'Seistan' [‎387v] (776/782)

4
brush aside this consensus of authority, and if we assume that Great Britain
may in the past have placed her money on the wrong horse m Asia as well as
in Europe, let us see what there is in the present situation to help us to an
independent reply.
12. The subiect is two-fold, commercial and political. By the efforts of
our traders during the past century we have built up a commerce (m the mam
from India) with the ports of the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. and with the cities of bouthern
and Central and even of Northern Persia, which possesses an annual value of
several millions sterling. It is not too much to say that we have crea ed this
market, and that in the southern zone we still monopolise it. Hie political
absorption of Persia by Russia means the certain proscription and the ultimate
extinction of this trade—at least in every article in which Russia can compete
with India or Great Britain. W here now is the Indian or the British trade
with Tiflis, Bokhara, and Samarkand ? Persia would follow suit, and a system
of carefully differentiated tariffs wouldj in a short time, deprive India of one of
her best and most lucrative markets.
13. These considerations are sufficiently serious. The political ones are more
so. The Russian railway to Kushk (where the materials are stored for the 70
miles prolongation to Herat) already places that. fortress within the . grasp of
Russia, should she at any time care to run the risk of a casus belli with Great
Britain. But the Russian railway about to be constructed to Meshed if
prolonged, as is the intention, to Seistan, and ultimately to the Gulf, will dispense
Russia from the necessity of crossing the Afghan frontier on the Herat side.
Prom Persian territory she will menace the entire western flank of Afghanistan.
She will command the Herat-Kandahar road and will render insecure any
future British occupation of Kandahar. Lower down, in the unsettled tracts of
Baluchistan and Makran, which we have at present only imperfectly brought
under our control, there would be limitless scope for frontier disturbance and
local intrigue. We should be compelled, at the cost of a great expenditure
of money and of a serious addition to our responsibilities, to invest our authority
over those regions with a more concrete character, and to maintain posts and
garrisons to guard what would then have become a vulnerable, though it is
now a negligeable, section of the Indian border.
14. The Minute which I wrote on 4th September 1899, and sent home
to the 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. with the Government of India’s despatch of 21st September
1899, sufficiently indicated the extreme strategical importance to India of
Seistan. The success that has attended the efforts which we have since made
to develop the trade route from India to that part of Persia—the value of the
trade having risen in two years from to 15 lakhs—has tended to increase
both our interest and our influence in that portion of the Shah’s dominions,
and has encouraged us to project the early construction of a railway from
Quetta to Nushki, i.e., over the first 90 miles of the route. A Russian rail
way through Seistan to the Gulf—followed as it must be by the political
absorption of Seistan—w 7 ould not merely kill this promising enterprise, and
close the one remaining overland trade-route (that to Yarkand and Kashgar is
already nearly dead) that still remains open to Indian commerce, but it would
have the following further and even more serious consequences. It would place
Russia in control of a district ethnographically connected with Baluchistan,
would profoundly affect our prestige both with Afghan and Baluch, and would
greatly enhance the difficulties that we already experience in managing the
cognate tribes on the Indian side of the border. If Great Britain is ever called
upon to ad\ ance to Kandahar, as she will probably one day be compelled to do,
an intolerable state of friction would arise between the Powers that would then
control the upper and the lower waters of the Helmund. Moreover, while
Seistan, if it ever fell under British influence, could, owing to the protecting
floods upon the north, be easily defended against Russian attack from the
direction of Meshed our present frontier (should Seistan pass into the hands of
Russia), being entirely exposed, would enjoy no similar immunity. I might easily