The Middle Eastern Question |
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Author:
| Chirol, Valentine |
ISBN: | 978-0-217-12593-2 |
Publication Date: | Aug 2009 |
Publisher: | General Books LLC
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Book Format: | Paperback |
List Price: | USD $23.74 |
Book Description:
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THROUGH THE GATES OF THE CASPIAN THE shortest and most convenient route for the traveller proceeding from Western Europe to the Persian capital is by rail through Russia to Baku and thence by steamer across the Caspian to Enzeli and Resht. He will find it also in many ways the most instructive,...
More DescriptionPurchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THROUGH THE GATES OF THE CASPIAN THE shortest and most convenient route for the traveller proceeding from Western Europe to the Persian capital is by rail through Russia to Baku and thence by steamer across the Caspian to Enzeli and Resht. He will find it also in many ways the most instructive, for it will afford him an opportunity of noting the energy and enterprise with which Russia has not only developed her means of communication in that direction, but has practically secured to herself the monopoly of access to Northern Persia. Less than twenty years ago, when I was first in Persia, the main railway system of Russia was entirely cut off from the line, which had then only been quite recently completed between Batum and Baku, by the great mountain range of the Caucasus, across which there was only the old military road from Vladikavkas to Tiflis over the Dariel Pass. Russia still considered herself bound by Article 59 of the Treaty of Berlin, under which she had undertaken to make Batum, which had been ceded to her under that instrument by Turkey, a free port essentially commercial, and, by way of Batum, goods for Persia and Central Asia could still be imported from Europe under a transit pass which exempted them from the payment of Russian import duties. At that time, both for freight and passengers, the most commodious route to Northern Persia was therefore unquestionably by Constantinople and the Black Sea to Batum and thence by rail, via Tiflis, to Baku. This has long since ceased. By a mere stroke of the pen Russia freed herself, in spite of Lord Rosebery's cogent and logically irrefutable protest, from the obligations she had contracted at Berlin. Not only has Batum ceased to be a free port, essentially commercial, but the exaction of Russian import and..