‘Persia – especially Seistan’ [‎202r] (402/949)

BEGISTERED No. A. 1.
1905.
NO, 13661.
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TlISRE HA.S BS 13 N PUBLISHSD RECENTLY AT
Teheran an offnial paper which will he
read with rather sad eyes by those who
realise how easily a great opportunity may be
lost, and how quick England’s rivals are to
take advantage of the openings furnished by
her neglect. This document gives the statis
tics of the commerce of Persia for the
financial year ended the 20 th March last, and
the pith of it may be summarised in the state
ment that of a total trade in imports and
exports amounting to .=£11,633,000, Russia is
credited with <£6,186,000. Put in another
form the figures are even more striking. The
total exports were valued at £4,633,000
and of this but £384,000 was British, whilst
the share of Russia equalled no less than
BEGISTEBED No. A. 1 .
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I 9 ° 5 - NO. 13661 .
are called strong measures. To M. Wai^ck-
Eousseau fell the task of restoring the Jwk
Army to a sense of its proper relat^nship to
the State and the People; to M. oSabes was
allotted the even more difficult work of
taming the truculence of a pr^sthood which
at several periods of its histogf had shown as
little respect for the authoafy of the Pope
himself as it had dismayed animosity of
the most virulent typgrtowards the Third
Eepublic and all its WFks. But the fate of
M. Combes proves^as Mr. Gladstone found
in regard to th/ Church of England
that Disestablishn^fnt, which had been on the
cards in Prance jp.ce 1809 (when Gambetta
first mentioned Jb in his election address of
that year) is a Jveapon as dangerous to those
who use it as may be to those against whom
it is directed/ M. Combes was accused of
priest-baitin/, and rather liked to “ torment
the parson/'’ but his victims have triumphed
over him/ in the end, although after the
recent debates and votes in the Chamber of
Deputies it is tolerably _ certain that the
days /f the Church Establishment in Prance
are strictly numbered.
+
There h\s been published recently at
Teheran an official paper which will be
read with rather sad eyes by those who
realise how easily a great opportunity may be
lost, and how quick England’s rivals are to
take advantage of the openings furnished by
her neglect. This document gives the statis
tics of the commerce of I^ersia for the
financial year ended the 20th March last, and
the pith of it may be summarised in the state
ment that of a total trade in imports and
exports amounting to <£11,633,000, Eussia is
credited with <£6,186,000. Put in another
form the figures are even more striking. The
total exports were valued at <£4,633,000
and of this but £384,000 was British, whilst
the share of Eus.sia equalled no less than
£2,827,000, Allowing for the contiguity
of frontiers this disparity is remarkable,
and prepares us for the preponderance of
Eussian interests also in the import trade.
Out of a total under this head of £7,000,000
for the year, Eussia did £3,359,0JO and
Great Britain only £2,334,000. There
is, however, a melancholy satisfaction 'in
the reflection that other nations are miles
behind us. Thus the total value of Persian
trade with Turkey was £840,000 ; with Prance,
£746,000 ; with Austria-Hungary, £220,000 ;
with Afghanistan, £186,000 ; with Italy;
£146,000 ; with the United States, £128,000;
with Germany, £111,000 ; and with other
countries, £352,000. Prom these results we
would appear to be a very good second. Some
explanation of the success of Eussia is afforded
by the report of the British Consul-General at
Ispahan who, dealing with the trade of his
own district for the last three years, says that
cotton goods form the main staple of the im
port trade and the market in them has been
much disturbed by reason of an influx of
Eussian cottons, which had been imported
to Bushire from Odessa and, failing to find
a market on the coast, were sent inland
and sold for what they would fetch to
save re-shipment home. Apart from this, how
ever, the trade of the district in Eussian cot
tons is increasing ; and quite recently a firm
of soda manufacturers has established an
agency An office of the East India Company and, later, of the British Raj, headed by an agent. in Ispahan and another Eussian
firm has done the same. “ Owing to the
assistance they get from the Eussian Gov
ernment,” adds the Consul-General “ in
drawbacks, special railway steamer rates, and
money facilities from the Euss'ian Bank, these
firms are able to sell their goods here at Mos
cow prices, and it is not to be wondered at
that in light printed cotton and fancy goods
they are able to compete with our goods. In
the last two years, as far as I can gather
from very imperfect information, the Eussian
imports have increased some eight to ten
fold. The advent of the representatives of
these two Eussian houses has practically
stamped out the small Armenian trader as an
importer of Eussian cotton good'.” Yet our
authority is not despondent as to the British
trade in Manchester goods, for he states that
“ Eussia competes to an appreciable extent in
Turkeyred twills and general printed goods,
yet with all the assistance given to them,
they cannot touch Manchester in heavy
white and grey goods, and if we could
but develop a quicker and cheaper trans
port service we should be placed in a position
to fight the opposition with fair prospects of
success here, and even with hopes of regain
ing some of our lost trade in the northern
markets.”