The Silk Road: A New World History of Human Civilization Spanning Two and a Half Centuries from the Persian Empire to the Contemporary International Scenario (3)

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Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries: The Great Age of Sail

Great Geographical Discoveries: Spanish-Portuguese Maritime Hegemony, Ottoman Control of Egypt

The replacement of Byzantium by Ottoman meant that the land route became impractical for the Western Europeans. The Europeans had to try to find new routes. Columbus discovered the New World, but at first, he actually wanted to find the sea route to India. In any case, Columbus went to America, Europe had a sea route to America, and gained access to the vast gold and silver deposits from the Americas. Europe thus became the heart of the world.

The man who really found the sea route to Asia was Da Gama, who bypassed the Cape of Good Hope and reached India, a route that could bring back the Asian luxuries and spices that Europeans had long favored. The combination of large amounts of gold and silver and new trade routes was a groundbreaking commercial boom.

The Ottomans took control of Egypt in the 16th century, dominated the entire eastern Mediterranean, and penetrated into central Europe in the following period. This progress also meant that the traffic through the ports of the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the Mediterranean Sea fell into Ottoman hands, and for a long time European trade continued to generate ever-increasing tax revenues for them. The Persian Empire, India, and China were not far behind, for the trade flowed in large quantities of gold and silver.

The continents are now connected to each other, and it is the flow of silver that connects them.

The Rise of the Anglo-Dutch Protestant Countries in Europe and the Decline of the Ottoman Empire

Europeans have always liked to compete with each other. After the King of England fell out with the Pope in the 16th century, he invested heavily in the Royal Navy, mainly because he feared that religious quarrels would lead to invasions from the European continent. The Spanish Invincible Armada did go to England, but it was unsuccessful.

In order to challenge the European powers of the time, Spain and Portugal, the Protestant Christians, the English, tried to maintain good relations with the Ottoman Empire in the Islamic world, and sent explorers and merchants to try to get in touch with Russia, Persia and China. When the Spaniards and the Portuguese had almost squandered the riches they had seized from afar, the center of gravity of Europe began to shift northward to the two Protestant countries of England and Holland.

The success of these two countries, especially the British East India Company in the sea trade, made the history of the whole world turn around. During this period, the most serious impact on Central Asia was the gradual hegemony of Britain, which relied on the sea route. By the 18th century, the land trade had been greatly reduced, and the Ottoman Empire was in decline.

The Nineteenth Century: The Beginning of the Race for Power

The Growing Power of Britain, France and Russia and the Struggle for Position in Asia

At the beginning of the 19th century, Russia continued to expand its borders both on the steppes of Central Asia and on the sea, and annexed new territories, including the declining Ottoman Empire and some territories and dependencies of Persia, and became a powerful state. Due to the interests of maritime trade, Britain, France and Russia kept each other in check during this period.

The balance of power among the three had a great influence on Persia. First of all, Russia always wanted to occupy more territories in Persia. In order to keep Russia in check, France was friendly with Persia. Britain wanted to keep France in check at first, so she favored Russia. Against this background, Persia kept losing more and more territories in the wars with Russia.

Later, as Russia's control over Central Asia, especially Persia and Afghanistan, grew stronger, Russia was in turn seen by Britain as a threat to her position in Asia. In fact, Russia's original purpose of controlling Central Asia was mainly for trade and to stop the slave trade which sold Russians into slavery, but Britain's hidden fear was that after Russia had taken Central Asia, it would invade their most important territory, India. (This may also have been due to the constant lobbying of Britain by some people in Central Asia to keep Russia at bay).

All in all, the situation has evolved into a struggle between the two powers for economic benefits.

The rivalry between Britain and Russia lasted for a long time. Russia's increasing expansion in Asia and Britain's attempts to contain a rising Russia in various parts of the world caused various wars and political problems in Asia. This included political and military involvement in Asia. In divided Afghanistan, British-backed leaders fought against Russian-backed forces, but the leaders Britain chose were highly traitorous. In Ottoman, Britain magnified the problem of the treatment of Christians in Ottoman territory, and attacked with France, which had been operating in Syria for a long time. All these situations sowed anti-British sentiments.

Britain had the upper hand for a time, and in 1856, after the Battle of Crimea, Britain, France and Russia signed the Peace of Paris, in which Russia was required to disarm the Black Sea coast. However, this did not stop Russia from expanding in Central Asia, and Russia continued to fight Britain with diplomatic and military efforts in Europe.

Anglo-Russian antagonism reached a wave of peaks in the late 1890s, and from this era onwards the Persian business mind was heavily used to capitalize on their strategic position. Russia spent a great deal of money to bring Persia into the fold and extend the railroad lines into Persian territory in order to make it geographically easier to attack India.

Persian rulers were fattened by all kinds of generous soft loans from countries that wanted to establish good relations, thanks to the fact that Persia was in a strategic position that coincided with the pivot point between the East and the West.

Germany Joins the Power Balance Formula

By this time, it was already difficult for Britain to win with her financial power. In order to solve the worry of Russia's attack on India, Britain decided to find a way to divert Russia's attention.

At this time, the competition between Germany and France became more and more intense, and France was actively trying to draw Russia into checking Germany. Therefore, Britain decided to cooperate with France and turn Russia's attention to Central Europe, and through the relationship between France and Russia, Britain, France, and Russia made an alliance to delineate their respective spheres of influence in Persia, so as to temporarily achieve the effect of checking Russia's influence in Central Asia.

In order to stop the erosion of the enviable position that Britain has built up over the last few centuries, all the bilateral guarantees are aimed at tying up Russia as an eye-catching challenger.

The alliance between Britain, France and Russia was not good for Germany. In order to find new relations and alliance partners, the Germans also shifted their attention to Arabia, Persia and Ottoman. Especially the Ottomans, whose support would be very helpful in the fight against Britain and Russia.

Early 20th Century: Oil and World War I

In 1908, British tycoon Knox D'Arcy dug for the legendary oil in Persia. Knox D'Arcy had obtained a license to dig for oil from the Persian government in 1901, and the Persian government probably didn't expect it to be successful when they sold the license. After digging for oil, in 1909, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company went public, which later became BP Oil.

Oil was vital to the modern economy, and the fact that the concession was in British hands led to even greater xenophobia among the Persians, which would eventually turn into nationalism and the rejection of the West by modern Islamic fundamentalists.

World War I

In 1914, against a background of great anxiety about the position of the great powers, the First World War was quickly triggered when young men from Sala shot the crown prince of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the Middle East, the Ottomans and Persians were trying to take advantage of the situation to rebel against the rule of Russia and Britain. The Ottomans began to fight back against Britain in 1915, and in Egypt, anti-British forces gathered, which affected British interests in the Suez Canal.

Britain sent troops to defend the pipelines and oil fields, and took possession of Basra, while making promises to several countries to secure future arrangements for the routing of British oil from Persia.

To ensure future control of oil and the Suez River, the British proposed to the Arab world that the Arab nation would be made Caliph of Mecca if the Arabs assisted Britain.
To ensure that the Russians would not betray the alliance, Britain also offered to hand over Constantinople and the Dardanelles, which were very important for Russia's exports and food production, to Russia after the victory.
The British made an agreement with the French that Syria and Lebanon would remain with France, while Mesopotamia, Palestine and Suez would go to Britain.

Post-WWI situation

After World War I, all of Europe tasted the bitter fruits of economic collapse.

The deficits of the warring nations are soaring, and new debts are being piled on top of old ones at a rapid rate, and they can't be repaid. The great empire that had controlled the world for 400 years did not disappear overnight, but this was the beginning of its disappearance.

At this time, the economic lifelines of the Silk Road became more important, and the powers began to intervene more deeply in the politics of the Middle East.

British political involvement

It was Britain, which had desperately carved up the oil region, that gained the most from the end of World War I. The British endeavored to secure political control over the countries within their sphere of influence, creating many problems, all of which contributed to the extreme anti-British sentiment. The British desire for control was so strong that in 1920-1930 alone, Britain was involved in the change of thrones in Iraq, Persia and Afghanistan. Opposition to the British imperialist methods of control was very strong. Economically, the oil-producing regions were not benefited much and there was a lot of public resentment.

The British created more and more social problems for their own interests. In Persia, the British first demanded the Shah of Persia to appoint Prince Farmer, who had invested heavily in the British stock market, as the Prime Minister. Later on, the British, not satisfied with Prince Farmer and impatient with the Shah's incessant demand for money, supported Reza Khan's accession to the throne. Backed by the British demand for oil, the royal family took over all the wealth of Persia. In Mesopotamia, the British came up with the idea of creating a new country called Iraq. In return for supporting the British trusteeship, the British gave the local magnates large tracts of land of the former Ottoman government, which prevented social mobility and deepened inequality.

Russia and France agitated against Britain.

Standing against the British were Russia and France.

With the revolution in Russia in 1917, the Bolsheviks (later the Russian Communist Party) gained power and signed a peace agreement with Germany to withdraw from WWI. The Bolsheviks propagated slogans against British imperialism and supported national self-determination in these regions. National identity in Central Asia rose in Ukraine, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

France, in fact, realized after the war that it was not getting any oil benefits and tried to get a share of the Persian political scene, but was unsuccessful and in turn financed anti-British propaganda within Persia.

U.S. Joins Asian War, Persia Tries to Control Oil Concessions

There was also an emerging power, the United States. In the aftermath of World War I, the United States seemed to have become the newest power. In order to bridge the economic gap, the Entente Powers borrowed heavily from the Morgan Group in the United States. Wealth poured into the United States, and the center of gravity of the world slowly shifted to the New World during this period. The United States also wanted to secure oil supplies from Persia as it realized that it was running low on oil after World War I. Persia was a major threat to Britain and Russia. Persia, which was rebelling against the intervention of Britain and Russia, welcomed the newcomers to the United States and initially offered American oil companies a 50-year concession for northern oil.

After India's independence in 1929, in 1932 the Shah of Persia finally announced the revocation of Britain's Noxtasy concession and renegotiated with Britain, and the Middle East began to gain control of its own oil.

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