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British efforts to open up Persia to railways during the last 30 years of the 19th century are discussed. These were seen as a hedge against Russian aspirations in the area.

Within the last generation there has been a vast outpouring of scholarship on the characteristics of British imperial policy in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The older orthodoxy that the mid-Victorian years were dominated by a commitment to laissez faire and free trade has been demolished. In the new era scholars quarrel over how “imperial” was “informal empire.” This article is not intended to add to this controversy, but rather to provide insight into the character of British policy in one area, Persia, during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, with particular emphasis on American efforts to build railways and British responses to this attempted intrusion into an exclusive British-Russian sphere of influence. For both Russia and Britain Persia had great strategic significance. Like Afghanistan, “the walls of the Indian garden,” Persia was important primarily in relation to the defense of the Indian Empire. Russian expansion to the borders of Persia, a weak state, posed the threat that the country would fall under Russian influence and what had been a buffer would become a menace. British interest in Persia thus involved a strong strategic component which affected economic policy. Unlike Afghanistan it was seen as a promising market for British goods, particularly if transportation to the interior of Persia could be opened up on the Karun River and if British capital could be attracted to build a network of railways which could be a further basis for controlling the Persian economy and thus contributing to British influence at the Persian court. At the same time Britain was determined to thwart Russian plans for railways in the north which could be used to transport troops to the borders of Persia and eventually beyond. Each power assumed the malevolent intent of the other and each was determined to frustrate these foul plans.

“Imperialism,” an eminent historian has written, “is no word for scholars.” But the study of European political expansion in Asia, the Pacific islands, and Africa in the last quarter of the nineteenth century certainly merits scholarly attention, and recently has been receiving it. Since 1960 an impressive array of books and articles has appeared which present new insights into aspects of the “scramble,” particularly the motives for British action. Most of these studies have been concerned with Africa, and a possible deficiency in the analysis of one of the most notable of them has been that in its preoccupation with Africa it has not taken sufficient account of relevant developments elsewhere. During the second half of the nineteenth century, particularly after 1870, European influence advanced with a new aggressiveness into the under-powered areas of the world. In the halcyon days of the Pax Britannica, British governments had sought to avoid annexations as unproductive and expensive. This policy continued to be the creed in the 1870's, but some statesmen found it increasingly difficult to apply without serious risk to major British interests. These officials were motivated largely by fear of future challenges rather than of demonstrated peril. But there was a growing conviction, particularly evident in the permanent staff of the Foreign Office, that Europe had entered a new era of great-power rivalries in which Britain must either pursue a more active imperial policy or risk the loss of commerce, prestige, and world power. There was widespread apprehension that expansion into overseas areas by the militant and protectionist German Empire, Spain, and other European states might be ruinous to British trade and dangerous to Imperial security.