'Russia, India and the Persian Gulf' [‎11v] (22/46)

ig The Western Frontiers of India.
of campaign includes the eventual possession of a port on the
Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. , which would turn the flank of our North-West
Frontier, with its costly and extended system of garrisons,
fortifications, and road and railway communications.
Since Persia and the '"warm Persian sea-board" are at pre
sent, far more than the Afghan Frontier, the point to which
Russian activities are directed, and for the reason that Russia’s
arrival in Southern Persia would immediately transfer to
that quarter all our anxieties for the safety of India, some
reference is necessary to the recent progress of our Northern
neighbours in the dominions of the Shah, since Lord Curzon
in his standard work described the country and the Persian
Ouestion. Subsequently to that date Russia has made the
Siberian Railway, has obtained practical possession of Man
churia, a port on the Pacific, a great if not preponderating
influence in Northern China, has largely developed and
linked up her Southern and Trans-Caucasian, and has
commenced to join her Siberian and Transcaspian Railway
systems, has enormously increased her commercial activities
on the Caspian and the Black Seas, has constructed a
carriage road from Resht, the Caspian port, to Teheran, the
capital, from Askabad on the Transcaspian Railway to
Meshed, the capital of Khorassan, is constructing other roads
from Erivan to Tabriz, and from Kazvin to Ramadan, a
route on which I* reported in 1885, has acquired almost a
monopoly of the trade of Northern Persia, has organized a
whole brigade of Persian Cossacks, to which the present
spendthrift monarch is said to have been indebted for his
undisputed succession, has stimulated the import of Russian
goods into Persia by the elaboration of a system of bounties
of from 15 to 20 per cent, ad valorem, and by the concession
of special railway rates, has established in Teheran the
Banque d’Escompte de Perse, which the Times has lately
described as practically a branch of the Russian Ministry of
Finance, and by repeated loans upon the security of the
Customs has been placed in a position to insist upon the
revision of the tariff in the interests of Russian trade, which
* “ Notes of a Journey from Kazveen to Hamadan,” by J. D. Rees.