a half billions was invested in Russia, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria,
Rumania, and Turkey. And by the system of ‘peaceful penetration’ she
gave these countries not only capital, but what they needed hardly
less, organization. The whole of Europe east of the Rhine thus fell
into the German industrial orbit, and its economic life was adjusted
accordingly.” A frank German admission of a policy of a self-sufficient
Central Europe is the work of Friedrich Naumann, _Mittel-Europa_,
translated into English by C. M. Meredith and published under the title
_Central Europe_ (New York, 1917). See, especially, Chapters IV-VII.
_Cf._, also, Ernst zu Reventlow, _Deutschlands auswärtige Politik_ (3rd
revised edition, Berlin, 1916), pp. 336 _et seq._; K. H. Müller, _Die
Bedeutung der Bagdadbahn_ (Hamburg, 1916), p. 29.
[38] Paul Rohrbach, _Die Bagdadbahn_ (Berlin, 1903), p. 16.
[39] H. A. Gibbons, _The Reconstruction of Poland and the Near East_
(New York, 1917), pp. 57–58. The author is not in agreement with either
Dr. Rohrbach or Dr. Gibbons. He certainly would hesitate to call any
imperialist policy “inevitable.”
[40] _Die deutsche Türkenpolitik_, p. 8.
CHAPTER IV
THE SULTAN MORTGAGES HIS EMPIRE
THE GERMANS OVERCOME COMPETITION
During 1898 and 1899 the Ottoman Ministry of Public Works received
many applications for permission to construct a railway to Bagdad.
Whatever may have been thought later of the financial prospects of
the Bagdad Railway there was no scarcity then of promoters who were
willing and anxious to undertake its construction. It was not because
of lack of competition that the _Deutsche Bank_ finally was awarded the
all-important concession.
In 1898, for example, an Austro-Russian syndicate proposed the building
of a railway from Tripoli-in-Syria to an unspecified port on the
Persian Gulf, with branches to Bagdad and Khanikin. The sponsor of
the project was Count Vladimir I. Kapnist, a brother of the Russian
ambassador at Vienna and an influential person at the Tsar’s court.
Count Kapnist had the support of Pobêdonostsev, the famous Procurator
of the Holy Synod, who was an avowed Pan-Slavist and an enthusiastic
promoter of Russian colonization in Asia Minor.[1] The Sultan
instructed his Minister of Public Works to study the Kapnist plan and
submit a report. The Austro-Russian syndicate, however, made no further
progress at Constantinople. The Sublime Porte obviously was opposed
to any expansion of Russian influence in Turkey—a point of view which
received the encouragement of the British and German ambassadors.
Furthermore, in Russia itself there was opposition to Count Kapnist’s
project. Count Witte, Imperial Minister of Finance, and foremost
political opponent of Pobêdonostsev, emphasized the strategic menace
to Russia of improved railway transportation in Turkey and sturdily
maintained that Russian capital and technical skill should be kept
at home for the development of Russian railways and industry. By the
spring of 1899 the Kapnist plan had been shelved.[2]
In the meantime French bankers had become interested in the
possibilities of constructing a railway from the Mediterranean to the
Persian Gulf, utilizing the existing railways in Syria as the nucleus
of an elaborate system. Their spokesman was M. Cotard, an engineer on
the staff of the Smyrna-Cassaba Railway. This project was possessed
of such strong financial and political support at Constantinople that
the _Deutsche Bank_ considered it best to negotiate for a merger with
the French interests involved.[3] Accordingly conversations were held
at Berlin early in 1899 between the _Deutsche Bank_ and the Anatolian
Railway Company, on the one hand, and the Imperial Ottoman Bank and
the Smyrna-Cassaba Railway, representing French interests, on the
other. The result was an important agreement of May 6, 1899, the chief
provisions of which were as follows:[4]
1. The _Deutsche Bank_ admitted the Imperial Ottoman Bank to
participation in the proposed Bagdad Railway Company. German and
French bankers were to be equally represented in ownership and
control, each to be assigned 40% of the capital stock, the remaining
20% to be offered to Turkish investors. If British, or other capital
were subsequently interested in the Company, the share of the new
participants was to be taken from the German and French holdings in
equal proportions.
2. A _modus vivendi_ was arrived at between the Anatolian and
Smyrna-Cassaba Railways. The prevailing rate-war was to be stopped; a
joint commission was to be appointed to agree upon a uniform tariff
for the two companies; a junction of the two lines was to be effected
and maintained at Afiun Karahissar for reciprocal through traffic.
3. In order to assure the faithful execution of the agreement between
the Anatolian and Cassaba railways, each of the companies was to
designate two of its directors to sit on the board of the other.[5]
4. French proposals for the construction of a Euphrates Valley railway
were to be withdrawn.
5. The French and German bankers were to use their best offices with
their respective governments to secure united diplomatic support for
the claims of the _Deutsche Bank_ to prior consideration in the award
of the Bagdad Railway concession.
This agreement temporarily removed all French opposition to the
Bagdad Railway. M. Constans, the French ambassador at Constantinople,
joined Baron Marschall von Bieberstein in cordial support of the new
“Franco-German syndicate.”[6]
Competition had arisen, however, from a third source. During the
summer of 1899 British bankers, represented in Constantinople by Mr.
E. Rechnitzer, petitioned for the right to construct a railway from
Alexandretta to Bagdad and the Persian Gulf. The terms offered by the
British financiers were considered more liberal than any heretofore
proposed,[7] and they were endorsed by the Ministry of Public Works.
Mr. Rechnitzer enlisted the aid of Mahmoud Pasha, a brother-in-law of
the Sultan. He secured the assistance of Sir Nicholas O’Connor, the
British ambassador. He attended to the niceties of Oriental business
by sending the Sultan and his aids costly presents.[8] He engineered
an effective press campaign in Great Britain to arouse interest
in his project. Just how much success Mr. Rechnitzer’s plan might
have achieved on its own merits is an open question. It definitely
collapsed, however, in October, 1899, when the outbreak of the Boer
War diverted British attention and energies from the Near East to
South Africa.[9] It was under these circumstances that the Sultan, on
November 27, 1899, announced his decision to award to the _Deutsche
Bank_ the concession for a railway from Konia to Bagdad and the Persian
Gulf.[10]
The success of the Germans was not unexpected. They had a strong claim
to the concession, for, in 1888 and again in 1893, the Sultan had
assured the Anatolian Railway Company that it should have priority in
the construction of any railway to Bagdad. On the strength of that
assurance, the Anatolian Company had conducted expensive surveys of
the proposed line.[11] After a short period of sharp competition for
the concession in 1899, the _Deutsche Bank_ group was left in sole
possession of the field—the Russian promoters had withdrawn because
of lack of support at home; the French financiers had accepted a
share in the German company in preference to sole responsibility for
the enterprise; the British proposals had lost support when the Boer
difficulty temporarily obscured all other issues. The diplomatic
situation, furthermore, was distinctly favorable to the German claims.
The Fashoda Affair and the serious Anglo-Russian rivalry in the Middle
East had served to put Russia, France, and Great Britain at sixes and
sevens, leaving Germans practically a free hand in the development of
their interests in Asia Minor.
Aside from these purely temporary advantages, however, there were
excellent reasons, from the Ottoman point of view, for awarding the
Bagdad Railway concessions to the German Anatolian Railway Company. The
usual explanations—that the soft, sweet-sounding flattery of William
II overcame the shrewdness of Abdul Hamid; that Baron Marschall von
Bieberstein dominated the entire diplomatic situation at the Porte;
that the German military mission exerted a powerful influence in
the final result—are more obvious than convincing. These were all
contributing factors in the success of the Germans, but they were not
determining factors. The reasons for the award of the concession to
the _Deutsche Bank_ were partly economic, partly strategic, partly
political.
The Germans alone submitted proposals which met the demands of the
Public Debt Administration and the Ottoman Government. They proposed to
extend the existing Anatolian Railway from Konia, across the mountains
into Cilicia and Syria, down the valley of the Tigris to Bagdad and
Basra and the Persian Gulf. The railway which they had in mind would
reach from one end of Asiatic Turkey to the other; in connection with
the railways of southern Anatolia and of Syria, it would provide
continuous railway communication between Constantinople and Smyrna in
the north and west, with Aleppo, Damascus, Beirut, Mecca, and Mosul
in the south and east. There were serious technical and financial
difficulties in the construction of such a railway, it is true, but
there were political and economic considerations which warranted the
expenditure of whatever effort and funds might be necessary to carry
the line to completion.
On the other hand, the groups other than the Germans proposed the
construction of a trans-Mesopotamian railway which did not come up
to specifications. They submitted plans calling for the building
of a line from some Mediterranean port—such as Alexandretta or
Tripoli-in-Syria—down the Euphrates valley to the Persian Gulf.[12]
Such a line would have had obvious advantages, from the point of view
of the concessionaires, over the projected German railway. The cost of
construction would have been materially less, for it would have been
unnecessary to build the costly sections across the Taurus and Amanus
mountains. The prospects of immediate earning power were better, for
the railway would have been able to take over some of the caravan
trade from Arabia to the Syrian coast and from Mesopotamia to Aleppo.
From the Ottoman point of view, however, the proposal was altogether
unsatisfactory. The railway would have developed the southern provinces
of the empire without connecting them with Anatolia, the homeland of
the Turks themselves and the heart of the Sultan’s dominions. It might
have promoted a separatist movement among the Arabs. Its termini on the
Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf could have been controlled by the
guns of a foreign fleet. From every standpoint—economic, political,
strategic—the acceptance of such a proposal was out of the question.
Even had all other things been equal, it is probable that the
German bankers would have been given preference in the award of the
concession. The Turkish Government was determined that the Anatolian
lines should be made the nucleus of the proposed railway system for
the empire. That being the case, no purpose, other than the promotion
of confusion, would have been served by awarding the Bagdad plum to
interests other than those which controlled the Anatolian Railway
Company. This reasoning was fortified by the fact that the Company had
made an enviable record in its dealings with the Ottoman Ministry of
Public Works. The existing lines were well constructed and were being
operated in a manner entirely satisfactory to the Ottoman Government
and to the peasantry and business men of Anatolia. And M. Huguenin,
Assistant General Manager of the Anatolian system, announced that
his Company would observe a similar policy in the construction and
operation of the proposed Bagdad Railway. “We are determined,” he said,
“to build a model line such as exists nowhere in Turkey, able in all
respects to undertake efficiently an international service involving
high speeds over the whole line.”[13]
From the political point of view, too, there were reasons for giving
preference to German capitalists. Abdul Hamid was seeking moral and
material assistance for the promotion of his favorite doctrine of
Pan-Islamism. He sought to foster this movement, which looked toward
the unification of Islamic communities for resistance to Christian
European domination over the Moslem world. As Caliph of the Mohammedan
world, Abdul Hamid placed himself at the head of those defenders of the
faith who had been propagating the idea that Mussulmans everywhere must
resist further Christian encroachment and aggression, be it political,
economic, religious, cultural. That the Sultan’s primary motives were
religious is doubtful. Apparently he believed that the Pan-Islamic
movement could be utilized to the greater glory of his dynasty and his
empire. As the tsars of Russia had utilized their position as head of
the Orthodox Church for the purpose of strengthening the power of the
autocracy, so Abdul Hamid proposed to exploit his position as Caliph
for purposes of personal and dynastic aggrandizement.[14]
In awarding the Bagdad Railway concession, which was of such
considerable economic and political importance, it was essential
to choose the nationals of a power which would be sympathetic
toward Pan-Islamism. Would it be Russia, whose tsars had set fires
in Afghanistan, sought to destroy the independence of Persia, and
threatened all of the Middle East? Would it be Great Britain, whose
professional imperialists were holding in subjection more than sixty
million Mohammedans in India alone? Would it be France, whose soldiers
controlled the destinies of millions of Mussulmans in Algeria and
Tunis? These nations could have no feeling for Pan-Islamism other than
fear and hatred,[15] for it threatened their dominion over their Moslem
colonies. Germany, however, had everything to gain and nothing to
lose in lending support to Abdul Hamid’s Pan-Islamic program. She had
practically no Mohammedan subjects and therefore had no reason to fear
Moslem discontent. She had imperial interests which might be served by
the revolt of Islam against Christian domination.[16]
Turkish patriots, as well as Moslem fanatics, would have preferred
to see Germans favored in the award of economic concessions in the
Ottoman Empire. The Germans came to Turkey with clean hands. Their
Government had never despoiled the Ottoman Empire of territory and
appeared to have no interests which could not be as well served by
the strengthening of Turkey as by its destruction. On the other hand,
Russia, traditional enemy of the Turks, sought, as the keystone of her
foreign policy, to acquire Constantinople and the Straits. France, by
virtue of her protectorate over Catholics in the lands of the Sultan,
sought to maintain special privileges for herself in Syria and the Holy
Land. Great Britain held Egypt, a nominal Turkish dependency, and was
fomenting trouble for the Sultan in the region of the Persian Gulf.[17]
Germany, it appeared, was the only sincere and disinterested friend of
the Ottoman Empire!
The rising prestige of Germany in the Near East and the rapid expansion
of German economic interests in Turkey, however, did not, during these
crucial years of 1898–1900, arouse the fear or the cupidity of other
European powers. Russia, it is true, objected for strategic reasons to
the construction of the proposed Bagdad Railway _via_ the so-called
“northern” or trans-Armenian route from Angora. But when the Tsar
was assured by the Black Sea Basin Agreement that a southern route
from Konia would be substituted, M. Zinoviev, the Russian minister
at Constantinople, withdrew his formal diplomatic protest.[18] The
French Government adopted a policy of benevolent neutrality toward the
claims of the _Deutsche Bank_ for the concession, on the ground that
the Imperial Ottoman Bank, representing powerful financial interests
in Paris, was to be given a substantial participation in the proposed
Bagdad Railway Company. The pact of May 6, 1899, between the German and
French promoters satisfied even M. Delcassé![19]
In Great Britain, likewise, there was the friendliest feeling toward
the German proposals. When the Kaiser made his second visit to the Near
East in 1898 the London _Times_ said: “In this country we can have
nothing but good wishes for the success of the Emperor’s journey and
for any plans of German commercial expansion which may be connected
with it. Some of us may perhaps be tempted to regret lost opportunities
for our own influence and our own trade in the Ottoman dominions. But
we can honestly say that if we were not to have these good things for
ourselves, there are no hands we would rather see them in than in
German hands.”[20] _The Morning Post_ of August 24, 1899, expressed the
hope that no rivalry over the Bagdad Railway would prejudice the good
relations between Great Britain and Germany. “So long as there is an
efficient railway from Haidar Pasha to Bagdad, and so long as the door
there is open, it should not really matter who makes the tunnels or
pays the porters. If it should be necessary to insist on an open door,
the Foreign Office will probably see to it; while if it should happen
to be, as usual, asleep, there are always means of poking it up. As a
matter of general politics it may not be at all a bad thing to give
Germany a strong reason for defending the integrity of Turkey and for
resisting aggression on Asia Minor from the North.”
Sympathetic consideration of German expansion in the Near East was
not confined to the press. Cecil Rhodes, great apostle of British
imperialism, visited Germany in the spring of 1899 and came away from
Berlin favorably disposed toward the Bagdad Railway and none the less
pleased with the Kaiser’s apparent enthusiasm for the Cape-to-Cairo
plan. In November of the same year William II paid a royal visit
to England. It was then that Joseph Chamberlain, Secretary for the
Colonies, learned the details of German plans in the Ottoman Empire,
but, so far from being alarmed, he publicly announced his belief in
the desirability of an Anglo-German entente. The almost simultaneous
announcement of the award of the preliminary Bagdad Railway concession
met with a favorable reception from the British press.[21]
At the same time, however, less cordial sentiments were expressed
toward Russia and France. There was general agreement among the London
newspapers regarding at least one desirable feature of the Bagdad
Railway enterprise: the discomfiture it would be certain to cause
the Tsar in his imperial ambitions in the Near East. _The Globe_
characterized as “impudence” the desire of Russia to regard Asiatic
Turkey as “a second Manchuria.”[22] No love was being lost, either, on
France. _The Daily Mail_ of November 9, 1899, said: “The French have
succeeded in wholly convincing John Bull that they are his inveterate
enemies. England has long hesitated between France and Germany. But she
has always respected German character, while she has gradually come to
feel scorn for France. Nothing in the nature of an _entente cordiale_
can exist between England and her nearest neighbor. France has neither
courage nor political sense.”
THE BAGDAD RAILWAY CONCESSION IS GRANTED
It was almost three years after the Sultan’s preliminary announcement
of the Bagdad concession that the imperial decree was issued. During
the interval the German technical commission was completing its survey
of the line; details of the concession were being arranged between
Zihni Pasha, Minister of Public Works, and Dr. Kurt Zander, General
Manager of the Anatolian Railway Company; Dr. von Siemens was working
out plans for the financing of the enterprise. Finally, on March 18,
1902, an imperial _iradé_ of Abdul Hamid II definitely awarded the
Bagdad Railway concession to the Anatolian Railway Company.[23]
The Constantinople despatches announcing the Sultan’s award met with a
varied reception. In Germany, of course, there was general satisfaction
and, in some quarters, jubilation. The Kaiser telegraphed his personal
thanks to the Sultan. In Vienna, the semi-official _Fremdenblatt_
expressed the opinion that “the construction of the railway would be
an event of the greatest economic and political importance and would
materially strengthen Turkey’s power of resistance.”[24] M. Delcassé,
French Minister of Foreign Affairs, interpolated in the Chamber,
informed the Deputies that, whether one liked it or not, the convention
was a _fait accompli_ which France must accept, particularly because
French capitalists were associated with the German concessionaires in
the enterprise.[25] The Russian Government was silent at the time,
although two months before M. Witte had informed the press that he saw
no reason for granting financial assistance or diplomatic acquiescence
to a possible competitor of Russian trans-Asiatic railways.[26]
In England there was very little opposition, but much friendly
comment, on the German plans. Earl Percy expressed the hope that
Great Britain would do nothing to interfere with the construction
of the Bagdad Railway. “Germany,” he told the House of Commons, “is
doing for Turkey what we have been doing for Persia, for the social
improvement and material welfare of native races; and in the struggle
between the Slavonic policy of compelling stagnation and the Teutonic
policy of spreading the blessings and enlightenment of civilization,
the victory will lie with those nations which are striving, selfishly
or unselfishly, consciously or unconsciously, to fulfil the high aims
which Providence has entrusted to the imperial races of Christendom.”
Lord Cranborne, Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, announced that,
although the Government had every intention of maintaining the
_status quo_ in the Persian Gulf, it would not otherwise interfere
in the project for a German-owned trans-Mesopotamian railway. Lord
Lansdowne, Secretary for Foreign Affairs, informed the French and
German ambassadors at London that His Britannic Majesty’s Government
would not oppose the Bagdad enterprise, particularly if British capital
were invited to participate in its consummation.[27] This was taken as
a definite promise, for English financiers already had been asked to
take a share in the Bagdad Railway Company by purchase, _pro rata_, of
portions of the holdings of the German and French interests.[28]
Although there was a noticeable lack of unanimity in European
diplomatic circles, little or no reason existed in 1902 to believe
that any determined resistance would be made to the consummation
of the plans for the construction of the Bagdad Railway. The chief
difficulties of the concessionaires seemed to be not political, but
financial and administrative. The year 1902 was one of economic
depression; in Germany, in particular, industrial and financial
conditions were distinctly unfavorable for the flotation of a
large bond issue such as would be required to raise funds for the
construction of the Bagdad Railway. Certain of the minor provisions
of the convention of 1902, furthermore, were unsatisfactory to the
financiers of the project. The concession for the lines beyond Konia
had been granted to the Anatolian Railway Company without privilege of
assignment to any other corporation. This meant that any participation
of outside capital in the new Bagdad Railway would, of necessity,
involve participation in the profits of the Anatolian lines already in
operation—a prospect by no means pleasing to the original promoters.
Furthermore, there was some question as to the advisability of placing
under a single administrative head all of the line and branches from
Constantinople to the Gulf.[29]
It was because of these difficulties, financial and administrative,
that the _Deutsche Bank_ marked time until March 5, 1903, when a
revised Bagdad Railway convention was executed and plans were perfected
for the financing of the first section of the line. It is to this
Great Charter of the Berlin-to-Bagdad plan that we now must turn our
attention.[30]
The definitive convention of 1903 provided that the existing
Anatolian lines were to continue in the possession of their owners;
the construction and operation of the new railway beyond Konia was
to be vested—without right of cession, transfer, or assignment—in a
new corporation, the Bagdad Railway Company. This new company was
incorporated under Turkish law on March 5, 1903, with a capital stock
of fifteen million francs, of which the Anatolian Railway Company
subscribed ten per cent. Continued Turco-German control of the railway
enterprise was assured by a provision of the charter that of the eleven
members of the Board of Directors, three should be appointed by the
directors of the Anatolian Railway Company, and at least three others
should be Ottoman subjects.[31]
It was apparent that the Ottoman Government expected big things of
the German concessionaires and their French associates. The new
convention provided, first, for the construction of a great trunk line
from Konia, southeastern terminus of the existing Anatolian Railways,
to the Persian Gulf. This was to be the Bagdad Railway proper, but
the concession carried with it, also, the privilege of constructing
important branches in Syria and Mesopotamia. With all its proposed
tributary lines completed, the Railway would stretch from the Bosporus
to the Persian Gulf and from the Mediterranean to the frontiers of
Persia. Second, it was stipulated that the Anatolian Railway Company
should effect any necessary improvements on its lines to make possible
the early initiation of a weekly express service between Constantinople
and Aleppo and the operation of fortnightly express trains to Bagdad
and the Persian Gulf as soon as the lines should be completed. The
Anatolian concessions were extended for a period of ninety-nine
years from 1903 to make them coincident with the new concession. The
concessionaires were obliged to make all improvements and to complete
all new construction by 1911, it being understood, however, that this
time limit might be extended in the event of delays by the Government
in the execution of the financial arrangements or in the event of
_force majeure_—the latter specifically including, not only a European
war, but any radical change in the financial situation in Germany,
England, or France.[32]
THE LOCOMOTIVE IS TO SUPPLANT THE CAMEL
The Bagdad Railway was to revive the “central route” of medieval
trade—to traverse one of the world’s historic highways. It was to
bring back to Anatolia, Syria, and Mesopotamia some of the prosperity
and prestige which they had enjoyed before the explorations of
the Portuguese and Spaniards had opened the new sea routes to the
Indies.[33]
The starting point of the new railway was to be Konia. This town of
44,000 inhabitants, situated high in the Anatolian plateau, was a
landmark in the Near East. It was once the capital of the Seljuk Turks
and during its heyday had been a crossroads of the caravan routes of
Asia Minor. Along one of these old routes to the northwest ran the
Anatolian Railway, with which the Bagdad line was to be linked. From
Konia the new railway was to cross the Anatolian table-lands, at an
average altitude of 3500 feet, passing through the towns of Karaman
and Eregli. Just beyond the latter town are the foothills of the
Taurus, the first of the mountain barriers between Asia Minor and the
Mesopotamian valley. In crossing the Taurus range the railway was to
pass through the famous Cilician Gates, down the eastern slope into the
fertile Cilician plain. At Adana, center of the trade of this region,
a junction was to be effected with the existing railway to Mersina, a
small port on the Mediterranean.[34]
Formidable engineering difficulties faced the succeeding stretch of the
railway. Beyond Adana stood the second mountain barrier of the Amanus
range, through which there was no natural pass, and it was apparent
that costly blasting and tunneling would be required before the hills
could be pierced.[35] Once beyond the mountains the railway could be
carried quickly to Aleppo, a city of 128,000, “the emporium of northern
Syria,” and a meeting place for the Mesopotamian, Syrian, and Anatolian
trade-routes. At this point connections were to be established with
the important railways of Syria, providing direct communication with
Hama, Homs, Tripoli-in-Syria, Beirut, Damascus, Jaffa, and Jerusalem.
In fact, enthusiastic Syrians have prophesied that when all projected
transcontinental railways are completed in Europe, Asia, and Africa,
Aleppo will become “the crossroads of the world”—a junction point for
rail communication between Berlin and Bagdad, Calais and Calcutta,
Bordeaux and Bombay, Moscow and Mecca, Constantinople and Cairo and
Cape Town.[36] Seventy miles away from Aleppo, along one of the few
good wagon roads in Turkey, lay the important Mediterranean port of
Alexandretta. Leaving Aleppo, the Bagdad Railway was to turn east,
crossing a desert country, to Nisibin and to Mosul, on the Tigris. From
this sector of the railway it was proposed to construct several short
spurs into the Armenian foothills, as well as a longer branch from
Nisibin to Diarbekr and Kharput.
The city of Mosul is the northern gateway to the Mesopotamian valley,
the “Land of the Two Rivers.” In medieval times it was a center of
caravan routes between Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Anatolia, and
once was famed for its textile manufactures, which produced a cloth
named after the city, “muslin.” It is located on the site of a suburb
of the ancient city of Nineveh and guards a high pass leading through
the mountains into Armenia. In 1903 it had a population of 61,000 and
bade fair, after the completion of the Bagdad Railway, to regain some
of its lost lustre. South and southeast of Mosul flows the Tigris River
all the way to the Persian Gulf. Along the valley of this river was to
run the new railway, through the towns of Tekrit, Samarra, and Sadijeh,
to Bagdad.[37]
In 1903 the splendor of the ancient city of Bagdad was very much
dimmed. Although it still was the center of an important caravan trade
with Persia, Arabia, and Syria, its prosperity was but a name compared
with the riches which the city had enjoyed before the commercial
revolution of the sixteenth century. The population of 145,000—in part
nomad—was to a large extent dependent upon the important export trade
in dates and cereals, amounting, in 1902, to almost £1,000,000. All
told, the trade of Bagdad was valued at about £2,500,000 annually.
Whether the shadow of the former great Bagdad could be transformed into
a living thing was an open question.[38]
Five hundred miles south of Bagdad is the Persian Gulf,[39] the
proposed terminus of the Bagdad Railway. About sixty miles north of
the Gulf, located on the Shatt-el-Arab—the confluence of the Tigris
and Euphrates Rivers—is the port of Basra, the outlet for the trade
of Bagdad. Communication between these two Mesopotamian cities was
carried on, in 1903, by means of a weekly steamer service operated
by the English firm of Lynch Brothers, under the name “The Euphrates
and Tigris Steam Navigation Company, Ltd.” The Lynch Brothers—typical
British imperial pathfinders—had established themselves at Basra
during the decade 1840–1850 and had succeeded during the following
half-century in securing a practical monopoly of the river trade from
Bagdad to the Persian Gulf. The absence of effective competition
and the hesitancy of the Turkish Government to grant permission for
the operation of additional steamers were responsible for a totally
inadequate service. It was not uncommon for freight to stand on
the wharves at Bagdad and Basra for three months or more awaiting
transportation. Under these circumstances it was to be expected that
freight charges would be exorbitant; it cost more to transfer cargoes
from Bagdad to Basra than from Basra to London. The advent of the
Bagdad Railway promised great things for the trade of lower Mesopotamia
and Persia.[40]
It was the aim of the Turkish Government and the concessionaires not
only to compete with the river trade of the Tigris, but to develop
the Euphrates valley as well, there being no steamer service on the
latter river. With this in mind, it was decided to divert the railway
beyond Bagdad from the Tigris to the Euphrates and down the valley to
Basra. For a time Basra was to mark the terminus of the railway; the
concession made provision, however, for the eventual construction of a
branch “from Zubeir to a point on the Persian Gulf to be agreed upon
between the Imperial Ottoman Government and the concessionaires.”[41]
Of considerable importance was a proposed branch line from Sadijeh,
on the Tigris, to Khanikin, on the Persian frontier. This railway, it
was believed, would take the place of the existing caravan route from
Bagdad to Khanikin and thence to Teheran. The annual value of British
trade alone transported _via_ this route was estimated at about three
quarters of a million pounds sterling.[42]
The Bagdad Railway, as thus projected, was one of the really great
enterprises of an era of dazzling railway construction. Here was a
transcontinental line stretching some twenty-five hundred miles from
Constantinople, on the Bosporus, to Basra, on the Shatt-el-Arab—a
project greater in magnitude than the Santa Fé line from Chicago to Los
Angeles or the Union Pacific Railway from Omaha to San Francisco.[43]
It was a promise of the rejuvenation of three of the most important
parts of the Ottoman Empire—eastern Anatolia, northern Syria, and
Mesopotamia. It was to open to twentieth-century steel trains a
fifteenth-century caravan route. It was to replace the camel with the
locomotive.
THE SULTAN LOOSENS THE PURSE-STRINGS
There are special and peculiar problems connected with the
construction of railways in the economically backward areas of the
world. In well populated regions, such as western Europe, railways
have been built to accommodate existing traffic; in sparsely populated
regions, such as eastern Russia and western United States, they have
been constructed chiefly to create new traffic. In the economically
advanced countries of the world the railway has been the result of
civilization; in the backward countries it has been the outpost of
civilization. A new railway in an undeveloped region is obliged at the
outset to concern itself mainly with the upbuilding of the territory
through which it runs, in order to assure abundant traffic for the
future; during this period its receipts are rarely, if ever, adequate
to meet the costs of operation. Private capital cannot be expected
to assume alone the risk and burden thus involved, but the public
service which the railway renders during this critical time justifies
the government in subsidizing the enterprise until it can become
self-supporting. The granting of state subventions has been a common
practice of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. China time and time
again has pledged national revenues in support of railway construction;
the Latin-American countries have been conspicuous exemplars of
the same practice; more than half of the railways of Russia were
constructed with government funds.[44]
There was every reason to believe that the Bagdad Railway would be
built with some system of state guarantees. Almost every railway in
Asiatic Turkey at one time or another had been the recipient of a
government subvention, and the proposed trans-Mesopotamian railway
faced many more obstacles than had faced any then in operation.
The provinces through which the Bagdad Railway was to pass were
sparsely settled and were too backward, economically, to warrant
the construction of a railway for the accommodation of existing
traffic;[45] the German technical commission of 1899 had pointed
out that the estimated gross operating revenue for some years would
be entirely inadequate to pay the expenses of running trains even
if there should be an unlooked for volume of passenger and mail
service to India. In time, it was believed, improved transportation
and greater political security would induce immigration and produce
widespread economic prosperity in the provinces of Anatolia, Syria, and
Mesopotamia, thus assuring financial independence to the railway.[46]
During the interim, however, a state guarantee appeared to be necessary.
Under the terms of the convention of 1903, the Turkish Government
undertook partially to finance the construction of the Bagdad Railway.
For each kilometre of the line built the Government agreed to issue
to the Company the sum of 275,000 francs, nominal value, in Imperial
Ottoman bonds, to be secured by a first mortgage on the railway and
its properties.[47] The payment of interest and sinking fund on these
bonds was to be guaranteed by the assignment to the Public Debt
Administration for this purpose of the revenues of certain of the
districts through which the railway was to pass. For the purpose of
financing the first section of two hundred kilometres beyond Konia,
there was delivered to the Company on March 5, 1903, an issue of
fifty-four million francs of “Imperial Ottoman Bagdad Railway Four Per
Cent Bonds, First Series.”[48] Similar payment for the construction of
subsequent sections was to be made the subject of further agreement
between the Government and the concessionaires.
In addition to supplying in this manner the actual funds for the
building of the railway, the Ottoman Government guaranteed gross
operating receipts of forty-five hundred francs annually for each
kilometre of the line open to traffic. If the receipts failed to
reach that sum, the Government was to reimburse the Company for the
deficiency. If the receipts amounted to more than forty-five hundred
francs per kilometre in any given year, the excess over that amount to
ten thousand francs was to belong to the Government; any excess over
and above ten thousand francs was to be divided sixty per cent to the
Government, forty per cent to the Railway. The Government also agreed
to reimburse the Company, in thirty annual payments of three hundred
fifty thousand francs, for such improvements as might be necessary to
prepare the Anatolian Railways for the initiation of a through express
service to the Persian Gulf and, furthermore, to subsidize that express
service at the rate of three hundred fifty thousand francs annually
from the date of the completion of the main line to Aleppo.[49]
Closely connected with these financial guarantees were grants of public
lands. Lands owned by the Government and needed for right-of-way were
transferred to the concessionaires free of any charge. Additional
land required for construction purposes might be occupied without
rental as well as worked by the Company for sand and gravel. Wood and
timber necessary for the construction and operation of the railway
might be cut from State-owned forests without compensation. The
concessionaires were permitted to operate mines within a zone twenty
kilometres each side of the line, subject to such regulations as might
be laid down by the Ministry of Public Works. As a public utility,
the railway was granted the right of expropriation of such privately
owned land as might be essential for the right-of-way, as well as
quarries, gravel-pits, or other properties necessary for purposes of
construction. The Company was authorized, also, to conduct researches
for objects of art and antiquity along the route of the railway![50]
In the foregoing respects the Bagdad Railway Convention was by
no means revolutionary in character. In issuing its bonds for the
purpose of financing railway construction, in pledging public
revenues as a guarantee of traffic receipts, in granting public lands
for right-of-way, the Imperial Ottoman Government was following
wellestablished precedents of the nineteenth century. The United
States, for example, had adopted similar measures to encourage the
building of transcontinental railways. To cite a single instance,
Congress granted the promoters of the Union Pacific system a
right-of-way through the public domain, twenty sections of land on
each side of each mile of the railway, and a loan of bonds of the
United States to an amount of fifty million dollars. Between 1850 and
1873 alone the Government transferred to the railways some thirty-five
million acres of public lands, an area in excess of that of the State
of New York.[51]
In certain other respects, however, the Bagdad Railway Convention was
radical and far-reaching in its innovations. Worthy of first mention
among its unusual provisions is the sweeping tax exemption granted
the concessionaires by _Article 8_: “Manufactured material for the
permanent way and materials, iron, wood, coal, engines, cars and
coaches, and other stores necessary for the initial establishment as
well as the enlargement and development of the railway and everything
pertaining thereto which the concessionaires shall purchase in the
empire or import from abroad shall be exempt from all domestic taxes
and customs duties. The exemption from customs duties shall also be
granted the coal necessary for the operation of the road, imported
abroad by the concessionaires, until the gross receipts of the line
and its branches reach 15,500 francs per kilometre. Likewise, during
the entire period of the concession the land, capital, and revenue of
the railway and everything appertaining thereto shall not be taxed;
neither shall any stamp duty be charged on the present Convention or
on the Specifications annexed thereto, the additional conventions,
or any subsequent instruments; nor on the issue of Government bonds;
nor on the amounts collected by the concessionaires on account of the
guarantee for working expenses; nor shall any duty be levied on their
stock, preferred stock and bonds, or on the bonds which the Imperial
Ottoman Government shall issue to the concessionaires.” Thus the Bagdad
Railway not only was assured of a subsidy constituting a preferred
claim on certain taxes collected from the Turkish peasantry, but, in
addition, was exempted from the payment of important contributions to
the national revenue. The extent to which such an arrangement would
confound confusion will be clear if one will recall that many other
restrictions on the collection and disbursement of public funds were
vested in the Ottoman Public Debt Administration.[52]
Incidental to the railway, the Bagdad Company was granted other
valuable concessions. The corporation was given permission to establish
and operate tile and brick works along the line of the railway. For the
direct and indirect use of the railway and its subsidiary enterprises
the Company was authorized to establish hydro-electric stations for the
generation of light and power. The erection of necessary warehouses
and depots was permitted as essential to the proper operation of
the railway. The Anatolian Railway was empowered to provide for
satisfactory ferry service between Constantinople and Haidar Pasha, in
order to insure direct sleeping-car service from Europe to Asia and to
provide other facilities for through traffic. All of these subsidiary
projects were to enjoy the same exemption from taxation as the railway
itself.[53]
The concessionaires were granted the right of constructing at Bagdad,
Basra, and at the terminus on the Persian Gulf modern port facilities,
including “all necessary arrangements for bringing ships alongside
the quay and for the loading, unloading, and warehousing of goods.”
During the period of the construction of the railway the Company
was granted rights of navigation on the Tigris, the Euphrates, and
the Shatt-el-Arab for the transportation of materials and supplies
necessary to the building and operation of the main line and its
branches.[54] These river and harbor concessions aroused the fear and
the rage of the Lynch Brothers, who, as we shall see, were to be among
the leaders of British opposition to the Bagdad Railway.[55]
These, then, were the outstanding economic provisions of the Bagdad
Railway Convention of 1903. The Imperial Ottoman Government assumed the
cost of the construction of the railway and, in addition, guaranteed
a certain minimum annual return on each kilometre in operation. It
pledged for these purposes the taxes of the districts through which
the railway was to pass, and it deputed the Ottoman Public Debt
Administration to collect these revenues and supervise payments to
the concessionaires. As additional compensation to the Company it
made large grants of public lands and conceded valuable privileges
indirectly connected with the construction of the railway. In this
manner the Sultan mortgaged his empire. But mortgages have their
purposes, and Abdul Hamid hoped for big things from the Bagdad Railway.
SOME TURKISH RIGHTS ARE SAFEGUARDED
As mortgagor the Sultan was certain to insist upon the recognition
and protection of certain rights. To assure observance by the
concessionaires of their obligations under the convention, supervision
over construction, operation, and maintenance of the railway was vested
in the Ministry of Public Works, represented by two Imperial Railway
Commissioners. As a guarantee of good faith the Company was obliged
to deposit with a Constantinople bank a bond of £30,000, subject to
release only upon the completion of the entire line. The Ottoman
Government was determined, also, that the concession, far-reaching as
were its implications, should not lead to additional extra-territorial
rights, or “capitulations,” in favor of foreign powers. The
concessionaires were forbidden to contract for the transportation
of foreign mails, or to perform other services for the foreign
post offices in Turkey, without the formal approval of the Ottoman
Government. It was specified, also, that, inasmuch as the Anatolian and
the Bagdad Railway Companies were Ottoman joint-stock corporations,
all disputes and differences between the Government and the Companies,
or between the Companies and private persons, “arising as a result
of the execution or interpretation of the present Convention and the
Specifications attached thereto, shall be carried before the competent
Ottoman courts.” It was further provided that the concessionaires “must
correspond with the State Departments in Turkish, which is the official
language of the Imperial Ottoman Government!”[56]
The Government was sincere in its determination that the railway
should become a powerful instrument in the economic development of the
backward provinces of the empire. A significant clause specified that
the section between Bagdad and Basra should not be placed in operation
before the section between Konia and Bagdad should have been opened
to traffic, although immediate operation of trains on the former
section would have enabled the Company to compete with the valuable
trade of the Lynch Brothers on the Tigris. The traffic between Bagdad
and Basra would have been profitable and would thus have decreased
by a considerable figure the total subsidies the Treasury might be
obliged to pay for railway operation. It was of more immediate concern
to the Turkish Government, however, that southern Mesopotamia should
be connected by an economic and political link with the rest of the
Sultan’s dominions. Elaborate regulations were laid down regarding a
minimum train service which the Company was required to supply, and
it was specified in this connection that Turkish mails, together with
postal employees and officials, should be transported without charge
and under such other conditions as the Government might stipulate. To
forestall discriminatory treatment of passengers and shippers maximum
rates were prescribed for all classes of traffic, including express,
insurance, and similar supplementary services; it was decreed that “all
rates, whether they be general, special, proportional, or differential,
are applicable to all travelers and consignors without distinction”;
the concessionaires were “formally prohibited from entering into any
special contract with the object of granting reductions of the charges
specified in its tariffs.”[57] This last provision was of the utmost
importance, as it enabled Germans and Turks alike to point to the
railway as an outstanding example of the economic “open door.”
One of the chief interests of the Turkish Government in the
construction of the Bagdad Railway was the possibility of its
utilization for military purposes. In time of peace for purposes of
maneuvers or the suppression of rebellion, in time of war for purposes
of mobilization, the Company was required, upon requisition of the
military authorities, to place at the disposal of the Government
its “entire rolling stock, or such as might be necessary, for the
transportation of officers and men of the army, navy, police or
gendarmerie, together with any or all equipment.” The Government
undertook to maintain order along the line and to construct such
fortifications as it might consider necessary to defend the railway
against invading armies, and the Company was obliged to expend, under
the direction of the Minister of War, a total of four million francs
for the construction of military stations. To give effect to all of
these provisions, a special military convention was to be drawn up and
approved by the Company and the Minister of War.[58]
Upon the expiration of the concession all rights of the concessionaires
in the railway, port works, and other subsidiary enterprises were to
revert, free of all debt and liability, to the Imperial Government. In
the meantime, a semblance of Turkish nationality was to be assured the
enterprise by the stipulation that the railway employees and officials
should wear the fez and such uniform as might be approved by the
Government. It was contemplated, also, that within five years after the
opening of each section to traffic the whole of the operating staff,
except the higher officials, should be composed exclusively of Ottoman
subjects.[59]
Appended to the Bagdad Railway Convention was a secret agreement
binding the Company not to encourage or install foreign settlements
or colonies in the vicinity of the Anatolian or Bagdad Railways.[60]
Although the Sultan had mortgaged his empire, at least he was
determined to retain possession![61]
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
[1] On this point _cf._ M. Solovieff, _La Terre Sainte et la société
impériale de Palestine_ (Petrograd, 1892). The society there referred
to was said to be liberally patronized by the Tsar and other members
of the imperial family.
[2] For details of the Kapnist plan see _The Times_ (London),
December 17, 1898; _The Euphrates Valley Railway_—a prospectus
(London, 1899).
[3] In a memorandum of June 10, 1899, to the Sultan, Dr. Kurt Zander,
General Manager of the Anatolian Railway Company, said that, in
accordance with the wishes of the Sultan—and “to avoid all obstacles
and avert every possibility of opposition”—his Company sought to
arrive at a satisfactory understanding with the Smyrna-Aidin and
Smyrna-Cassaba railways. All proposals to the Smyrna-Aidin Company,
however, “met with evasive answers, which finally resulted in a
termination of negotiations.” _Cf._, also, E. Aublé, _Bagdad—son
chemin de fer, son importance, son avenir_ (Paris, 1917), pp. 9 _et
seq._
[4] For a copy of the text of this agreement the author is indebted
to Mr. E. Rechnitzer. Summaries were published in _The Times_, August
10, 1899; _Le Temps_ (Paris), August 15, 1899; _Corps de droit
ottoman_, Volume IV, pp. 155–156.
[5] In June, 1899, the Anatolian Railway Company elected to its Board
of Directors M. L. Rambert, of the Imperial Ottoman Bank, and in
June, 1900, M. Gaston Auboyneau, of the same institution. The new
directors replaced Mr. George Henry Maxwell Batten, of London, and
Sir Edward F. G. Law, of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration. The
refusal of the Smyrna-Aidin line to come to a working agreement with
the Anatolian Company thus removed the last British directors from
the board of the latter. _Cf._ _Reports of the Anatolian Railway
Company_, 1898–1900, _passim_.
[6] A letter from Mr. E. Rechnitzer to the Sultan, dated August
16, 1899, accuses M. Constans of having publicly referred to the
“accord” between French and German interests in Turkish railways. Dr.
Karl Helfferich states that the agreement between the two railway
companies was supplemented by a gentlemen’s agreement between the two
ambassadors. _Die Vorgeschichte des Weltkrieges_ (Berlin, 1919), p.
127. This would seem to be confirmed by André Chéradame, _op. cit._,
pp. 48 _et seq._
[7] The proposals previously made called for an absolute guarantee
of several thousands of francs income per kilometre per annum.
Mr. Rechnitzer’s plan called for “an annual guarantee of 15,000
francs in gross receipts per kilometre, the said guarantee to be
paid exclusively out of the excess of the tithes of the _vilayets_
through which the railway is to pass; it being understood that in
the event that the excess of such tithes be not sufficient to defray
the kilometric guarantee, the concessionaire shall have no redress
against the Imperial Government on account of the insufficiency.”
Memorandum of May 14, 1899, from Mr. Rechnitzer’s files. Although
this plan had the great advantage of requiring no immediate payments
from the Ottoman Treasury, it probably would have cost Turkey
more in the long run, for the guarantee specified was excessively
high. Compare with provisions of the Bagdad Railway concession of
March, 1903, _infra_. Mr. Rechnitzer also asked for extensive port
privileges in Alexandretta and in the port to be determined on the
Persian Gulf. The chief features of the plan were outlined in a
pamphlet published in London, July 29, 1899, entitled _The Euphrates
Valley Railway_.
[8] Mr. Rechnitzer now has in his possession a beautiful watch—inlaid
with a map of the Ottoman Empire, in precious stones, showing the
route of the proposed Euphrates Valley Railway—which he presented to
Abdul Hamid in 1899. He repurchased it at a public auction held in
Paris after the Young Turk revolution of 1909.
[9] In a letter dated September 30, 1922, to the author Mr.
Rechnitzer outlines the situation as follows: “My offer being much
more favorable than that of the Germans, it seemed likely in August,
1899, that it would be accepted. Unfortunately the Transvaal War
broke out in the autumn of that year, and the German Emperor, a
few days after the declaration of war, specially came to London to
ask our Government to give him a free hand in Turkey. It appears
that there was an interview between the Emperor and Mr. Joseph
Chamberlain, who was more interested in Cecil Rhodes’ scheme in
Africa than in my scheme in Turkey. As a consequence Sir Nicholas
O’Connor was instructed to inform the Turkish Government that the
British Government’s support was withdrawn from my offers.” It is
only fair to add, however, that there may have been other factors in
the situation. _The Financial News_ (London), of August 17, 1899,
intimated that Mr. Rechnitzer’s proposal did not have sufficiently
strong financial backing; that it was more Austrian than British;
that the support of the British Government was more formal than
whole-hearted.
[10] _Report of the Anatolian Railway Company_, 1899, pp. 9–10; _The
Annual Register_, 1899, p. 292. Simultaneously the Sultan granted
the _Deutsche Bank_ group a concession for the construction of port
and terminal facilities at Haidar Pasha, across the Straits from
Constantinople. Sweeping privileges were granted for the building of
docks, stations, sidings, and quays to a subsidiary of the Anatolian
Railway, the Haidar Pasha Port Company. The latter company completed
a handsome station and terminal at Haidar Pasha in 1902, the year
before the definitive Bagdad Railway concession. Furthermore,
it entered into close coöperation with the Mahsoussie Steamship
Company, a Government-owned company operating a ferry service between
Constantinople and the Asiatic side of the Straits; in this manner
adequate service was assured passengers and freight from European to
Asiatic points. The text of the concession is to be found in _Corps
de droit ottoman_, Volume III, pp. 342–351. _Cf._, also, _Report of
the Anatolian Railway Company_, 1902, p. 8.
[11] _Supra_, pp. 31–34.
[12] The single exception was Mr. Rechnitzer’s plan, which provided
that within five years of the award of the concession, the Sultan
might require the construction of a spur from Alexandretta to
Konia, on terms to be agreed upon between the Government and the
concessionaire. The chief feature of Mr. Rechnitzer’s plan, however,
unquestionably was the railway from Alexandretta to the Persian
Gulf—_i.e._, the Syrian and Mesopotamian, not the Anatolian and
Cilician, sections. Furthermore, there were political objectives
connected with the Rechnitzer proposal which, however attractive to
British imperialists, could not have been regarded with equanimity
by the Sultan. The following are typical quotations from Mr.
Rechnitzer’s prospectus: “It has long been the object of English
statesmen to consolidate the position of England in the Persian
Gulf, where British interests (both political and commercial) are
now paramount. With a railway in this region controlled by British
interests ... a very strong foothold would accrue to British
influence” (p. 12). Among the advantages of the proposed railway
are listed the following (pp. 17–18): “It will place under British
control two important ports, one on the Mediterranean and the other
on the Persian Gulf; it will strengthen British influence in Turkey
and in the Persian Gulf, and indirectly, in Persia and Afghanistan;
it will afford England powerful means of exercising her influence
over the territory of Central Persia, and of establishing new
commercial enterprises over an enormous area of unexploited country
of exceptional wealth.”
[13] Quoted by A. D. C. Russell, “The Bagdad Railway,” in _The
Fortnightly Review_, Volume 235 (1921), p. 312. _Cf._, also, _Corps
de droit ottoman_, Volume IV, pp. 153 _et seq._
[14] Pan-Islamism started as a religious and cultural revival but
rapidly took on political and economic significance. Later, in
connection with Turkish nationalism (see _infra_, Chapter IX), it
became a serious international problem. A short, popular discussion
of the rise of Pan-Islamism is Lothrop Stoddard’s _The New World of
Islam_ (New York, 1921), Chapters I, II, V. _Cf._, also, _Mohammedan
History_, No. 57 of the Foreign Office Handbooks (London, 1920),
Part I; G. Charmes, _L’avenir de la Turquie: le pan-islamisme_
(Paris, 1883); A. J. Toynbee, _Nationality and the War_ (London,
1915), pp. 399–411, and _Turkey: a Past and a Future_ (New York,
1917); Tekin Alp, _Türkismus und Pantürkismus_ (Weimar, 1915); C.
Snouck Hurgronje, _The Holy War, “Made in Germany”_ (New York, 1917).
Regarding Abdul Hamid’s place in the Pan-Islamic movement _cf._
_Mohammedan History_, pp. 42–46.
[15] Great Britain, characteristically enough, took steps to protect
her interests by reviving the Arabian caliphate—_i.e._, by supporting
the claims of the Sherif of Mecca to the caliphate.
[16] _Infra_, pp. 127–128.
[17] Regarding British activities in Koweit, _cf. infra_, pp. 197–198.
[18] _Infra_, p. 149.
[19] _Infra_, pp. 155–157; Chéradame, _op. cit._, pp. 267 _et seq._;
K. Helfferich, _Die Vorgeschichte des Weltkrieges_ (Berlin, 1919),
pp. 124 _et seq._
[20] _The Times_, October 28, 1898
[21] _Annual Register_, 1899, pp. 289–291; _Parliamentary Debates,
House of Commons_, Volume 120 (1903), p. 1247, Volume 126 (1903), p.
108; W. von Hohenzollern, _My Memoirs, 1887–1918_, pp. 84–86, 101–103.
[22] _The Globe_, August 10, 1899. _Cf._, also, _The Morning Herald_,
August 10, 1899, and _The Westminster Gazette_, August 11, 1899.
[23] No attempt is made here to analyze the convention of March
18, 1902 (which had been preceded by a draft convention of January
8, 1902), as it was superseded by the convention of March 5, 1903.
_Cf. infra_, pp. 70–71, 77–84. The text of the convention of 1902
is to be found as an appendix to R. LeCoq, _Un chemin de fer en
Asie Mineure_ (Paris, 1907). George von Siemens (1839–1901) did not
live to see the consummation of his great plans for the development
of Turkish railways. After his death in 1901 his work was taken up
by his successor as Managing Director of the _Deutsche Bank_, Dr.
Arthur von Gwinner. For a short account of the life of von Siemens
see an obituary by Professor J. Riesser, in _Bank-Archiv_, No. 2,
November, 1901. The work of von Siemens in the development of German
economic enterprises in the Near East is told in a biography by his
son-in-law, Dr. Karl Helfferich; _Georg von Siemens_ (Leipzig, 1923).
[24] _The Times_, January 25, 1902.
[25] _Journal officiel, Débats parlementaires, Chambre des députés_,
1902, pp. 1468 et seq.
[26] _The Times_, January 25, 1902.
[27] _Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons_, Volume 101, pp. 129,
597, 628, 669, Volume 120 (1903), p. 1371.
[28] _Report of the Anatolian Railway Company_, 1901, p. 17; _The
Times_, January 25, 1902.
[29] _Annual Register_, 1902, pp. 290–291; _Report of the Bagdad
Railway Company_, 1904, p. 7.
[30] _La Société Impériale Ottomane du Chemin de Fer de
Bagdad-Firman, Convention, Cahier des Charges, Statuts_, in French
and Turkish (Constantinople, 1905); translated into English in
_Parliamentary Papers_, No. Cd. 5635, Volume CIII (1911), No.
1. Where references are here given to the convention itself, no
preceding identifying word will be given, the citation being merely,
_e.g._, _Article I_. The _Statuts_ will be referred to as “By-Laws”
and the _Cahier des Charges_ as “Specifications.”
[31] Turco-German control of the Board of Directors was not
inconsistent with the agreement of 1899 between the _Deutsche Bank_
and the Imperial Ottoman Bank, which assured French interests only
40% of the shares of the Bagdad Railway Company. For details of the
organization of the Company see the _Report of the Anatolian Railway
Company_, 1903, pp. 4–7; _By-Laws_, _passim_.
[32] _Articles 1–4, 7, 12, 37–39_; _Specifications_, Article 30.
[33] In this connection see Sir W. M. Ramsay, _The Historical
Geography of Asia Minor_ (London, 1890); D. G. Hogarth, _The Nearer
East_ (London, 1902); Jastrow, _op. cit._, Chapter II; Sir C. W.
Wilson, _Murray’s Handbook for Asia Minor_ (London, 1895 and 1900);
R. Fitzner, _Anatolien-Wirtschaftsgeographie_ (Berlin, 1902); F.
Dernburg, _Auf deutscher Bahn in Kleinasien_ (Berlin, 1892). Good
general accounts of the regions through which the Bagdad Railway
was to run are: Baron E. von der Goltz, _Reisebilder aus dem
griechisch-türkischen Orient_ (Halle, 1902); R. Oberhummer and H.
Zimmerer, _Durch Syrien und Kleinasien_ (Berlin, 1899); E. Banse,
_Die Türkei; eine moderne Geographie_ (Berlin, 1916); Sir Mark
Sykes, _The Caliph’s Last Heritage—A Short History of the Turkish
Empire_ (London, 1915), Part 2, Chapters II and IV. A well-informed
article describing the projected route of the Bagdad railway is one
by a member of the German technical commission, “Die anatolischen
Eisenbahnen und ihre Fortsetzung bis zum persischen Golf,” in _Archiv
für Eisenbahnwesen_, Volume 26 (1903), pp. 75–90.
[34] For a description of the line from Konia to Adana, including
an historical sketch of the principal towns served by the railway,
_cf._ Karl Baedeker, _Konstantinopel und das westliche Kleinasien_
(Leipzig, 1905), pp. 156–172, and _Konstantinopel, Balkanstaaten,
Kleinasien, Archipel, Cypern_ (second edition, Leipzig, 1914), pp.
270–306, generously supplied with excellent maps.
[35] A popular account of the engineering difficulties facing the
construction of the railway from Adana to Aleppo is to be found
in _The Scientific American_, supplement, Volume 51 (1901), pp.
21248–21249.
[36] _Cf._ W. H. Hall (of the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut),
_The Near East_ (New York, 1920), particularly an interesting map, p.
174. According to the convention of 1903, Article 1, Aleppo was to be
connected with the main line by a branch from Tel-Habesh, but in 1910
the route was changed, on petition of the inhabitants, to include
Aleppo as a station on the Bagdad line itself. _Report of the Bagdad
Railway Company_, 1910, p. 8. Statistics regarding the population of
Aleppo and other cities along the line are taken, unless otherwise
indicated, from the _Statesman’s Year Book_, 1903, _passim_.
[37] _Article 38_; “The Trade of the Mesopotamian Valley,” in
_Commerce Reports_, No. 280 (Washington, 1912), pp. 1050–1065, and
No. 256 (1913), pp. 350–358; Karl Baedeker, _Palestine and Syria,
with the chief routes through Mesopotamia and Babylonia_ (fourth
edition, Leipzig, 1906), pp. 351–411.
[38] Valentine Chirol, _The Middle Eastern Question, or Some
Political Problems of Indian Defence_ (New York, 1903), pp. 179–182.
[39] This is the distance by the Tigris and the Shatt-el-Arab; as the
crow flies, the distance is about 150 miles shorter.
[40] Regarding the Lynch Brothers see David Fraser, _The Short Cut to
India_ (London, 1909), pp. 42 _et seq._; _Mesopotamia_, p. 30; _The
Near East_, August 11, 1916, p. 358; _infra_, pp. 190–191.
[41] _Article 1_, which describes in detail the route of the Bagdad
Railway and its branches.
[42] Chirol, _op. cit._, p. 179; _Supplement to Daily Consular and
Trade Reports_, Annual Series (Washington, 1915).
[43] The distances on the Bagdad Railway may be estimated as follows:
Haidar Pasha to Ismid 91 kilometres
Ismid to Eski Shehr 174 ”
Eski Shehr to Konia 444 ”
Konia to Basra 2,264 ”
Branch lines, about 800 ”
——-
Total 3,773 kilometres,
or approximately 2,400 miles. This does not include the section of
the Anatolian Railway from Eski Shehr to Angora, a distance of 311
kilometres, or 194 miles additional. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa
Fé Railway from Chicago to Los Angeles is 2,246 miles in length.
The distance from Chicago to San Francisco _via_ the Chicago and
Northwestern-Union Pacific system is 2,261 miles. _Official Guide of
the Railways of the United States_ October, 1921, pp. 679, 825.
[44] _Cf., e.g._, T. W. Overlach, _Foreign Financial Control
in China_ (New York, 1919), _passim_; _La Gaceta Oficial_ of
the Republic of Cuba for the years 1911 and 1912, regarding the
_Ferrocarril de la Costa Norte de Cuba_; the _Statesman’s Year Book_,
1903, p. 1044.
[45] The average population per square mile in eastern Anatolia was
27, in northern Syria 31, in Mesopotamia 13.
[46] _Diplomatic and Consular Reports_, 1903, No. 3140, pp. 26–27;
Sir William Willcocks, _The Recreation of Chaldea_ (Cairo, 1903).
[47] This financial assistance was granted at the rate of 11,000
francs per kilometre, payable annually throughout the ninety-nine
years of the concession. The obligation was capitalized and met by
the issue of 4% bonds as here described.
[48] _Bagdad Railway Loan Contract_, March 5, 1903. M. Léon Berger,
President of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration, and a French
citizen, was one of the signatories of this document. The bonds of
the loan were issued in denominations of 500 francs, 408 marks, 20
pounds sterling, 22 pounds Turkish, and 245 Dutch florins, in order
to facilitate their sale in the international securities markets.
The _Deutsche Bank_ was made fiscal agent for all transactions in
connection with the loan, with the single qualification that it was
to appoint as its Paris agent the Imperial Ottoman Bank, representing
the French interests in the enterprise. The syndicate apparently made
a profit of over 2,500,000 francs on the transaction, as the bonds
were delivered to the concessionaires, under _Article 35_ of the
Convention, valued at 81–1/2% of par but were sold at 86.40.
[49] _Articles 35_ and _37_.
[50] _Articles 6, 10, 22, 27._
[51] _Cf._ W. A. Dunning, _Reconstruction, Political and Economic,
1865–1877_ (New York, 1907), pp. 145, 227; H. V. Poor, _Manual of the
Railroads of the United States_ (New York, 1869), pp. xlvi-xlvii.
[52] _Supra_, p. 11.
[53] _Articles 13, 24, 25, 33_; _Specifications_, Article 4.
[54] _Articles 9_ and _23_.
[55] _Infra_, pp. 190–191.
[56] _Articles 5, 18, 29, 34._
[57] _Article 29_; _Specifications_, Articles 21, 24, 25, 29, 30.
[58] _Articles 15, 26, 45_; _Specifications_, Article 26.
[59] _Articles 20_ and _21_. Another sop to Turkish pride was
_Article 46_, which required the Company to contribute annually to
the Constantinople Poorhouse the sum of £500.
[60] _The Times_, March 14, 1903, contained a report of this secret
appendix. A denial was issued by the Berlin _National Zeitung_ of
March 18, 1903, but the existence of the supplementary agreement was
confirmed by Dr. von Gwinner in 1909 (_op. cit._, p. 1092). Djavid
Bey, in a memorandum to the author, has stated that the Ottoman
Government considered this appendix of the utmost importance.
[61] A proviso of the concession of 1903 was that the _Deutsche Bank_
was to float an Ottoman Four Per Cent Loan of March, 1903, to an
amount of about $10,000,000. _Parliamentary Papers_, 1920, No. Cmd.
964, pp. 57–58.