Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎446v] (17/238)

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The Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. .
world-wide and complex that a British statesman has the
right to ask whether he is justified by the .§fake at issue to
commit his country to a policy which, if challenged, will
have to be vindicated by force, and from which, once
adopted, there must be no going back.
I put aside the magnitude of our commercial interests in
these countries, which would be sacrificed were they occu
pied or controlled by a Protectionist Power. My desire is
to consider the eventuality of such an occupation as it would
be likely to affect our hold upon India and the security of
our communications with the Far East. Am I, are we
English, too near our subject to see it clearly, in just per
spective, so to speak ? I turn to the pages of an American
writer The lowest of the four classes into which East India Company civil servants were divided. A Writer’s duties originally consisted mostly of copying documents and book-keeping. , whose surveys of world-movements have been studied
in this country, and whose name is known to all with
respect. In a book not long ago published, and called
“ The Problem of Asia,” Captain Mahan, of the American
Navy, has devoted much of his attention to this question of
the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. and adjacent countries. He bids us sup
pose for the sake of discussion that the various territories
known as Turkey in Asia, instead of composing, as at
present, a flabby body, enfeebled by centuries of misrule,
were to be braced together into a highly organized modern
state. Stretching from the Black Sea and the Mediterranean
to the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. and the Red Sea, this hypothetical state
would control the communications between Europe and Asia,
and play in the Eastern Mediterranean the part played by
France in the Western. Egypt would be at her mercy just
as, during the prevalence of analogous conditions, the valley
of the Nile became incorporated into the vigorous Ottoman
Empire. He proceeds to draw a most instructive com-
panson between the relative importance in modern world-
movements between China on the one hand, and, on the
other, Persia and the territories component of Asiatic
Turkey. In the case of China it is her wealth, both actual
and potential, that attracts the nations to her gates. One
is anxious to come down into these favoured regions ; while