‏"ملخص الأحداث والتدابير الرئيسية التي اتخذها سمو نائب الملك اللورد كرزون من كيدلستون، نائب الملك والحاكم العام للهند في إدارة الخارجية. ‏I‏. يناير ١٨٩٩-أبريل ١٩٠٤. ‏II‏. ديسمبر ١٩٠٤-نوفمبر ١٩٠٥. المجلد IV. بلاد فارس والخليج الفارسي." [و‎‎٩] (٣٨٦/٢٢)

5
The other quarter calling for special notice is Seistan. In his work
on Persia, published in 1892, Lord Curzon had drawn attention to the
potentialities of this area. In 1899 the local struggle between Russian
and British interests had barely begun. But the intrinsic factors of the
case are the same to-day as in that year. Situated at the point of junction
of the frontiers of Persia, Afghanistan,
Special interestg in Seistan. and British territory, Seistan must closely
touch the destinies of all three countries.
It is the one tract in all Eastern Persia or Western Afghanistan that has once
been fully irrigated and cultivated by a dense population, and it can still
be restored to its pristine glory at no prohibitive cost. The power holding
Seistan must dominate the whole Perso-Afghan frontier. The district lies
midway between the Russian frontier and the Persian Gulf; to the west the
great Persian desert stretches its inhospitable sands; to the east it is hemmed
by the Afghan border tracts which are almost as sterile. Erom Transcaspia to
the sea no advance is possible through Persian territorv save by way of Seistan;
while its position upon the exposed flank of Afghanistan must render its
occupation of peculiar value to any Power contemplating a hostile move
against that country. The Kandahar-Herat line could not he held with
safety by India, nor the valley of the Helmand defended, were a hostile Power
in possession of Seistan. It can hardly be doubted that a day will come
when, in response to an external challenge, Great Britain will be obliged
to advance to Kandahar. When Kandahar is re-occupied, the valley of the
Helmand will he occupied with it. Then will come the time when the
channel and the valley of that river, now running parallel to the British
border, though at no great distance from it, having passed under British
control, the regeneration of Seistan w ill for the first time become practicable,
and it will be possible to revive its former name as one of the great granaries
of that part of Asia. No wise man can be anxious to precipitate or even
to hasten that consummation. But no wisdom in the world can greatly
retard it; and when the hour strikes, it is essential that Seistan should be
waiting to be regenerated by us, instead of having already been absorbed in
the regenerative embraces of others. The only alternative is to make it a
desert by extensive irrigation works on the upper course of the Helmand, an
expedient that could only be adopted by a civilised Government in the last
resort.
Such in outline were the interests of Great Britain in Persia, as
defined by Lord Curzon in the despatch in which he reviewed the entire situa
tion when addressing His Majesty’s Government in September 1899. But
. . British interests found a formidable
Hussian activity. rival in the activity of Persia’s northern
neighbour. In the north-west the Georgian railways had been pushed as far
south as Kars; and a line from this point to the Russo-Persian frontier
had already been surveyed. In the north a road from Enzeli to the capital was
already approaching completion. Russian goods had driven out a large pro
portion of the British trade from Tehran, and had reached as far
as Ispahan. At the latter place a Russian Consul-General had been
installed and had already set to work to undermine the long-standing British
predominance. On the northeast the proximity of the Trans-Caspian Railway
and of her Central Asian garrisons, the construction of a road from Ashkabad to
Meshed, and the expenditure of large sums of money had enabled Russia to
take up a commanding position in the commerce and politics of Khorasan. In
1889 a Russian Consul-General had been appointed to Meshed, and had set out
on a campaign of what may he termed the Russification of Khorasan. News
agents, surveyors, and emissaries of every kind, Native and European, had been
despatched to Tabbas and Neh, Birjand, and Nasirabad, and had penetrated as
far south as Persian Baluchistan and Bampur. Under the pretext of sanitary
precautions, a cordon of Russian Cossacks, Russian officers, and Russian doctors
had been established for the purpose of asserting Russian influence and strangling
British trade. British imports into Meshed which in 1893-94 had represented a
value of £198,500, and in 1894-95 of £312,000, had shrunk by 1897-98 to
£130,000; and in 1897 the first British officers despatched to Seistan to safe-