'DIARY OF A TOUR IN THE PERSIAN GULF AND IN TURKISH ARABIA, DECEMBER, 1906 (WITH MAP)' [‎20v] (40/106)

34
merchants. From them I gathered the
following ideas, which I give verbatim in
asmuch as it appears that if such are wholly
disregarded, our direct association with
affairs in Turkish Arabia A term used by the British officials to describe the territory roughly corresponding to, but not coextensive with, modern-day Iraq under the control of the Ottoman Empire. may some day
be diminished. They do not, as a rule,
welcome as Consular representatives offi
cers of the Indian Political Department. on Indian political officers,
They say that such officers are too much
given to neglecting the commercial and
customs questions in which they, as
merchants, are chiefly interested and re
garding which they have a right to expect
the assistance of their Consul. It was in
consequence of this that they petitioned
the London Foreign Office to remove the
Indian Political Officer from Basra and re
place him by a professional Consul not above
attending to commercial cases. They said
that the same complaint applied all over
Persia where Indian officers were found—
that they were so immersed in niggling
political questions that they could not or
would not attend to business matters.
There were exceptions, of course, and they
specially instanced Majors Ramsay and
Sykes. Of the former they spoke very
highly, and they evidently desired his re
tention at Bagdad. Still, they could not
understand why any Indian man, ignorant
of the country, language and customs,
should be pitchforked into the heart of
Asiatic Turkey when there already existed ^ j
a trained Consular Service which had made
a life study of local languages and habits.
They, as also some foreigners, were parti
cularly bitter about some recent repre
sentatives of the Government of India at
Bagdad, and they made it plain that they
would raise a vigorous protest both in Con
stantinople and in London should this type
of representative again be sent there. Cer
tainly there seemed some force in their
contention that a Consul who is hardly on
speaking terms with any single member
of the community, European or Turkish,
is of slight use to them as merchants, and
does little to endear the British name or
consolidate British influence. From other
conversations I gathered that, if suitable
opportunity offered, a strong attempt
would be made by the Leventine Consular
Service to secure Bagdad for itself. This
would certainly be most unfortunate from
our point of view, considering our great
political interests in these regions.
Amongst our passengers were the repre- American trade,
sentatives of an American firm which ex
ports large quantities of the liquorice which
grows wild in all the Tigris region im
mediately below Bagdad. This liquorice is
used in America for the manufacture of
quid tobacco, varieties of chewing gum, and