'Despatch from Sir M. Durand respecting appointment of Additional Consular Officers in Persia' [‎99r] (1/18)

[This Document is the Property of Her Britannic Majesty’s Government.]
Printed for the use of the Foreign Office. April 1S99.
CONFIDENTIAL.
(7101.)
Despatch from Sir M. Durand respecting appointment of
Additional Consular Officers in Persia.
[With a Map ]
Sir M. Durand to the Marquess of Salisbury.—{Received March 20.)
(No. 16.)
My Lord, Tehran, February 12, 1899.
I HAVE the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your Lordship's despatches
Nos. 61 of the 27th June and No. 8, Consular, of the 29th September, 1898, calling
for my opinion with regard to certain suggestions for the appointment of additional
Consular officers in Persia.
The matter has engaged my attention for several years, and I have more than
once expressed my opinion upon it. In September 1895 I wrote a Memorandum
reviewing the state of affairs in Persia, and submitting proposals for the improvement
of our position. An officer had shortly before been sent to act as Consul in Kerman,
and I wrote with reference to this appointment: “ It will strengthen our influence
materially if we have more men of this kind in other parts of Persia as occasion
offers, and if our Representatives in Bushire and Ispahan and Khorassan are
encouraged to travel and make friends among the Chiefs and tribesmen. We need
not excite the ready alarm of the Prussians by too frequent journeys along their border,
hut I think we should spend some money in encouraging travel elsewhere, and
in establishing Agencies at important points. For instance, I feel very doubtful
whether the Government of India are right in deprecating the establishment of a
British officer in Seistan; and, under certain conditions, we might find it very useful
to have a man in Shuster to help in the opening of the roads in the Lur and Bakhtiari
country.”
I also advocated an improvement in the position of the Consul-General in
Tabreez.
In August 1896 I submitted a detailed proposal for the establishment of a
Consulate at Shuster, on the Karun, where our traders had been brutally ill-used,
and I suggested that for their protection and the maintenance of order we might raise
a tribal levy under British officers.
A year later, when in England, I followed up these suggestions by advocating the
retention of the Kerman appointment, and again asking for the establishment of a
Consul on the Karun.
The result was that the Kerman appointment w'as continued, provisionally, and
since that time the nomination by the Russians of a Consul for Seistan has led to our
also appointing a Consul for that district; but I believe no further steps have been
taken to carry out my suggestions.
Those suggestions formed part of a general scheme of policy, based upon an
examination of the state of affairs in Persia in 1895. The further suggestions which
I now desire to submit must, i think, in like manner, form part of a general scheme
of policy, based upon an examination of the state of affairs in Persia at the present
time. The question of our Consular establishments cannot be considered apart from
the larger question.
Almost the whole of the Memorandum of 1895 applies to the present position,
and the paper contains a general statement of the views which I held then, and hold
still, regarding the manner in which we should deal with Persia. I would therefore
ask that the Memorandum may be read, and that this despatch may be considered as
a supplement bringing it up to date. I can then confine myself to pointing out the
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