ABSTRACT
Persia is one of the highways to the open sea of Russian dreams. It was natural that Russian imperialism, when other outlets were temporarily or permanently blocked, should try to travel by the Persian road. When Russia began to build railways to the frontiers of Persia and Afghanistan, Persia became the principal field in which Great Britain and Russia opposed each other's ambition to dominate Asia. Between 1872 and 1890 twelve railway promotion groups received concessions from the Persian government. But in 1890 Russia, simply to frustrate the plans of the British and the French, secured from the Persian government the exclusive right for twenty-one years to build railways in northern Persia. In Persia, after fifty years of bitter struggle, Great Britain and Russia were able to bury their animosity and to compromise their conflicting interests throughout the world. The Anglo-Russian agreement was a necessary corollary to the Anglo-French agreement in laying the bases of the Triple Entente.
