Page images
PDF
EPUB

is its true future, and Egypt is the agent best able to realise it. Best able, because there is no natural repulsion in the Soudan against Egypt, in its normal state, as there would be against any Christian Power; because the Egyptians are fitted to endure the severities of the climate; because they constitute-note that I always speak of Egypt in a normal state-a link between the Khalifat and the Soudanese Moslems; and because for these preceding reasons the work would be done at a far less cost of men and money than if it were attempted under the auspices of any European Power.

It is needless to show that, by whatever agency the civilisation of the Soudan were effected, it would be the commercial States of the world, foremost amongst which stands England, which would reap the benefit of the transformation.

Direct action against the slave trade can never be effectual. It tends rather to defeat its humanitarian object by aggravating the cruelties which are inherent to the trade, and which are often increased in order to evade the measures adopted to check it. The slave-trade is an evil that must be borne with while it lives. Civilisation will kill it, slowly perhaps, but surely.

This is the outline of my views on the Soudan, views founded upon a personal knowledge of the country and of the people, of whose natural docility I have had abundant proof.

When I hear it proposed that England should annex Egypt, or establish a protectorate over the country, I am tempted to ask why either one measure or the other should be adopted. Broadly speaking, it is better that every country and people should do its own work in the world than that it should be taken out of their hands and done by some other country to which it is but of secondary importance. Egypt has by no means given proof of incompetency in the management of her own existence, which sped easily and prosperously from 1841 onwards, until the follies of Ismail, which sold the country to the loan-mongers of Western Europe, brought foreign interference into it.

Egypt, as I have said before, is a simple country, and the people are simple; but they suffice for the country, and if tranquillity is assured to them, they are perfectly able to cope with the economic difficulties into which a misguided ruler has plunged them. They are capable, under a ruler whom they trust, and whom, trusting, they will obey, to repurchase their financial independence; and that much more speedily than it could be done by the costly methods which foreigners employ.

It is not for me, as an Egyptian, to dwell upon the difficulties which seem to attach alike to the protectorate and to annexation, and which differ, on either hypothesis, only in degree. Either as possessor or protector of Egypt, England would become more continental and less insular; her vulnerability would be increased, and Egypt does not

afford the military material requisite to guard against this increased vulnerability.

If England held such a position in Egypt that a blow could be struck at her there, such a possibility would render necessary the maintenance of military establishments in Egypt on a very large scale. And who would pay for these establishments?

As a dependency of the Ottoman Crown, Egypt requires but a small army for the internal support of the Government; its political existence is guaranteed by treaties.

But if these treaties were superseded, and England were established in Egypt, it would be quite another matter. England herself could then be attacked in Egypt, and she would be compelled to show a military front in the country which would suffice to deter aggression. Naturally, Egypt would be expected to pay the cost of these defensive measures, and by so much would the power of Egypt be reduced of playing her own modest and legitimate part in the world.

Cairo would become the centre of intrigue, not only wrestling, as as at present, for local influence, but scheming against the British power, in a spot where England would be at a manifest disadvantage.

Suppose even the protectorate, the minor responsibility of the two-the Khedive flanked by two British residents, one civil, one military, the army commanded by British officers. What guarantee would this be of security? A guarantee so thin that it would be almost a danger in itself.

Moreover, annexation or protectorate would inevitably bring changes which would alter the political surroundings of Egypt; and England, established there, would have neighbours less easy to deal with than Turkey.

But these are points which cannot have escaped the attention of the British Government, and of which the consideration probably explains its reluctance to adopt that forward' policy in Egypt which has been urged upon it with much persistence and with some authority.

[ocr errors]

In my opinion annexation or a protectorate is unnecessary. All that Egypt wants is a restoration of her normal situation—the constitution of a Government acceptable to the Khalifate and to the people. Give this to Egypt, and Egypt is quite capable of making her own way through present embarrassments, and of satisfying all the demands with which the misgovernment of Ismail and its consequences have saddled her.

HALIM.

THE COMING WAR.

If I were asked to give my opinion, as a geographer, on the pending conflict on the Afghan frontier, I should merely open the volume of Elisée Reclus's Géographie Universelle, L'Asie Russe, and show the pages he has consecrated under this head to the description of the Afghan Turkistan. Summing up the results of his extensive, careful, and highly impartial studies of Central Asia, Reclus has not hesitated to recognise that, 'geographically, the upper Oxus and all the northern slope of the Iran and Afghan plateaux belong to the Ural-Caspian region,' and that the growing influence of the Slavonian might cannot fail to unite, sooner or later, into one political group, the various parts of this immense basin.' And, surely, nobody who has studied these countries without being influenced by political or patriotic preoccupations will deny that the Afghan Turkistan cannot be separated from the remainder of the Ural-Caspian region. Afghanistan proper may remain for some time the bone of contention between England and Russia; and if it be divided, one day or the other, into two parts by the two rivals-no geographical or physical reasons could be alleged for the partition; but the vassal Khanates of Maimene, Khulm, Kunduz, and even the Badakshan and Wahkran, certainly belong geographically and ethnographically to the same aggregation of tribes and small nations which occupies the remainder of the basin of the Amu-daria. Arrangements' concluded by diplomatists may provisorily settle other frontiers these frontiers will be, however, but provisory ones; the natural delimitation is along the Hindoo-Kush and the Paropamisus; Afghan Turkistan must rejoin the now Russian Turkistan.

[ocr errors]

The necessity, in Central Asia, of holding the upper courses of rivers which alone bring life to deserts, and the impossibility of leaving them in the hands of populations which to-morrow may become the enemies of the valleys; the necessities of traffic and commerce; the incapacity of the populations settled on the left bank of the Upper Amu to defend themselves against raids after they have lost in servility their former virile virtues; nay, even the national feelings of the Uzbeg population, however feeble-all these and several other reasons well known to the explorers and students of those regions contribute to connect the whole of the basin of the

Amu and the Murghab into one body. To divide it for political purposes would be to struggle against physical, ethnographical, and historical necessities. As to the Wakhran, the Shugnan, the Badakshan, and even the small khanates west of the Pamir, perhaps they could struggle some time for their independence if they were able to rise in arms like the Circassians; but they would necessarily succumb before the power which already holds the high pasture-grounds of the Pamir, since it has taken a footing on the Trans-Alay and about Lake Kara-kul. The fact is, that the Roof of the World already belongs to the generals of the Russian Tsar.

As soon as the Russian Empire had stepped into the delta of the Amu, the conquest of the whole of the basin of the Oxus, with its thinly scattered oases, with its populations which have not yet succeeded in constituting themselves into national units, became a sad necessity. The march on Khiva already implied the occupation of Merv; and, as soon as a footing was taken on the eastern coast of the Caspian, the conquest of Geok-Tepe, of Merv, and of the last refuges of the Saryks at Penj-deh were unavoidable. The advance no longer depended on the will of the rulers: it became one of those natural phenomena which must be fulfilled sooner or later. Notwithstanding its seeming incoherence, its floating population, its small tribes now at war with one another and to-morrow allied together for a common raid; notwithstanding the continuous wars between the desert which besieges the oasis-the whole of the Steppe is one organism. The separate parts are perhaps still more closely united together than the settled populations of valleys separated by low ranges of hills. Owing to the impressionability of its populations, the Steppe may remain for years together as quiet as an English village; but suddenly it will be set on fire, be shattered in its farthest unapproachable parts, be covered with outbreaks stopping all intercourse for thousands of miles. African travellers know well how rapidly the physiognomy of the desert changes: the same is true with the Central Asian Steppe. Its internal cohesion cannot be destroyed by frontiers coloured on our maps. Those who have entered the Steppe with their military forces have no choice; either they must retire immediately, or they will be compelled to advance until they have met with the natural limits of the desert. This is the case with England in the Soudan, and so it is with Russia. She cannot stop before she has reached the utmost limits of the Steppe in the Indian Caucasus' and the Hindoo-Kush.

Such is the opinion which a geographer, whatever his nationality, ought to give, and which I should give, but with sadness of heart. For, during the years I spent in Eastern Siberia I was enabled closely to appreciate what the anomalous, monstrous extension of the frontiers of the Russian Empire means for the Russian people. One must have stayed in one of our colonies to see, to feel, and to touch the burden,

and the loss of strength which the population of Russia in Europe have to support in maintaining a military organisation on the absurdly extended frontiers of the Empire; to reckon the heavy costs of the yearly extension of the limits of the Empire; the demoralisation which repeated conquests steadily throw into the life of our country; the expense of forces for assimilating ever new regions; the loss resulting from emigration, as the best elements abandon their mother-country, instead of helping her to conquer a better future. The expansion of the Russian Empire is a curse to the metropolis. We must recognise that. But life in our Asiatic colonies teaches us also that this continual growth is taking the character of a fatality: it cannot be avoided; and even if the rulers of Russia did nothing to accelerate it, it still would go on until the whole of the process is fulfilled.

Of course the expansion might have been slower; it ought to have been slower. When the St. Petersburg Geographical Society was besieged in 1870-73 with schemes of exploration of the Amu basin, it was in the power of Government either to favour them or to abandon them to their proper destiny. Abandoned to itself, private initiative would have done but very little; and none of the scientific expeditions which used to be the precursors of military advance would have started at all were they not literally, very literally, supported and patronised by Government. While geologists, botanists, engineers, and astronomers came to us every day to offer themselves for penetrating further and further into the Transcaspian region; while we naïvely interested ourselves in discussions about the testimonies of Greek and Persian writers as to the old bed of the Amudaria, and planned detailed explorations, the Government took advantage of this scientific glow for planning its advance into the Turcoman Steppes, never refusing either money or Cossacks and soldiers to escort the geographers who dreamed of resolving the longdebated question as to the Uzbegs. While the Irkutsk geographers and geologists were compelled to start with a few hundred roubles and a broken barometer for the exploration of the great unknown Siberia, thousands of roubles were immediately voted by all possible Ministries for pushing forward the learned pioneers into the Transcaspian. This willingness to support scientific exploration, precisely in that direction, was obviously the result of a scheme long ago elaborated at the Foreign Office for opening a new route towards the Indian frontier. Far from checking the advance-as it does on the Mongolian frontier-the Government favoured it by all means.

6

Recently, we have been told by the enfant terrible Skobeleff what was the real meaning of this advance, via Herat, to Constantinople'--such, we are told, is the watchword of a group of Russian politicians; and when we consider the energy and consciousness displayed by Government in that matter, instead of the formerly quite

« PreviousContinue »