'Historical Summary of Events in Territories of the Ottoman Empire, Persia and Arabia affecting the British Position in the Persian Gulf, 1907-1928' [12r] (30/188)
The record is made up of 1 volume (90 folios). It was created in 1928. It was written in English. The original is part of the British Library: India Office The department of the British Government to which the Government of India reported between 1858 and 1947. The successor to the Court of Directors. Records and Private Papers Documents collected in a private capacity. .
Transcription
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21
ambitions, if cherished any longer, might be ranked with the idlest of a people's
dreams. Yet, within the next three years, Turkish troops were again in Batum;
Turkey had permanently recovered the districts of Kars and Ardahan; and only the
restoration of. Russian authority in other parts of Caucasia barred Mustafa Kemal
from obtaining a Caspian seaboard for the Turkish Republic. Such were the
surprising alternations of failure and success that attended the efforts of the
pan-Turks, during and immediately after the war, to realise their ambitions in the
East.
To the Bagdad Railway, as representing the German corridor to the Persian
Gulf and the East, the aim of German effort for nearly twenty years, a few more
words may be spared.
After it was seen that the British army in Mesopotamia had made Bagdad its
objective, the necessity of preventing British occupation of territory through which
the corridor must pass forced itself more and more on the German High Command.
The farther the prospect of obtaining decisive German victory in Europe receded,
the more anxious the command became for Bagdad. If the war ended in anything
short of an imposed peace, it was clear that the fate of the corridor might turn on
the military situation existing in Mesopotamia at the time hostilities ceased. If
Bagdad were then in Turkish possession and British occupation limited to the
Basra region, the corridor might perhaps be saved; if, on the other hand, the British
were holding Bagdad and had pushed their occupation northward of it, the corridor
would be as good as lost. The defence of Bagdad, the recovery of Bagdad after the
British had taken it, became, therefore, a dominating German interest. Enver
Pasha
An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders.
's obsession for the recovery of the city, to the prejudice of other Turkish war
fronts, was, in fact, an obsession passed on to him by his German paymasters. In
this way defence of the railway and of its future exercised a deep influence on the
course of the war in Turkey. In this way, too, it may be said that the British
campaign from the
Persian Gulf
The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran.
not only determined the fate of the German corridor
to the East, but decisively limited Turkish military effort in Palestine and towards
the Caspian and Central Asia.
Chapter (5).—Persia (1914-19).
During the war Germany sought to use the territory of neutral Persia as a
thoroughfare and base for reaching Afghanistan and India to the injury of Great
Britain. With less dangerous design and less persistence in execution, Turkey did
the same, but she also endeavoured to realise that part of her territorial ambitions
which called for the annexation of Persian provinces. Russia w T as chiefly concerned
with defending, and perhaps enlarging, the position she had already secured for
herself in the Kingdom of the Shahs. And Great Britain directed her energies mainly
to closing to her enemies the avenues of approach through Persia to Central Asia,
and thereby to Afghanistan and India, and to maintaining some degree of security
in those Persian regions in which her established interests lay. Meanwhile each of
the two hostile alliances contended for the favour and support of the Shah, Govern
ment and people with varying success. Military operations, in which forces
representing all the warring Powers took part, were conducted on the soil of Persia,
but they were always of minor importance and subservient to the ebb and flow of the
great campaigns in the Caucasus, Gallipoli, Mesopotamia and Palestine.
In this sphere of conflicting neutrality and hostilities little occurred that directly
affected the British position in the Gulf; Persia during the war is, therefore, a subject
to be treated briefly here.
In August 1914 Russian troops were in occupation of Tabriz, Khoi, Maku and
Urmia, all in the Russian zone; the Turks had encroached into Persian territory west
of Lake Urmia; British consular guards of Indian cavalry w T ere at Isfahan and
Shiraz, and small detachments of Indian infantry at Bushire, Jask, Shahbar and
Henjam Island.
Russia and Russians excited almost universal Persian hatred, and this feeling
was extended to Great Britain to some extent as the ally of Russia and her partner
in the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. Turkey w T as feared for the designs she
was supposed to cherish for the annexation of Persian territory. But at the same
time her pan-Islamic aims commanded a certain amount of theoretical and passive
sympathy among Persians as Moslems.
Persia herself w T as helpless, even unable to enforce the neutrality of her territory,
About this item
- Content
The volume is entitled Summary of Events in Territories of the Ottoman Empire, Persia and Arabia affecting the British Position in the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. , 1907-1928 (printed by the Committee of Imperial Defence, October 1928).
Includes sections on The Ottoman Empire, Persia, Arabia (Nejd [Najd]), Mohammerah [Khorramshahr], Muscat, and Bahrein [Bahrain].
- Extent and format
- 1 volume (90 folios)
- Arrangement
There is a table of contents at the front of the volume.
- Physical characteristics
Foliation: the foliation sequence commences at 1 on the front cover and terminates at 90 on the back cover. These numbers are written in pencil, are enclosed in a circle, and appear in the top right hand corner of the recto The front of a sheet of paper or leaf, often abbreviated to 'r'. page of each folio. Foliation anomalies: ff. 1, 1A; ff. 86, 86A. Two folios, f. 3 and f. 4 have been reattached in the wrong order, so that f. 4 precedes f. 3. The following map folios need to be folded out to be examined: f. 87, f. 88.
- Written in
- English in Latin script View the complete information for this record
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'Historical Summary of Events in Territories of the Ottoman Empire, Persia and Arabia affecting the British Position in the Persian Gulf, 1907-1928' [12r] (30/188), British Library: India Office Records and Private Papers, IOR/R/15/1/730, in Qatar Digital Library <https://www.qdl.qa/archive/81055/vdc_100022744604.0x00001f> [accessed 29 March 2024]
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- Reference
- IOR/R/15/1/730
- Title
- 'Historical Summary of Events in Territories of the Ottoman Empire, Persia and Arabia affecting the British Position in the Persian Gulf, 1907-1928'
- Pages
- front, back, spine, edge, head, tail, front-i, 1ar:1av, 2r:86v, 86ar:86av, 89r:89v, back-i
- Author
- East India Company, the Board of Control, the India Office, or other British Government Department
- Usage terms
- Open Government Licence