War against the Turks, have shown a fiery spirit of nationalism. Moreover, the fire is fanned by Arab colonies and Arab publications in Egypt, in New York, in Latin America. Whether this nationalism will communicate itself to the people at large, depends to some extent on British and French policy. And Great Britain and France have done much to promote Arab nationalism. During the war, to enlist Arab aid against the Turks, British and French authorities held out bright hopes of an independent Arab confederacy, then, by dashing these hopes to the ground, created a resentment that only intensified the national spirit. When Arab leaders in Syria and Palestine desired to make an Arab prince their king, a French general expelled the prince. Great Britain, nothing loath to discommode her ally, gave this same prince a crown and made him king of "Iraq" (the Arabic name for Mesopotamia).

More than that, the London cabinet adopted what seemed to be a brilliant general policy toward Arabia; it would conciliate the Arabs by putting the sons of Hussein the Arab king of Hedjaz on convenient thrones as kings or princes under British supervision. The new king of Iraq, Prince Feisal, was one of these sons; his brother was made emir (prince) of Kerak, or Transjordan, the land east of the Palestinian Dead Sea. Further, for a time the statesmen of London seemed inclined to favor the idea of making the King of Hedjaz caliph of all Islam, in place of the deposed Turkish sultan. The conception of this policy was unquestionably bold, and brilliant. If successful, it would make Britain ultimately the patron and protector of an Arab confederacy, and through the Arab caliph, Hussein, of the world of Islam. One difficulty, however, was that the very fact of British support made Hussein and his sons unpopular with other Arab chieftains, and perhaps with many of the tribesmen. Indeed, the warlike Ibn Saud, sultan of Nejd and leader of a puritanical Moslem sect (the Wahabis), invaded and conquered the Hedjaz. Hussein was overthrown, though his sons remained on their thrones in Iraq and Kerak. Admitting the failure of their former policy, the British, ever flexible, now made terms with the victorious Ibn Saud.

Quickly the moving finger writes. The Near East, penetrated by German imperialism through the Bagdad Railway, becomes an arena for Anglo-French imperialism, as Germany is elimi

nated; American capital enters the field as a politically disinterested third party, to seek oil, and business profit; Turkey, ceasing to be an empire, becomes a defiant nation; and the Arab tribesmen stir uneasily with the ferment of nationalism. The historic "question of the Near East" has passed through many transformations, until to-day it is but part of the world-wide question, what will be the issue of the conflict between Europe's imperialism and the new Oriental nationalism.

CHAPTER XII

ANGLO-RUSSIAN RIVALRY

IN THE MIDDLE EAST

BETWEEN the Near East and the Far East, between Turkey on one side and China and India on the other, is an intermediate zone which may be called the Middle East,' in which the clash of Russian against British imperialism menaced the peace of Europe for a generation, prior to 1907, and in which, after 1907, the combination of Russian and British imperialism was one of the most potent factors in shaping the international situation which led to the Great War. The region is the more interesting to American students because since the war it has become one of the battlefields in which American oil interests have waged war against British rivals, and because American influence has here been arrayed against British imperialism.

RUSSIAN AGGRESSION AND BRITISH PRECAUTIONS

One thinks of Persia as the home of ancient conquerors and emperors, or as the source of luxurious rugs; it would be nearer reality to visualize camel caravans crossing deserts infested by bandits, tribesmen dwelling in oases, a few cities where patient women weave rugs and loquacious tradesmen haggle in the bazaars. Persia is three times as large as France, but onetwelfth as densely populated, chiefly because most of the country consists of desert and semi-desert plateau; only in small and scattered irrigated spots are there more than thirty inhabitants per square mile. North of Persia is the desert, salt-encrusted basin of the shrinking Aral Sea, bordered by broad belts of steppe, of tablelands where just enough rain falls to cover the soil with grass for the cattle of wandering herdsmen. This is

'The designation is merely for convenience. Sometimes the "Near East" is made to include Persia, and the "Middle East" pushed farther east. There is nothing sacred about such terms.

Western Turkestan. But in the eastern part of this country and in Afghanistan the mountain slopes, rising toward the loftiest peaks of the earth's crust, are better watered and more thickly peopled. All things considered, this was not an attractive field of economic enterprise for imperialists of the last century.1

Yet there was a minor economic interest, financial and commercial. An English financier, Baron Julius de Reuter, founded the Imperial Bank of Persia in 1889 to lend money to the Shah, and to finance mines, if minerals should be discovered. A rival Bank of Loans (Banque des Prêts de Perse) was set up by the Russian ministry of finance, and between Reuter's concern and the Russians there developed a keen competition in the astonishing business of encouraging spendthrift shahs to spend and borrow more freely. A certain humor appears in the situation, when one remembers that Russia herself was borrowing from France, while lending to the Shah. Lending money to the Shah, however, was profitable, for like all such Moslem sovereigns, he had to pay exceedingly high rates of interest. Moreover, finance here as in Tunis was not wholly economic; there was always an ulterior motive, of obtaining political control through loans. And then, there was the possibility of obtaining valuable concessions; for example the Russians got concessions to build a railway from the Russian border to Teheran, the capital, and to prospect for oil and coal. Commercially, a few English merchants were interested in the Persian wares, and, even more, in the caravan traffic from western India, through Persia. Such economic interests in themselves were relatively small and insignificant, but as advance guards for other interests they formed a sort of skirmishing line, provocative of political rivalry."

Much more powerful was the strategic interest. For British imperialists, the Middle East was tremendously important as a zone of defense protecting British India from European rivals, above all, from Russia. For Russian imperialists, the same region was not only a natural field of expansion, south from the Caucasus and Siberia, and not only an approach to India

'Bowman, The New World, gives the setting in two vivid and authoritative chapters (29-30).

2 See Maclean's report on trade prospects, Parl. Papers, 1904 (Cd. 2146). For example, see Curzon's dispatch of Sept. 21, 1899, Parl. Papers, 1908 (Cd. 3882), and his books on Persia (1892) and Russia in Central Asia (1889); compare Chirol, The Middle Eastern Question (1903).