Description: A map of the Anatolian Railway and Bagdad Railway, between 1888 and 1914. During this period, Germany was developing her colonies in East Africa and Kiauchau (Jiaozhou, China), and an overland route bypassing the British controlled Suez Canal to the Persian Gulf was seen as a strategic advantage. The ultimate plan was for the construction of the BBB line — Berlin, Byzantium, Bagdad. In 1885 the Anatolian Railway, built from Scutari on the Black Sea to Konia (420 miles) by German engineers for the Turkish Government, was transferred to a German company in 1888. In 1899 a concession was granted by Abdul Hamid, Sultan of Turkey, to William II, Emperor of Germany, "my only friend in Europe," for an extension of the Anatolian Railway across Asiatic Turkey to the Persian Gulf. In the same year Great Britain made a treaty with a sheik at the head of the Persian Gulf, by virtue of which she laid claim to Koweit (Kuwait). Between 1903 and 1912, track was laid by the Germans to Mosul and southward toward Samara, and two routes had been proposed by the British from Kuwait to Basra and Bagdad. At the time this map was made (1918), no official reports as to progress of the line had been published since 1914, and the route shown between Samara and the Persian Gulf was a projection.
Place Names: Southwest Asia, Baghdad, Mosul, Basra,
ISO Topic Categories: transportation,
location,
inlandWaters,
oceans
Keywords: Bagdad Railroad, physical, transportation, physical features, railroads, transportation,
location,
inlandWaters,
oceans, Unknown, 1888–1914
Source: Lucius Hudson Holt, Ph.D., The History of Europe from 1862 to 1914 (New York, NY: The Macmillan Company, 1918) 302
Map Credit: Courtesy the private collection of Roy Winkelman |
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