'SUMMARY OF THE PRINCIPAL EVENTS AND MEASURES OF THE VICEROYALTY OF HIS EXCELLENCY LORD CURZON OF KEDLESTON, VICEROY AND GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF INDIA IN THE FOREIGN DEPARTMENT. I. JANUARY 1899-APRIL 1904. II. DECEMBER 1904-NOVEMBER 1905. VOLUME IV. PERSIA AND THE PERSIAN GULF.' [‎56r] (116/386)

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10. It is not open to doubt that these enterprises, and the power for pressure and control
which they would give, would be followed at no distant interval by the destruction of the
Persian monarchy as an independent kingdom, and its incorporation, on much the same
footing as Bokhara or Khiva, in the dominions of the Czar. The north of Persia is al ready
within the grasp of Russia, and can be absorbed or annexed by her whenever she desires.
A railway from the north to the south would be the link by which the same process would
be extended southwards until it reached the ocean. The lateral connections, eastwards and
westwards, might for a while be delayed. Sooner or later they would follow. A Shah mi<jht
be left upon the throne, just as there is a Khan at Khiva and an Amir at Bokhara. We also
have our Asiatic Piinces in India, and we know that they are not incompatible with a
European dominion.
11. But it may be said, why not let Persia be swallowed up as the Central Asian
Khanates have successively been? V\ hat is Persia to Great Britain or to India? A sufficient
answer might probably be found in the history of the past hundred years. It is inconceivable
that a succession of Indian Governments and of British statesmen for a century can all have
been so blind as to have expended the efforts of a ceaseless diplomacy and millions of money
upon an object which, after all, was of little value or concern. Even, however, if we brush
aside this consensus of authority, and if we assume that Great Britian m >y in the past have
placed her money on the wrong horse in 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 subject is two-fold—commercial and political. By the efforts of our traders
during the past century we have built up a commerce (in the main 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 Southern 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 created this market, and that in the southern zone we still monopolise it.
The 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 llritain. Where now is the Indian or the British trade with liflis, Bokhara, and
Samarkand? Pe sia would follow suit; and a system of carefully differentiated tariffs would,
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 caws belli with Great Britain. But the Russian railway about to be con
structed 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. From
Persian territory she will menace the entire western Hank of Afghanistan. She will com
mand 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 th; 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 garris 'ns to guard what
would then have become a vulnerable, though it is now a negligeable section of the Indian
border.
II. 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.
• For summary of the Minute, inis under Seis- with the Government of India's despatch of 21st
tan, Chapter XIV, pages 89-92. September 1899, sufficiently indicated the extreme
strategical importance to India of Seistan. The success that has attended the effort
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 7^ to 15 lakhs—has tended to increase both
our interest and our influence in that portion of the Shuh s dominions, aud 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 railway through Seistan to the Gulf—followed as it must be by
the political absorption of Seistan—would not merely kill this promising enterprise, aud close
the one remaining overland trade route (that to Yarkand and Kashgar is already nearly dead)
that still remains open to Indian conamerce, but it would have the following further and
even more serious oonsecpiences. It would place Russia in control of a distriot efhno*
graphically connected with Baluchistan, would profoundly affect our prestige both with Afghan
and Baluch, and would greatly enhance the difficulties that wo experience in managing the
cognate tribes on the Indian side of the border. If Great Britain is ever called upon to
advance 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 Helmand. 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 enlarge
at greater length upon the strategical importance to India of Seistan. But as I believe it to
be now generally recognised both here and in England, it will be sufficient to say that a
Russian railway through Eastern Persia to the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. means neither more nor less than
the final loss to Great Britain of Seistan ; and that the recent declarations of the British