Page 463 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

460 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

British India; and that neither, therefore, should be permitted, acting either on

its own initiative or under inspiration or duress from Russia, to weaken the
other.
For the rest of the century Russia’s efforts against the Ottoman empire were
directed primarily to the elimination of Turkish rule from the Balkans. These

efforts were not opposed by Britain except when they threatened to secure for
Russia direct access to the Mediterranean. Instead, British policy was directed
towards the preservation of the Ottoman empire in Asia and the prevention of a
Russian ascendancy at Constantinople. Although Russia wrested possession of

Batum from the Turks in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-8, there seemed less
chance that she would make further inroads into the Ottoman dominions in
Asia Minor in the last quarter of the century than that she might acquire
further slices of Persian territory, as a consequence of having outflanked that

power east of the Caspian by her advances into Central Asia in the twenty years
between 1864 and 1884. As it happened, the Russians were quite content at this
stage to pause and digest their new conquests, and not to continue their
advance southwards into Khorasan and Afghanistan.

Two important consequences followed from the Russian conquest of Central
Asia. One was that Russia, like Britain in India, had become a Muslim as well
as a Christian power; the other was that, in addition to drawing much closer to
the approaches to India, she had shown herself to be capable of undertaking

arduous and sustained military operations deep in the heart of Asia. Hitherto
the British had believed that the preservation of Turkey, Persia and Afghanis­
tan as barrier powers to India could be achieved by diplomatic, political and
economic means. Now they had to consider whether and by what routes the
Russians might attempt an actual advance to the gates of India; whether it

would be from Armenia by way of Lake Van or Persian Azerbaijan to the Tigris
and thence to Baghdad and the Gulf; or from Transcaspia by way of Merv and
Herat to Kandahar; or from Khiva to Bukhara and on over the Hindu Kush to
Kabul; or by any one of a dozen alternative, if difficult, approaches. The

Russians apparently regarded Persia as the key. Northern Persia in the thirty
years between the conquest of Merv in 1884 and the outbreak of the First
World War became virtually a Russian province. The Russians also evinced a
growing interest in the Gulf, opening a consulate-general at Bushire an
regularly dispatching warships to cruise in its waters. When Britain extende a

veiled protectorate over Kuwait by means of the secret agreement of 1899, er
action was influenced as much by reports of Russian endeavours to secure
permission from the Sublime Porte to build a railway through Turkey to t e

Gulf as it was by Germany’s bid to obtain a concession to extend the Ber m-to
Constantinople line onwards to Baghdad and Kuwait. manv’s
By the turn of the century, or even earlier, it was clear that er
growing penetration of the Ottoman empire and Russia’s P'
derance in Persia and Central Asia had made it impossible for Britain