Page 104 - PERSIAN 5 1905_1911

2 REVIEW BY THE POLITICAL RESIDENT IN THE PERSIAN GULP.

The. past year, from an administrative point of view, may perhaps be best de­
scribed as one of expectant inactivity. There has been no scope for energy or
enterprise in new directions and in regard to one and all of the posts whose passing
history is now dealt with, it may, I think, truly be said, in each case, that one-half
the energies of the representative of British interests have been devoted, no
doubt with good reason, to keeping the other within check, often under suffi.
ciently trying conditions.
Two epoch-making developments have contributed to induce this necessity.
Firstly the determination of His Majesty’s Government to come to an amicable
settlement w^th Russia in regard to our respective and often conflicting interests
in the Middle East and the progress of negotiations in furtherance of this settle­
ment. Secondly the spread of the nationalist movement in Persia resulting in
the grant of a constitution by MozafTcr-ud-din Shah by Firman of 1st January
1907, while actually on his death-bed.
I may mention here that contrary to precedent the actual demise of His
Majesty after a lingering illness on the 5th January was received with almost
complete indifference throughout the country ; but his long illness and the conse-
quent unsettled condition of affairs in Tehran resulted in the prevalence of much
disorder in the distant provinces and Fars especially was a prey to it. Mozaffcr-
ud-din Shah was succeeded on 9th January by Prince Mahommed Ali Mirza, Gover­
nor-General of Azerbaijan, his eldest son by a non-Kajar wife, to whom he be­
queathed a most difficult inheritance which makes the future both of the
sovereign and of the country a matter for much speculation and grave concern.
With extremely delicate ncgociations in progress between the Russian Gov­
ernment and ourselves in regard to our spheres of interest or disinterest in Persia,
and with the existence within the country itself of a strong wave of national feeling,
easily convertible in its early stages into an anti-foreign movement, it is not difficult
to realise the necessity which has existed for extreme caution on the part of the
representatives of Government in the conduct of their duties within the sphere
in question, having for its object the avoidance of any action or measure calculated,
either to embarrass the negociations above mentioned, or to excite the suspicions
of the Persian public and Press, already considerably aroused, by rumours of the
contemplated entente, and convinced, according to their lights, that any such un­
natural fraternization between the Lion and the Bear can but presage ill for the
future of Iran.
Under such conditions all local considerations have had to give way to
weightier interests, and thus it is that the history of the several outposts of the
Bushire Residency for the past year furnishes few new themes of special interest
or importance, and leaves the salient questions mentioned in last year’s Report
where we left them.
With these prefatory remarks I may briefly discuss the several reports here
embodied.
I.—BUSHIRE AND FARS.
The progress of German commercial competition, including the acquisition
of mining rights on Abu Musa Island by Herr Wonckhaus ; the institution of an
almost international campaign against the Persian Gulf Quarantine System as ad­
ministered by the Government of India for His Majesty the Shah, a campaign
to which jealousy of the special position of Great Britain seems to have gjyen
no little zest; the travail of Bushire, in common with her sister townships, m the
birth of constitutional ideas and the aftermath thereof,—these are the salient poin s
of the last year’s history of Bushire. Similarly, that of Shiraz is almost entire >
concerned with the convulsions of the same infant prodigy, aggravated by e
general chaos and anarchy existing throughout Fars, as the result of several years
of gross raisgovemment. . . „ . r v.
It is difficult to conceive how by its own unaided efforts the Persia *
ernment can ever hope to bring back these distant provinces to a state ol or c
prosperity.
II.—ARABISTAN.
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Concession Syndicate the inception of whose operations was chronicled ast y