'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎623] (692/714)

RAILWAYS
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been demanded, and which it was known would ultimately be
made. It involved no monopoly for British trade, and indicated
no peculiar resuscitation of British influence. Seeing, however,
that these merits were loudly claimed for it by the English and
European Press, the Russian papers started a counter agitation,
proclaimed that Russia had been worsted in a diplomatic duel,
and insisted upon some corresponding advantage to redress the
shattered balance. Prince Dolgorouki, the Russian Minister in
Persia, received instructions to apply the screw at Teheran; and
the result of his combined threats and persuasion was the signa
ture of a document by the Shah which gave to Russia the refusal
of any railway concession in Persia for a period of five years. In
other words, no foreign company or individual could obtain
authority to construct a railway in Persia during that period,
unless or until Russia had herself received a similar permission or
commenced similar operations. Russia, in fact, had it placed in her
power either to promote railway enterprise in Persia to-morrow by
starting a company or applying for a concession herself, when she
would certainly not long remain alone in the field ; or absolutely
to close the door for five years against any railway enterprise at all
by declining to exercise her own preferential right.
Such was the state of affairs when I was in Teheran, and after
Further describing it, I not unnaturally observed in the columns
extension of the . Times >
Here, therefore, is presented to Russia the opportunity of showing
how far she is genuinely interested in the development of the country,
and whether she is prepared to use her power as a sullen barrier to
progress or in the interests of much-needed reform.
What is her own interpretation of the document, and what is
her real attitude towards the opening up of Persia, have since been
made evident in a manner that has more than justified my early
suspicions. The first act of the new Russian Minister, M. Butzow,
upon arriving at Teheran in 1890 with instructions to insist upon
some Russian equivalent to the recent British successes in the
matter of the Imperial Bank, the Mining Corporation, and the
Tobacco Regie, was to secure a prolongation of the railroad prohi
bition for another period of fiveyears, or for ten years in all from 1889;
and Russian diplomacy has since been openly congratulating itself
on having stifled the railway movement at its birth, and retarded the
first step towards the ultimate regeneration of Persia for another