The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

by Frankopan, Peter

  64Nicolson to Hardinge, 18 April 1912, Hardinge MSS, vol. 92.

  65Grey to Nicholson, 19 March 1907; Memorandum, Sir Edward Grey, 15 March 1907, FO 418/38.

  66Clark, Sleepwalkers, pp. 85, 188; H. Afflerbach, Der Dreibund. Europäische Grossmacht- und Allianz-politik vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg (Vienna, 2002), pp. 628–32.

  67Grey to Nicolson, 18 April 1910, in G. Gooch and H. Temperley (eds), British Documents on the Origins of the War, 1898–1914, 11 vols (London, 1926–38), 6, p. 461.

  68Cited by B. de Siebert, Entente Diplomacy and the World (New York, 1921), p. 99.

  69I. Klein, ‘The Anglo-Russian Convention and the Problem of Central Asia, 1907–1914’, Journal of British Studies 11.1 (1971), esp. 140–3.

  70Grey to Buchanan, 18 March 1914, Grey MSS, FO 800/74, pp. 272–3.

  71Nicolson to Grey, 24 March 1909, FO 800/337, p. 312; K. Wilson, The Policy of the Entente: Essays on the Determinants of British Foreign Policy (Cambridge, 1985), p. 38.

  72Nicolson to Grey, 24 March 1909, FO 800/337, p. 312.

  73Cited by N. Ferguson, The Pity of War (London, 1998), p. 73.

  74Cited by K. Wilson, Empire and Continent: Studies in British Foreign Policy from the 1880s to the First World War (London, 1987), pp. 144–5; G. Schmidt, ‘Contradictory Postures and Conflicting Objectives: The July Crisis’, in G. Schöllgen, Escape into War? The Foreign Policy of Imperial Germany (Oxford, 1990), p. 139.

  75Cited by R. MacDaniel, The Shuster Mission and the Persian Constitutional Revolution (Minneapolis, 1974), p. 108.

  76T. Otte, The Foreign Office Mind: The Making of British Foreign Policy, 1965–1914 (Cambridge, 2011), p. 352.

  77Bertie to Mallet, 11 June 1904 replying to Mallet to Bertie, 2 June 1904, FO 800/176.

  78The Schlieffen plan is controversial – in its context and precise date of composition, and in its use in the build-up to the First World War. See G. Gross, ‘There was a Schlieffen Plan: New Sources on the History of German Military Planning’, War in History 15 (2008), 389–431; T. Zuber, Inventing the Schlieffen Plan (Oxford, 2002); and idem, The Real German War Plan (Stroud, 2011).

  79J. Sanborn, Imperial Apocalypse: The Great War and the Destruction of the Russian Empire (Oxford, 2014), p. 25. For Plan 19 and its variants, also see I. Rostunov, Russki front pervoi mirovoi voiny (Moscow, 1976), pp. 91–2.

  80Kaiser Wilhelm to Morley, 3 November 1907, cited by Cohen, ‘British Strategy in Mesopotamia’, 176. For the Kaiser’s involvement in the railway, see J. Röhl, Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile, 1900–1941, tr. S. de Bellaigue and R. Bridge (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 90–5.

  81R. Zilch, Die Reichsbank und die finanzielle Kriegsvorbereitung 1907 bis 1914 (Berlin, 1987), pp. 83–8.

  82A. Hitler, Mein Kampf (London, repr. 2007), p. 22. See here, B. Rubin and W. Schwanitz, Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East (New Haven, 2014), pp. 22–5.

  83D. Hoffmann, Der Sprung ins Dunkle oder wie der I. Weltkrieg entfesselt wurde (Leipzig, 2010), pp. 325–30; also A. Mombauer, Helmuth von Moltke and the Origins of the First World War (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 172–4.

  84R. Musil, ‘Europäertum, Krieg, Deutschtum’, Die neue Rundschau 25 (1914), 1303.

  85W. Le Queux, The Invasion of 1910 (London, 1906); Andrew, Defence of the Realm, p. 8; Ferguson, Pity of War, pp. 1–11.

  86‘Britain scared by Russo-German deal’, New York Times, 15 January 1911. Also see D. Lee, Europe’s Crucial Years: The Diplomatic Background of World War 1, 1902–1914 (Hanover, NH, 1974), pp. 217–20.

  87A. Mombauer, Helmuth von Moltke and the Origins of the First World War (Cambridge, 2001), p. 120.

  88R. Bobroff, Roads to Glory: Late Imperial Russia and the Turkish Straits (London, 2006), pp. 52–5.

  89Grigorevich to Sazonov, 19 January 1914, in Die Internationalen Beziehungen im Zeitalter des Imperialismus, 8 vols (Berlin, 1931–43), Series 3, 1, pp. 45–7, cited by Clark, Sleepwalkers, p. 485. Also see M. Aksakal, The Ottoman Road to War in 1914: The Ottoman Empire and the First World War (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 42–56.

  90S. McMeekin, The Russian Origins of the First World War (Cambridge, MA, 2011), pp. 29, 36–8.

  91Girs to Sazonov, 13 November 1913, cited by McMeekin, Russian Origins, pp. 30–1.

  92W. Kampen, Studien zur deutschen Türkeipolitik in der Zeit Wilhelms II (Kiel, 1968), 39–57; M. Fuhrmann, Der Traum vom deutschen Orient: Zwei deutsche Kolonien im Osmanischen Reich, 1851–1918 (Frankfurt-am-Main, 2006).

  93See J. Röhl, The Kaiser and his Court: Wilhelm II and the Government of Germany, tr. T. Cole (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 162–89.

  94Nicolson to Goschen, 5 May 1914, FO 800/374.

  95For the transfusion, A. Hustin, ‘Principe d’une nouvelle méthode de transfusion muqueuse’, Journal Médical de Bruxelles 2 (1914), 436; for forest fires, Z. Frenkel, ‘Zapiski o zhiznennom puti’, Voprosy istorii 1 (2007), 79; for the German football, C. Bausenwein, Was ist Was: Fußballbuch (Nuremberg, 2008), p. 60; A. Meynell, ‘Summer in England, 1914’, in The Poems of Alice Meynell: Complete Edition (Oxford, 1940), p. 100.

  96H. Pogge von Strandmann, ‘Germany and the Coming of War’, in R. Evans and H. Pogge von Strandmann (eds), The Coming of the First World War (Oxford, 2001), pp. 87–8.

  97T. Ashton and B. Harrison (eds), The History of the University of Oxford, 8 vols (Oxford, 1994), 8, pp. 3–4.

  98For the details of the assassins’ training, the attempts on Franz Ferdinand’s life and his murder, see the court documents concerning the trial of Princip and his accomplices, The Austro-Hungarian Red Book, Section II, Appendices I-13, nos. 20–34 (1914–15).

  99Clark, Sleepwalkers, p. 562.

  100E. Grey, Twenty-Five Years, 1892–1916 (New York, 1925), p. 20.

  101I. Hull, ‘Kaiser Wilhelm II and the “Liebenberg Circle”’, in J. Röhl and N. Sombart (eds), Kaiser Wilhelm II: New Interpretations (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 193–220; H. Herwig, ‘Germany’, in R. Hamilton and H. Herwig, The Origins of the First World War (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 150–87.

  102Conversation with Sazonov, reported by V. Kokovtsov, Out of my Past: The Memoirs of Count Kokovtsov, Russian Minister of Finance, 1904–1914, ed. H. Fisher (Oxford, 1935), p. 348.

  103Bureau du Levant to Lecomte, 2 July 1908, Archives des Ministres des Affaires Etrangères: correspondance politique et commerciale (nouvelle série) 1897–1918. Perse, vol. 3, folio 191.

  104Clark, Sleepwalkers, pp. 325–6.

  105Clerk, ‘Anglo-Persian Relations in Persia’, 21 July 1914, FO 371/2076/33484.

  106Buchanan to Nicolson, 16 April 1914, in Gooch and Temperley, British Documents, 10.2, pp. 784–5.

  107Buchanan to Grey, 25 July 1914, in Gooch and Temperley, British Documents, 11, p. 94.

  108‘Memorandum communicated to Sir G. Buchanan by M. Sazonof’, 11 July 1914, in FO 371/2076; M. Paléologue, La Russie des tsars pendant la grande guerre, 3 vols (Paris, 1921), 1, p. 23.

  109K. Jarausch, ‘The Illusion of Limited War: Bethmann Hollweg’s Calculated Risk, July 1914’, Central European History 2 (1969), 58; idem, The Enigmatic Chancellor: Bethmann Hollweg and the Hubris of Imperial Germany (London, 1973), p. 96.

  110J. McKay, Pioneers for Profit: Foreign Entrepreneurship and Russian Industrialization, 1885–1913 (Chicago, 1970), pp. 28–9. Also here see D. Lieven, Russia and the Origins of the First World War (London, 1983); O. Figes, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924 (London, 1996), esp. pp. 35–83.

  111D. Fromkin, ‘The Great Game in Asia’, Foreign Affairs (1980), 951; G. D. Clayton, Britain and the Eastern Question: Missolonghi to Gallipoli (London, 1971), p. 139.

  112E. Vandiver, Stand in the Trench, Achilles: Classical Receptions in British Poetry of the Great War (Oxford, 2010), pp. 263–9.

  113H. Strachan, The Outbreak of the First World War (Oxford, 2004), pp. 181ff.

  114W. Churchill, The World Crisis, 1911–1918, with New Introduction by Martin Gilbert (New York, 2005), pp. 667–8; for the
views about the Churchill family, Hardinge to O’Beirne, 9 July 1908, Hardinge MSS 30.

  115E. Campion Vaughan, Some Desperate Glory (Edinburgh, 1982), p. 232.

  116HM Stationery Office, Statistics of the Military Efforts of the British Empire during the Great War, 1914–1920 (London, 1922), p. 643.

  117Grey to Goschen, 5 November 1908, FO 800/61, p. 2.

  118Rupert Brooke to Jacques Raverat, 1 August 1914, in G. Keynes (ed.), The Letters of Rupert Brooke (London, 1968), p. 603.

  119W. Letts, ‘The Spires of Oxford’, in The Spires of Oxford and Other Poems (New York, 1917), pp. 3–4.

  120The Treaty of Peace between the Allied and Associated Powers and Germany (London, 1919).

  121Sanborn, Imperial Apocalypse, p. 233.

  122H. Strachan, Financing the First World War (Oxford, 2004), p. 188.

  123Ibid. Also see K. Burk, Britain, America and the Sinews of War, 1914–1918 (Boston, 1985); M. Horn, Britain, France and the Financing of the First World War (Montreal, 2002), pp. 57–75.

  124Above all, Strachan, Financing the First World War; also see Ferguson, Pity of War, esp. pp. 318ff., and B. Eichengreen, Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919–1939 (Oxford, 1992).

  Chapter 17 – The Road of Black Gold

  1D. Carment, ‘D’Arcy, William Knox’, in B. Nairn and G. Serle (eds), Australian Dictionary of Biography (Melbourne, 1981), 8, pp. 207–8.

  2J. Banham and J. Harris (eds), William Morris and the Middle Ages (Manchester, 1984), pp. 187–92; L. Parry, ‘The Tapestries of Sir Edward Burne-Jones’, Apollo 102 (1972), 324–8.

  3National Portrait Gallery, NPG 6251 (14), (15).

  4For the Background here see R. Ferrier and J. Bamburg, The History of the British Petroleum Company, 3 vols (London, 1982–2000), 1, pp. 29ff.

  5S. Cronin, ‘Importing Modernity: European Military Missions to Qajar Iran’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 50.1 (2008), 197–226.

  6Lansdowne to Hardinge, 18 November 1902, in A. Hardinge, A Diplomatist in the East (London, 1928), pp. 286–96. Also see R. Greaves, ‘British Policy in Persia, 1892–1903 II’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 28.2 (1965), 302–3.

  7Wolff to Kitabgi, 25 November 1900, D’Arcy Concession; Kitabgi Dossier and Correspondence regarding Kitabgi’s claims, BP 69454.

  8See in general Th. Korres, Hygron pyr: ena hoplo tes Vizantines nautikes taktikes (Thessaloniki, 1989); J. Haldon, ‘A Possible Solution to the Problem of Greek Fire’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 70 (1977), 91–9; J. Partington, A History of Greek Fire and Gunpowder (Cambridge, 1960), pp. 1–41.

  9W. Loftus, ‘On the Geology of Portions of the Turco-Persian Frontier and of the Districts Adjoining’, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society 11 (1855), 247–344.

  10M. Elm, Oil, Power, and Principle: Iran’s Oil Nationalization and its Aftermath (Syracuse, 1992), p. 2.

  11Letter of Sayyid Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī to Mujtahid, in E. Browne, The Persian Revolution of 1905–1909 (London, 1966), pp. 18–19.

  12P. Kazemzadeh, Russia and Britain in Persia, 1864–1914: A Study in Imperialism (New Haven, 1968), pp. 122, 127.

  13Griffin to Rosebery, 6 December 1893, FO 60/576.

  14Currie Minute, 28 October 1893, FO 60/576.

  15J. de Morgan, ‘Notes sur les gîtes de Naphte de Kend-e-Chirin (Gouvernement de Ser-i-Paul)’, Annales des Mines (1892), 1–16; idem, Mission scientifique en Perse, 5 vols (Paris, 1894–1905); B. Redwood, Petroleum: Its Production and Use (New York, 1887); J. Thomson and B. Redwood, Handbook on Petroleum for Inspectors under the Petroleum Acts (London, 1901).

  16Kitabgi to Drummond-Wolff, 25 December 1900, Kitabgi Dossier and Correspondence regarding Kitabgi’s claims, BP 69454.

  17Gosselin to Hardinge, 12 March 1901, FO 248/733; Marriott mentions the letter of introduction in his Diary, 17 April 1901, BP 70298.

  18Marriott Diary, pp. 16, 25, BP 70298.

  19Hardinge to Lansdowne, 12 May 1901, FO 60/640; Marriott Diary, BP 70298.

  20Marriott to Knox D’Arcy, 21 May, BP 70298; Knox D’Arcy to Marriott, 23 May, BP 70298.

  21Ferrier and Bamberg, History of the British Petroleum Company, pp. 33–41.

  22Ibid., Appendix 1, pp. 640–3.

  23N. Fatemi, Oil Diplomacy: Powder Keg in Iran (New York, 1954), p. 357.

  24Hardinge to Lansdowne, 30 May 1900, FO 60/731.

  25Marriott Diary, 23 May 1901, BP 70298.

  26Knox D’Arcy to Lansdowne, 27 June 1901, FO 60/731; Greaves, ‘British Policy in Persia’, 296–8.

  27Hardinge to Lansdowne, 30 May 1900, FO 60/731.

  28Ferrier and Bamberg, British Petroleum, pp. 54–9.

  29D’Arcy to Reynolds, 15 April 1902, BP H12/24, p. 185.

  30Letter Book, Persian Concession 1901 to 1902, BP 69403.

  31Bell to Jenkin, 13 July, Cash Receipt Book, BP 69531.

  32A. Marder (ed.), Fear God and Dread Nought: The Correspondence of Admiral the First Sea Lord Lord Fisher of Kilverstone, 3 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1952), 1, p. 185. For this and for Britain’s turn to oil before the First World War see Yergin, The Prize, pp. 134ff.

  33Kitabgi Dossier and Correspondence regarding Kitabgi’s claims, BP 69454; Hardinge to Grey, 23 December 1905, FO 416/26; T. Corley, A History of the Burmah Oil Company, 1886–1924 (London, 1983), pp. 95–111.

  34Ferrier and Bamberg, British Petroleum, pp. 86–8.

  35Ibid.

  36A. Wilson, South West Persia: Letters and Diary of a Young Political Officer, 1907–1914 (London, 1941), p. 42.

  37Ibid.

  38Ibid., p. 103; Corley, Burmah Oil Company, pp. 128–45.

  39Fisher, Fear God and Dread Nought, 2, p. 404.

  40Churchill, World Crisis, pp. 75–6.

  41‘Oil Fuel Supply for His Majesty’s Navy’, 19 June 1913, CAB 41/34.

  42Asquith to King George V, 12 July 1913, CAB 41/34.

  43Churchill, House of Commons, 17 July 1913, Hansard, 55, 1470.

  44Slade to Churchill, 8 November 1913, ‘Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Proposed Agreement, December 1913’, ADM 116/3486.

  45Cited by D. Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power (3rd edn, New York, 2009), p. 167.

  46Cited by M. Aksakal, ‘“Holy War Made in Germany?” Ottoman Origins of the Jihad’, War in History 18.2 (2011), 196.

  47F. Moberly, History of the Great War Based on Official Documents: The Campaign in Mesopotamia 1914–1918, 4 vols (London, 1923), 1, pp. 130–1.

  48Kitchener to HH The Sherif Abdalla, Enclosure in Cheetham to Grey, 13 December 1914, FO 371/1973/87396. Also here E. Karsh and I. Karsh, ‘Myth in the Desert, or Not the Great Arab Revolt’, Middle Eastern Studies 33.2 (1997), 267–312.

  49J. Tomes, Balfour and Foreign Policy: The International Thought of a Conservative Statesman (Cambridge, 1997), p. 218.

  50Soroka, Britain, Russia and the Road to the First World War, pp. 201–36; Aksakal, Ottoman Road to War.

  51‘Russian War Aims’, Memo from British Embassy in Petrograd to the Russian government, 12 March 1917, in F. Golder, Documents of Russian History 1914–1917 (New York, 1927), pp. 60–2.

  52Grey to McMahon, 8 March 1915, FO 800/48. For French investment before the war, see M. Raccagni, ‘The French Economic Interests in the Ottoman Empire’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 11.3 (198), 339–76; V. Geyikdagi, ‘French Direct Investments in the Ottoman Empire Before World War I’, Enterprise & Society 12.3 (2011), 525–61.

  53E. Kedourie, In the Anglo-Arab Labyrinth: The McMahon–Husayn Correspondence and its Interpretations, 1914–1939 (Abingdon, 2000), pp. 53–5.

  54For the campaign, see P. Hart, Gallipoli (London, 2011).

  55The Times, 7 January 1918.

  56The Times, 12 January 1917.

  57C. Seymour (ed.), The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, 4 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1928), 3, p. 48.

  58Yergin, The Prize, pp. 169–72.

  59‘Petroleum Situation i
n the British Empire and the Mesopotamia and Persian Oilfields’, 1918, CAB 21/119.

  60Hankey to Balfour, 1 August 1918, FO 800/204.

  61Hankey to Prime Minister, 1 August 1918, CAB 23/119; V. Rothwell, ‘Mesopotamia in British War Aims, 1914–1918’, The Historical Journal 13.2 (1970), 289–90.

  62War Cabinet minutes, 13 August 1918, CAB 23/42.

  63G. Jones, ‘The British Government and the Oil Companies 1912–24: The Search for an Oil Policy’, Historical Journal 20.3 (1977), 655.

  64Petrol Control Committee, Second Report, 19 December 1916, Board of Trade, POWE 33/1.

  65‘Reserves of Oil Fuel in U.K. and general position 1916 to 1918’, minute by M. Seymour, 1 June 1917, MT 25/20; Jones, ‘British Government and the Oil Companies’, 657.

  66B. Hendrick, The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, 2 vols (London, 1930), 2, p. 288.

  67‘Eastern Report, No 5’, 28 February 1917, CAB 24/143.

  68Balfour to Lloyd George, 16 July 1918, Lloyd George Papers F/3/3/18.

  Chapter 18 – The Road to Compromise

  1Marling to Foreign Office, 24 December 1915, FO 371/2438/198432.

  2Hardinge to Gertrude Bell, 27 March 1917, Hardinge MSS 30.

  3Slade, ‘The Political Position in the Persian Gulf at the End of the War’, 4 November 1916, CAB 16/36.

  4Europäische Staats und Wirtschafts Zeitung, 18 Aug 1916, CAB 16/36.

  5Hankey Papers, 20 December 1918; 4 December 1918 entry, 1/6, Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge; E. P. Fitzgerald, ‘France’s Middle Eastern Ambitions, the Sykes–Picot Negotiations, and the Oil Fields of Mosul, 1915–1918’, Journal of Modern History 66.4 (1994), 694–725; D. Styan, France and Iraq: Oil, Arms and French Policy-Making in the Middle East (London, 2006), pp. 9–21.

  6A. Roberts, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples since 1900 (London, 2006), p. 132.

  7The Times, 7 November 1917. For Samuel, see S. Huneidi, A Broken Trust: Herbert Samuel, Zionism and the Palestinians (London, 2001).

  8Lord Balfour, House of Lords, 21 June 1922, Hansard, 50, 1016–17.

  9‘Report by the Sub-Committee’, Imperial Defence, 13 June 1928, CAB 24/202.

  10Time, 21 April 1941; J. Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle that shaped the Middle East (London, 2011), p. 163.