'IRAQ AND THE PERSIAN GULF' [‎187v] (379/862)

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264 HISTORY
to tap the eastern trade by reopening the overland route, and the
Levant A geographical area corresponding to the region around the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Company had a great trading station at Aleppo (whither
Shakespeare’s sea-captain ‘the Master of the Tiger’ was supposed
to sail), which was the western terminal of the desert route to Baghdad
or Basra. As a trading venture this method could not vie with sea
borne commerce except for the more valuable cargoes—‘spices and
precious stones, pearls, and cloths of silk and gold’—but caravans
of 400-600 freight camels were common, and the route ceased to
carry trade only at the end of the eighteenth century. It was also used
by political and commercial agents of the great companies as the
quickest means of journeying or sending dispatches between Europe,
the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. , and India. Many travellers, including several
Englishmen, have left remarkable descriptions of these journeys.
Though the East India Company gained from Istanbul in i66f
the Capitulations on which its later position in Iraq was built, fixing
customs duties on English trade at 3 per cent., all practical results
depended on the caprice of the local rulers, and the factory An East India Company trading post. at Basra
was not reopened till about 1725. The Dutch were supplanted and
moved their station to Kharg island in 1752. French agents with
consular rank arrived in 1755, but the British interests rapidly became
dominant. The Company kept a Resident or Baleos at Basra with
consular rank, whose office was moved to Baghdad in 1798. The great
economic power of the Company tended to become political, with
influence in town and tribe; the Resident Latouche had helped to
secure the Mamluk government for Sulaiman the Great in 1779.
The power and prestige of the Resident reached its highest in the
time of Claudius James Rich (1808-1821), who was for long the
second man in Iraq. At this time the Mamluks were drawing their
main supplies, particularly of munitions, from India and thus were
dependent on the Company’s goodwill. But in matters of detail
there was continual bickering between vigorous and scrupulous
Residents and the greedy extortionate Mamluks.
The eastern ambitions of Napoleon brought Syria and Iraq into
European politics again. When Napoleon held Egypt the desert
route was the only speedy road for dispatches left open between
England and India, and a regular courier service was started in 1801
from Basra or Baghdad by Aleppo to the Levantine ports. This
enterprise led, in 1837, to Colonel Chesney’s remarkable explora
tion of the Euphrates by steamboat from Birecik in Turkey down to
Basra, and also of the lower Tigris, which paved the way for the
establishment of a British navigation company on the Tigris.