Distant Ties: Germany, the Ottoman Empire, and the Construction of the Baghdad Railway: Germany, the

Jonathan S. McMurray. Distant Ties: Germany, the Ottoman Empire, and the Construction of the Baghdad Railway. Westport and London: Praeger, x +
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A well-financed British plan collapsed due to the outbreak of the Boer War. A well-financed French proposal titled the Imperial Ottoman railway [17] enabled them to become financiers of the winning Deutsche Bank plan.

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Other nations of Europe paid little attention to the building of the railway lines until when the Ottoman Government gave permission to an Ottoman corporation to build the railway line from Konia to Baghdad. This Baghdad Railway Company was controlled by a few German banks. McMurray rejects the theory that the railway tied Turkey to Germany. There was concern in Russia , France , and Britain after as the implications of the German scheme to construct a great Berlin-Baghdad railway became apparent.

A railway that would link Berlin to the Persian Gulf would provide Germany with a connection to its southernmost colonies in Africa , i. The railway might eventually have strengthened the Ottoman Empire and its ties to Germany and might have shifted the balance of power in the region. Despite obstructions at the diplomatic level, work slowly began on the railway.

Both geographical and political obstacles prevented the completion of the Baghdad railway before World War I commenced in Much of the construction work was undertaken by Philipp Holzmann. The Mersin —Yenice—Adana line existed prior to the construction of the Bagdad railway and was used for the latter in its Yenice—Adana section. The initial reaction of Britain was one of strong support. A long article outlining the positive benefits of the enterprise appeared in the Times newspaper.

The railway would obviously compete with British trade in Mesopotamia, but this would not happen for many years. However, in the Hamburg-American Steamship Line announced its intention to run regular steamships between Europe and the Persian Gulf.

Distant Ties

After a futile price war the British lines, which had lost their monopoly, came to agreement in with their competitors, ending a rivalry which had caused considerable political concern. In the railway company looked to build a branch line to Alexandretta from Aleppo to pick up on the valuable trade of Northern Syria and the Northern Mesopotamian valley.

However the Young Turk government could not offer further railway concessions without raising customs duties from 11 to 14 percent. Such a raise required the agreement of all the powers, but was vetoed by Britain after Sir Edward Grey spoke in the House of Commons: The British realised that the railways would be slightly too close to their oilfields in Persia.

The British were worried that the Young Turks could block off oil supplies vital for the navy. Discussion of the railway's role as a contributing factor to the outbreak of war are complicated by two issues:. Firstly, historians and political analysts who wrote about this issue directly after the war were not in possession of closed diplomatic records.

Full diplomatic documents of the German government were released between and , British documents between and Only some Russian documents were released, and Italian documents only came out after the Second World War. Secondly, war historians tend to give an interpretation of the facts that is clouded by their own partisanship, political orientation, language, and contemporary perspectives. Regardless of diplomacy, financing and agreements, and later points of view, the existence of the railway would have created a threat to British dominance over German trade, as it would have given German industry access to oil, and a port in the Persian Gulf.

The importance of oil as opposed to coal as fuel was recognised, as it could greatly improve the performance and capacity of the rival navies. The presence of the British there, and the creation of Kuwait to block non-British access to the Persian Gulf speaks to the strategic importance. Other historians have argued that intractable nationality issues in the denial of self-determination to minority groups were among the dominant causes of World War I.

Some of the optimism should be attributed to the willingness of the German government to compose long-standing differences Many economic and colonial issues which had been causing friction between French, German and British governments before , such as the financing of the Berlin-Baghdad railway and the future disposition of the Portuguese colonies, had been resolved by the summer of Eventually an agreement over the Baghdad railway issue was reached between Britain and the Ottoman Government in in the following terms: First, there should be no differential treatment on any railway in Asiatic Turkey; second, two British representatives approved by HMG should be admitted to the Board of the Baghdad Railway Company; third, the terminus of the railway should be at Basra; last, no railway should be constructed from Basra to the Gulf without the sanction of HMG.

Berlin–Baghdad railway

This was followed by an Anglo-German agreement on the similar lines in London on 15 June However these agreements, at the last eleventh hour, just prior to the outbreak of the Great War, were not turned into practical actions, but remained to be unreal. However, war began on 1 August — and one day later the secret treaty establishing the Ottoman-German Alliance was signed, perhaps giving credence to the notion that the issue had not been fully resolved. In fact, restriction of German access to Mesopotamia and its oil, and strategic exclusion from rail access to the Persian Gulf was enforced by British military presence during World War I, and afterwards in the Treaty of Versailles by removal of the would-be Baghdad railway from German ownership.

Thus the potential consequences to Anglo-German economic rivalry in oil and trade by the existence of the railway, were ultimately addressed by ownership and outright control, rather than by agreement.

Germany, the Ottoman Empire, and the Construction of the Baghdad Railway

Another spur, heading east from Aleppo, ended at Nusaybin. Additionally some rail was laid starting in Baghdad reaching north to Tikrit and south to Kut.

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This left a gap of some kilometres miles between the railway lines. Additionally, there were three mountains which the railway was going to go through, but the tunnels through these three mountains were not complete. So the railway was, in fact, broken into four different sections at the start of the war. The total time to get from Constantinople to Baghdad during the war was 22 days. The breaks in the railway meant that the Ottoman government had significant difficulties in sending supplies and reinforcements to the Mesopotamian Front.

The fighting in Mesopotamia remained somewhat isolated from the rest of the war. During the conflict, Turkish and German workers, together with allied prisoners of war, laboured to complete the railway for military purposes but with limited manpower and so many more important things to spend money on, only two of the gaps were closed. In , the Treaty of Versailles cancelled all German rights to the Baghdad railway , however, the Deutsche Bank transferred its holdings to a Swiss bank.

Further west, the Treaty also set the border immediately north of the town and railway station of Meidan Ekbis. People in Turkey , Italy , France, and Britain created various arrangements that gave a certain degree of control over the Baghdad railway to various indistinct interests in those nations. Investors, speculators, and financiers were involved by in secretive and clandestine ways. The British Army had completed the southeastern section from Baghdad to Basra, so that part was under British control. The French held negotiations to obtain some degree of control over the central portion of the railway, and Turkish interests controlled the oldest sections that had been constructed inside of Turkey, but talks continued to be held after The United States involvement in the Near East began in when Turkey approved the Chester concession , which aroused disapprovals from France and the United Kingdom.

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