'Report on the Nushki, Chagai and Western Sinjerani Districts for the year 1897-98 and on the Development of The Quetta-Seistan [Sistan] Trade Route' [‎16v] (32/148)

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Because to link Meshed with Quetta by means-ot a direct d&k system,
would draw Ktiorasan, and with it Seistan y into closer touch with.
Quetta.
That this measure would go far to strengthen British prestige at the
expense of Kussian, and make the inhabitants of South-Eastern
Persia feel that they were no’longer cut on from .British influence
by hundredls of miles of impassable desert.
Because nothing is more uncertain than the turn which events may
take any day in Afghanistan, and if the Quetta-Herat dak System of postal communication used in Moghul India and later by the East India Company. service
should become blocked at such a juncture, serious results might
ensue.
6. Lieut. Napier’s report waS'Sgainst the proposal to link Quetta with
Meshed by d&k, and indeed it could not well have been otherwise in face of the
fact that he found an Afghan force garrisoning Chagai and another Afghan out
post holding Galichah. He also stated that the physical difficulties were very
great, but as against this I would ask leave to mention that fromMay 1897* up to
the present time an uninterrupted weekly dak System of postal communication used in Moghul India and later by the East India Company. service has been maintained
with Seistan, and this fact shows that tbe physical difficulties which formerly
existed have been overcome, and that no obstacle remains to bar the consum.
mation of the scheme on which so much stress was laid in 1893, while at the
same time the arrangements in favour of linking Meshed to Quetta by d&k
have gained, if possible, in weight in recent years for reasons which I will
shortly discuss.
7. The mission entrusted to Lieut. Napier was well and ably discharged,
and would have been followed by important results, had Agents been installed ia
South-Eastern Persia to further British interests. Such a measure as the
appointment of Agents was, I think, justified by that portion of Lieut,
Napier’s report in which he pointed out how marked had been the recent exten*
sion of Russian influence, how actively Russian Agents were pushing their
country’s interests, and the dangers of permitting Russia to gain such a point
d* appui as Seistan offered.
8. Since the date of Lieut. Napier's expedition,. Russia has been permitted
to follow her bent unopposed, has steadily extended her influence southwards,
and has eventually posted Agents to Neh and Nasirabad,subsidising at every step
the leading Native officials of the districts occupied. Having thus made heJ
position tenable, she introduced, in the beginning of 1895, a Customs tariff into
Trans-Caspia, under which all British products, excepting indigo, tea, muslin
and one or two other unimportant Indian trades, have been prohibited entering
Central Asia, and even in the case of these goods they were only admitted
under heavy imposts, which were indiscriminately exacted whether the route
selected was via Batoum or Persia. The effectiveness of this measure was soon
shown in the shrinkage which followed in Indian trade with Meshed. Yet al*
though the falling off in the year 1895-96 was marked, still these impositions
did not, as the Russian Government no doubt anticipated, prove a death bio*
to Indian trade. The reasons for this appear to have been twofold : /rtf/y,
because the Russian Trans-Caspian preventive staff, although it was largely in
creased ad hoc, proved inadequate to cope with the extensive smuggling which
immediately followed the publication of the Customs decree along^the Perso*
ussian frontier line; and, secondly, because English goods had taken a firm
old on Persian markets, and Persian merchants—like most orientals, conserva
tive to a degree—clung tenaciously to the markets whence they and their fathers
had been accustomed to buy their goods for generations.
9, But the Russians were not so easily daunted, and cast about for still more
effective means to crush Indian trade. Unfortunately, they had not far to look.
° f i pl . a ^ e m Bombay afforded a pretext for actively interfering
TTrJ t ^ ade ] n ? 0 i l which was eminently suited to their purpose?-
Under the guise of establishing a protective cordon to guard the Perso-Afghan
rontisr in Persian interests from a disease which existed neither in Baluchistan
. a ^ 1Stan ^ R - US ^ ari . C(;8saoks were P oste( * at carefully selected points on
the trade roads in Persia, and every caravan that attempted to pass wai