'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎525] (588/714)

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THE NOKni -AVEST AXJ3 WESTERN PROVINCES 525
dence with a large commercial house in the City, who opened
direct communication by steamer with Trebizond. The first
experiment failed; but a second attempt, in which the English
goods were brought in transit through Constantinople, succeeded,
and this transit trade is said before long to have amounted to
1,000,000?. At the same time cloth manufacture was introduced
into Persia by Mr. Armstrong, an Englishman, at the request and
cost of Abbas Mirza. Fulling mills were established at Khoi, and
spinning, carding, and weaving machines near Tabriz. After the
rupture between England and Persia consequent upon Mohammed
Shah's expedition against Herat in 1888, this Anglo-Persian trade
collapsed abruptly; and in the year 1839 an English traveller
wrote; ' Of the British residents in Tabriz only three remain ; of
the British commerce I am not aware that there are any remains.'
The squabbles of diplomatists and the humours of Courts do not,
however, permanently interfere with a trade well founded and
convenient to both parties ; and within a few years' time British
imports were again to be seen in the ascendant in the bazaars of
Tabriz. There was the less necessity to adopt the long and arduous
overland route from Trebizond, because Russia for some time en
couraged international trade by allowing free transit through the
Caucasus, Poti being the port of debarkation usually resorted to on
the Black Sea. Under these conditions the value of imports and
exports for the province of Azerbaijan rose in theyears 1868, 1869
and 1870 to the following high figures :—
Imports
Exports
18G8
. £1,351,000
683,885
1869
£1,575,776
901,218
1870
£1,094,717
422,632
In explanation of these remarkably high figures of imports, it
must be remembered that the bulk of trade with Northern Persia,
both Russian and English, at that time entered the country by way
of Azerbaijan, the Russians not having as yet developed the Baku-
Enzeli route, and the English not having approached Teheran on
any large scale from the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. . The absolute command of
the market in cotton fabrics, possessed by Great Britain, is shown
by the following proportions of the totals above quoted :
1868
£1,017,885
1869
£1,123,211
1870
£864,000
1 The great fall in the exports for 1870 was due to the lamentable famine of
that year. The growth and export of cotton all but collapsed.
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