ABSTRACT
With the signing of the Anglo-Russian Agreement over Persia in 1907 the Russian government set to work to absorb completely the northern zone of Persia. Its policy was made easier by the fact that the British government was anxious to avoid friction with Russia, in view of the overriding need to maintain the Triple Entente as a bulwark against Germany, and had instructed its Minister in Tehran in this sense. The Persian constitutional revolution, which had begun in 1905, was now in mid-career, and had inevitably upset what little stability there was in the internal régime of Persia. In 1909 the Russians sent a military force to support the reactionary Mohammed Ali Shah. The Persian constitutionalists succeeded, however, in deposing him, and power passed into the hands of the extremist socalled ‘Democrats’, whose attitude was exasperatingly hostile to the Russians. In 19 11 the ex-Shah, with the connivance of minor Russian officials if not of the government, passed through Russia in disguise with a consignment of arms and ammunition and made a landing on the Caspian coast of Persia, but was defeated
and forced to withdraw. The Russians frustrated attempts by the Persian government to meet its great financial difficulties and made impossible the efforts o f the American financial adviser. They constantly found or created pretexts for further intervention, protecting rich landowners and merchants in Khurasan, collecting Persian revenues in Azerbaijan, importing Russian subjects into Asterabad to till lands they had bought at a nominal price as a result o f pressure. In 19 11 Russia went behind her allies’ backs to conclude the Potsdam Agreement with Germany, recognizing the German interest in the Baghdad Railway in return for German recognition of her own interest in North Persia, arranging to link the projected Persian railway-system with the Baghdad Railway via Khaniqin, and promising Germany an open door for her trade with Persia.
