نسخة مذيلة من "بلاد فارس والشأن الفارسي" بقلم جورج كرزون، مع أوراق مدرجة [ظ‎‎٨‎٧‎١] (١٨١٤/١٧٥٩)

PERSIA
604
Persia has a hostile object and aggressive intent, it is, I shall now
hope to show, not less evident that British policy neither has, nor is
again likely to have, any but the most opposite charac-
interest in teristics. It is only thirty-five years since this country
Persia was at war with the reigning Shah—an episode already so
buried in oblivion that nine Englishmen out of ten are probably
unaware that it ever occurred, while the tenth will not be able to
say what it was about. The reception twice given to the Persian
monarch in England, the large space that is now occupied m the
public press by Persia, the vigilant interest with which oui
diplomacy in that country is watched at home, the increasing
movement of Englishmen and English capital towards its shoies,
are evidences of a new-born, or at least re-aroused, concern in its
welfare, and of a consciousness that its existence is in a measure
bound up with our own. hTo more convincing illustration could be
afforded of the impossibility of regarding British interests from an
insular standpoint—that scatter-brained fallacy of a moribund
school—than the contemplation of this distant country and its
interesting people.
I trust that, from the information and reasoning that have
been supplied in these volumes, the importance of Persia to Eng
land will have been made sufficiently manifest. The
figures and calculations which I have given relating
to trade, and more particularly Anglo-Persian trade, the analysis
of the indigenous resources of Persia, the character and chances
of the still undeveloped schemes for internal amelioration, the
field thus opened for the judicious employment of capital, are
all of them appeals to the practical and business-like instincts of
Englishmen. In the furious commercial competition that now
rages like a hurricane through the world, the loss of a market is a
retrograde step that cannot be recovered ; the gain of a market is
a positive addition to the national strength. Indifference to
Persia might mean the sacrifice of a trade that already feeds
hundreds of thousands of our citizens in this country and in
India. A friendly attention to Persia will mean so much more
employment for British ships, for British labour, and for British
spindles.
But I should be sorry to rest a demonstration of the impor
tance of Persia upon mercenary grounds alone. If the physical
position of that country, coterminous with Afghanistan along a
bot
do!
limits
liop erl
ial
Russian
it wiU af
open t° 11
Persia I 31
own Cer
will rend
than it i*
because ]
.-all
doubt-
tions, an
The hist
gpt ffluc
must be
most ele
we are i
from ar
pared tc
to conc(
future,
accretio
the pres
must b<
The
prevaih
History o
Anglo-
Persian
relations
alterna
statesu
anon o
occasic
at ano
opinio:
has b*
stupor