Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-jwnkl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-15T15:46:29.507Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

STEAM POWER AND BRITISH INFLUENCE IN BAGHDAD, 1820–1860*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2013

J. P. PARRY
J. P. PARRY*
Affiliation:
Pembroke College, University of Cambridge
*
Pembroke College, Cambridge, CB2 1RFjpp3@cam.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Very little has been published on British political activity in the province of Baghdad in the nineteenth century. Indeed, those formally responsible for it – officials in India – considered the region insignificant. This article argues, however, that it was not insignificant either to men on the spot or to influential British public figures in London and Constantinople. These men argued for its strategic and commercial potential, based on an inter-continental rather than a narrowly Indian view of policy, and optimism about the transformative material and moral power of steamships. Their pressure was responsible for the introduction of British armed steamers to the Mesopotamian rivers in 1835 and their retention throughout the century. This helped to ensure that the British had greater power in the region than any rival. The British also cultivated good relations with Arabs, expecting Ottoman rule to collapse in favour of something more progressive. The case of Baghdad shows the value for diplomatic historians of seeing Britain's European and Indian strategy as connected. It also raises doubts about the importance to British officials of promoting specific commercial interests abroad: the British in the region were much more concerned with the projection of power, reliability, and even-handedness. For the early Victorian mind, the key to progress was surely not the making of particular tariff arrangements, but the dynamic potential of steam itself.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , March 2013 , pp. 145 - 173
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This article is based on four collections of MSS, abbreviated as follows: the Foreign Office records in the National Archives (FO) and three collections in the British Library: the Broughton papers, MSS Eur. F213 (Broughton); the Layard papers, BL Add. MSS (Layard), and the India Office records (IOR). I am grateful to Marie Keyworth for discussions on some of these issues when she was preparing an undergraduate dissertation, to Charles Melville for help with local names, and to the insightful comments of the anonymous referees.

References

1 Porter, A., ed., The Oxford history of the British empire, iii: The nineteenth century (Oxford, 1999)Google Scholar; Cain, P. J. and Hopkins, A. G., British imperialism, 1688–2000 (London, 2002 edn)Google Scholar; Darwin, J., The empire project: the rise and fall of the British world-system, 1830–1970 (Cambridge, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Kelly, J. B., Britain and the Persian Gulf, 1795–1880 (Oxford, 1968)Google Scholar; Onley, J., The Arabian frontier of the British Raj: merchants, rulers and the British in the nineteenth-century Gulf (Oxford, 2007), pp. 20–1Google Scholar. The same is true of Fisher, M., Indirect rule in India: Residents and the Residency system, 1764–1858 (Delhi, 1991), pp. 461–3Google Scholar.

3 Saleh, Z., Britain and Mesopotamia (Iraq to 1914): a study in British foreign affairs (Baghdad, 1966)Google Scholar; Khan, M. G. I., ‘British policy in Iraq, 1828–1843’, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, 18 (1973), pp. 173–94Google Scholar. I shall use ‘Baghdad’ or ‘Mesopotamia’ except when following a specific reference by a contemporary or historian.

4 Yapp, M. E., The making of the modern Near East, 1792–1923 (London and New York, NY, 1987)Google Scholar, p. 142; his magisterial Strategies of British India: Britain, Iran and Afghanistan, 1798–1850 (Oxford, 1980) has only a handful of passing references to Iraq. There is one paragraph on Iraq before the 1860s in Owen, R., The Middle East in the world economy, 1800–1914 (London, 1981)Google Scholar.

5 Mathew, W. M., ‘The imperialism of free trade: Peru, 1820–1870’, Economic History Review, 21 (1968), pp. 562–79Google Scholar; Ferns, H. S., Britain and Argentina in the nineteenth century (New York, NY, 1960)Google Scholar; Hopkins, A. G., ‘Informal empire in Argentina: an alternative view’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 26 (1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 470; Lynn, M., ‘The “imperialism of free trade” and the case of West Africa, c. 1830 – c. 1870’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 15 (1986–7), pp. 22–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Bayly, C. A., Imperial meridian: the British empire and the world, 1780–1830 (London and New York, NY, 1989)Google Scholar, p. 231, claims that the British resident (Rich) was ‘sent packing’ in 1823. In fact, the crisis took place in 1820–1 when Daud Pasha confiscated the goods of Antone Svoboda, a Viennese crystal merchant with British protection, then doubled customs duties on a British merchant's goods. Daud almost certainly feared that Rich was encouraging Persian hostilities against Baghdad on the Kurdistan frontier; he also disliked British political influence in the Gulf after the anti-piracy treaty of 1820. This important incident needs further discussion. See Malet, A., Précis containing information in regard to the first connection of the Hon'ble East India Company with Turkish Arabia (Calcutta, 1874), pp. 111–20Google Scholar. The British needed to show their power, so got the excessive duties abandoned: Aitchison, C. U., A collection of treaties, engagements, and sunnuds relating to India and neighbouring countries, vii (Calcutta, 1876), pp. 11–14Google Scholar. Arguably, rather than being shut out, the small amount of British trade had considerable advantages at Baghdad at this point, by managing unofficially to avoid many of the duties: Issawi, C., The fertile crescent, 1800–1914: a documentary economic history (New York and Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar, p. 109. Generally, see Cain and Hopkins, British imperialism.

7 Morrell, J. and Thackray, A. W., Gentlemen of science: early years of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Oxford, 1981)Google Scholar; Bord, J., Science and whig manners: science and political style in Britain, c. 1790–1850 (Basingstoke, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Hoskins, H. L., British routes to India (London, 1966 edn)Google Scholar; Guest, J. S., The Euphrates expedition (London and New York, NY, 1992)Google Scholar; Headrick, D. R., The tools of empire: technology and European imperialism in the nineteenth century (New York, NY, and Oxford, 1981)Google Scholar, chs. 1, 8.

9 Yapp, M. E., ‘The establishment of the East India Company Residency at Baghdad, 1798–1806’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 30 (1967), pp. 326–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 335.

10 The best sources of information on the history of British representation in Turkish Arabia are: Saldanha, J. A., The Persian Gulf Précis, vi: Précis of Turkish Arabia affairs, 1801–1905 (8 vols., Gerrards Cross, 1986; orig. pub. 1906)Google Scholar, and Malet, Précis, originally produced in 1847 for the Indian government inquiry into the Baghdad Residency.

11 Rawlinson, G., A memoir of Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson (London, 1898), pp. 140–1Google Scholar, 150, 158–9; Adkins, L., Empires of the plain: Henry Rawlinson and the lost languages of Babylon (London, 2003)Google Scholar; Yapp, Strategies, p. 522.

12 Rawlinson to Canning, 19 Aug. 1846, FO 195/237. It helped that Taylor had been made a consul in 1841; Rawlinson was later promoted to consul-general.

13 Ingram, E., The beginning of the great game in Asia, 1828–1834 (Oxford, 1979)Google Scholar. See also his In defence of British India: Great Britain in the Middle East, 1775–1842 (London, 1984), and ‘From trade to empire in the Near East, iii – the uses of the Residency at Baghdad, 1794–1804’, Middle Eastern Studies, 14 (1978), pp. 278–306.

14 Aitchison, Treaties, vii, p. 15.

15 Report, 14 July 1834, Parliamentary Papers (PP), 1834, xiv.

16 Headrick, D. R., The tentacles of progress: technology transfer in the age of imperialism, 1850–1940 (New York, NY, and Oxford, 1988), pp. 23–4Google Scholar.

17 Hoskins, British routes, chs. 4–5.

18 Ingram, Great game, ch. 9.

19 For an emphasis on Chesney's role, see Hoskins, British routes, p. 154; Guest, Euphrates expedition, chs. 3–4. Guest, and Headrick, Tools of empire, ch. 1, also give T. L. Peacock much of the credit.

20 Buckingham, J. S., Travels in Mesopotamia (2 vols., London, 1827), ii, pp. 198–9Google Scholar.

21 Khan, ‘British policy’, pp. 177–81; Ingram, Great game, pp. 149–60.

22 Stocqueler, J. H., Fifteen months' pilgrimage through untrodden tracts of Khuzistan and Persia in a journey from India to England … in the years 1831 to 1832 (2 vols., London, 1832), i, pp. 53–4Google Scholar.

23 Taylor to Auber, 14 July 1830, IOR L/P&S/P/91.

24 Thomas Love Peacock at the India Office, another exponent of the route, made these historical points particularly forcefully: PP, 1834, xiv, pp. 5–6; ‘On steam navigation to India’, Edinburgh Review, 60 (1835), p. 462.

25 Robert to James Taylor, 11 July 1830, IOR L/P&S/9/91; Groves, A. N., Journal of a residence at Bagdad, during the years 1830 and 1831 (London, 1832), pp. 3–4Google Scholar, 9–11, 17, 54; Newman, F. W., Personal narrative, in letters, principally from Turkey, in the years 1830–1833 (London, 1856), pp. 99–101Google Scholar.

26 Kelly, Persian Gulf, p. 270; Ingram, Great game, pp. 165–76.

27 Stocqueler, Fifteen months, pp. 53–4.

28 Fraser, J. B., ‘Memorandum on the present condition of the Pachalic of Bagdad and the means it possesses of renovation and improvement’, 12 Nov. 1834, printed as Appendix E of Malet, Précis, pp. xxviii–xlivGoogle Scholar.

29 Taylor to Norris, 15 Jan. 1832, IOR L/P&S/9/93, Taylor to Bombay, 15 Sept. 1832, IOR L/P&S/9/95; see Ingram, Great game, pp.173–4.

30 See Taylor to London, 6 Oct. 1831, and Cabell memo, 14 Mar. 1832, IOR L/P&S/P/92; Malet, Précis, pp. 128–9.

31 In instructing Taylor about the expedition, India House emphasized the approval for steam navigation that he had secured in 1831–2: Carter to Taylor, 1 Sept. 1834, FO 195/113.

32 Taylor to Ponsonby, 25 June, 30 July, 23 Aug. 1833, 31 Mar. 1834, FO 195/113; Taylor to London, 14 Mar. 1834, IOR/L/P&S/9/96; Times, 14 Jan. 1834, p. 4.

33 Hobhouse to Taylor, 14 May 1839, 4 June 1840, Broughton 7.

34 Headrick, Tools of empire, is useful on broader debates about steam power but does not consider these arguments. For Ponsonby, see Lynch to Hobhouse, 12 Nov. 1838, Broughton 9.

35 To Ponsonby, 31 Mar. 1834, FO 195/113.

36 Chesney to Hobhouse, 30 Apr., 16 May 1836, Broughton 4; Lynch to London, 5 Feb. 1839, IOR L/P&S/9/110; Jones, Felix, Memoirs of Baghdad, Kurdistan and Turkish Arabia, 1857 (Slough, 1998)Google Scholar, p. 76.

37 Lynch to Hobhouse, 25 Jan. 1840, Broughton 10.

38 Chesney to Hobhouse, 19 June 1836, Broughton 4; Jones, Memoirs, p. 271. This practice had inestimable benefits but had to be concealed from the bureaucrats in charge of the Indian navy accounts.

39 Taylor to London, 11 June 1836, IOR L/P&S/9/99, 15 Aug. 1837, IOR L/P&S/9/103.

40 Jones, Memoirs, pp. 42, 133, 240–1; Chesney, F. R., The expedition for the survey of the rivers Euphrates and Tigris … 1835, 1836, and 1837 (2 vols., London, 1850), ii, pp. 602–3Google Scholar, 686–8, 691, 697; Fraser, ‘Memorandum’, pp. xli–xliv.

41 Lynch memo, 7 Sept. 1837, IOR L/P&S/9/103. See also Nostitz, Countess, Travels of Doctor and Madame Helfer in Syria, Mesopotamia, Burmah and other lands (2 vols., London, 1878), i, pp. 274–6Google Scholar.

42 Jones, Memoirs, pp. 107–8, 128, 204, 235.

43 Rawlinson to London, 2 Feb. 1852, IOR L/P&S/9/14.

44 Newman, Personal narrative, p. 104; Jones, Memoirs, pp. 42,110, 133, 223–4; Lynch, T. K., Across Mesopotamia to India by the Euphrates valley (London, 1879)Google Scholar, p. 18. Jones was more critical of ‘predatory’ Arabs than the others.

45 Lynch memo, Aug. 1837, IOR L/P&S/9/103.

46 Layard to Sara Austen, 28 May 1840, Layard 58154. The British Museum acquired 355 works, BL Add. MSS 23252–606.

47 Lynch to Hobhouse, 31 May 1838, 11 Aug. 1837, Broughton 6.

48 Lynch to Hobhouse, 12 Nov. 1838, Broughton 9. Fraser also argued that Britain must seek ‘permanent influence’ irrespective of who actually ruled the pashalik: ‘Memorandum’, p. xliv.

49 Lynch to Hobhouse, 28 May 1839, Broughton 9; see also Chesney to Hobhouse, 30 Apr. 1836, Broughton 4.

50 Lynch to Hobhouse, 31 Mar. 1839, Broughton 9. See Onley, J., ‘The politics of protection in the Gulf: the Arab rulers and the British Resident in the nineteenth century’, New Arabian Studies, 6 (2004), pp. 30–92Google Scholar.

51 Lynch to Maddock, 23 Aug. 1839, IOR L/P&S/9/113; hence his ill-advised trip to London in search of extra resources in 1840.

52 Chesney to Grant, 16 Oct. 1836, Broughton 5.

53 To Canning, 25 Nov. 1845, FO 195/237. Preliminary reports about the Tigris were published in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, 7 (1837), p. 432, and ibid., 9 (1839), pp. 441–2, 471–6.

54 Sheil to Palmerston, 15 Apr. 1841, IOR L/P&S/9/118; Selby, W. B., ‘Account of the ascent of the Karun and Dizful rivers’, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, 14 (1844), pp. 231, 242CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Layard to B. Austen, 19 Jan. 1842, Layard 58154; Chesney, Euphrates expedition, pp. 698, 701.

55 To Lynch, 26 Dec. 1838, Broughton 7.

56 Hobhouse to Grant, 19 Dec. 1836, Broughton 5.

57 Malet, Précis, pp. 133–4.

58 Chesney to Ponsonby, 24 Sept. 1836, Broughton 5; Lynch to London, 7 Sept. 1837, IOR L/P&S/9/103.

59 Lynch and Taylor to London, 20 and 25 June 1838, IOR L/P&S/9/106.

60 See Palmerston to Hobhouse, 27 Aug. 1838, Melbourne to Hobhouse, 26 Sept. 1838, Hobhouse to Palmerston, 29 Sept. 1838, Broughton 6; Hobhouse to Taylor, 15 July 1839, Broughton 7.

61 Hobhouse to Auckland, 27 Oct. 1838, Broughton 6, Hobhouse to Taylor, 26 Dec. 1838, Broughton 7.

62 See Cabell and Peacock notes, 30 Aug. and 14 Sept. 1838, IOR L/P&S/3/4; Hobhouse to Auckland, 27 Oct. 1838, Broughton 6; Hobhouse to Carnac, 4 May 1840, Broughton 7. Hobhouse personally regretted that several thousand troops were not available to be sent to Baghdad: to Auckland, 15 June 1839, Broughton 7.

63 Hobhouse to Taylor, 25 Sept. 1839, and to Lynch, 4 Mar. 1840, Broughton 7.

64 Hobhouse to Taylor, 13 June 1839, Broughton 7; Rawlinson, Rawlinson, pp. 69–70.

65 Kelly, Persian Gulf, ch. 8.

66 Markham, C. R., A memoir on the Indian surveys (London, 1871)Google Scholar, p. 30.

67 Kelly, Persian Gulf, ch. 9.

68 Lynch to Fitzgerald, 25 June 1842, IOR L/P&S/9/13.

69 See Malet, Précis, pp. 1, 136–7.

70 Saleh claims that the Lynch brothers took over the steamers for commerce in 1842–3: Britain and Mesopotamia, pp. 182–3. So does Ceylan, Ebubekir, The Ottoman origins of modern Iraq: political reform, modernization and development in the nineteenth-century Middle East (London and New York, NY, 2011)Google Scholar, p. 190. Guest thinks that they took over the Company vessels in 1861: Euphrates expedition, p. 155. Hala Fattah suggests that the British steam project made no inroads before 1861 though there was a ‘surreptitious’ plan for steamships at Maqil in 1849 (where in fact the flotilla had been assembled openly in 1839–40): The politics of regional trade in Iraq, Arabia, and the Gulf, 1745–1900 (Albany, NY, 1997), pp. 104–5, 117–18. For the truth, see Saldanha, Précis, pp. 173–85.

71 Hobhouse note on Rawlinson to London, 28 May 1846, IOR L/P&S/9/14; Palmerston memo 16 Dec. 1846, FO 78/656.

72 Saldanha, Précis, pp. 173–5; Rawlinson to Bombay, 22 Feb. 1845, IOR L/P&S/9/14.

73 Jones, Memoirs, pp. 369–86.

74 Petition to Rawlinson, 27 Oct. 1846, IOR L/P&S/9/14.

75 Rawlinson had to pay £60: to Aberdeen, 26 June 1846, FO 78/656; see Jones to Rawlinson, 18 Dec. 1845, FO 195/237.

76 Canning to Rawlinson, 25 Mar. 1846, IOR L/P&S/9/14; Rawlinson to Canning, 28 Apr. 1846, FO 195/237; Saldanha, Précis, pp. 176–80. In fact, successive pashas used the 1834 firman to restrict the number of British steamers on the Tigris to two.

77 Palmerston memo, 16 Dec. 1846, FO 78/656.

78 Saldanha, Précis, pp. 181–5; Owen, Middle East, pp. 181–3.

79 Longrigg, S. H., Four centuries of modern Iraq (Oxford, 1925)Google Scholar, p. 279.

80 See Bayly, C. A., Empire and information: intelligence gathering and social communication in India, 1780–1870 (Cambridge, 1996)Google Scholar; Fisher, Indirect rule, pp. 128–33, 170–7.

81 Newman, Personal narrative, pp. 99–101. His predecessor said the same: Colquhoun to the select committee: PP 1834, xiv, p. 141.

82 Buckingham, Travels, ii, p. 211; Nostitz, Travels, i, pp. 263–4; Longrigg, Four centuries, pp. 255–6.

83 Rawlinson to Wellesley, 26 May 1847, FO 195/272; Jones, Memoirs, p. 340; Nostitz, Travels, i, pp. 263–4; Nieuwenhuis, Tom, Politics and society in early modern Iraq: mamluk pashas, tribal shayks and local rule between 1802 and 1831 (The Hague, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 82.

84 Britain's role in Kurdistan between 1820 and 1850 is a complex subject, never written up, which needs separate treatment.

85 Taylor to Hobhouse, 19 Nov. 1840, 8 Apr. 1841, Broughton 11; Hobhouse to Werry, 4 Aug. 1840, Broughton 7.

86 Groves, Journal, p. 195; Taylor to Hobhouse, 9 July 1838, Broughton 9; Robert Taylor jnr to the select committee: PP 1834, xiv, p. 108. An old man in Sumeïchah told Lynch in 1837 that the British, unlike the Turks, would provide the area with a proper water supply: Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, 9 (1839), p. 475.

87 Newman, Personal narrative, pp. 99–100, 103.

88 Rawlinson to Bidwell, 28 May 1848, FO 78/753; Jones, Memoirs, p. 76. Lynch had reported similar sentiments to Canning, 12 Nov. 1842, FO 195/113.

89 Taylor's other daughter Harriet married Lynch's brother Tom in 1857.

90 Malet, Précis, p. 136; Taylor to Bombay, 7 Mar. 1843, IOR L/P&S/9/13; Stark to Addington, 30 Oct. 1843, IOR L/P&S/3/15.

91 Stocqueler, Fifteen months, i, pp. 25–6, 58–9.

92 Stirling to Aberdeen, 5 June 1843, IOR L/P&S/3/14; Hector to Layard, 8 Oct. 1842, 11, 24 Mar., 5, 19 Apr., 15 May 1843, Layard 38975; also Layard to Mitford, 12 Aug. 1842, Layard 58159, and to Canning, 9 Dec. 1842, Layard 38975.

93 Ross to Taylor, 22 Jan. 1843, FO 195/204.

94 Canning to Taylor, 10 Mar. 1843, and Aberdeen to Fitzgerald, 10 Apr. 1843, IOR L/P&S/3/14; Layard to Canning, 4 Feb, 30 Apr., 25 June 1843, and Hector to Layard 5, 19 Apr. 1843, Layard 38975. See Taylor's justification, to Canning, 14 May 1843, FO 195/204, and Farrant's various reports, on the whole discounting the Persian complaints, ibid.

95 The flow of the various letters is summarized in IOR Z/P/3537. Hector to Layard, 6 Mar. 1844, Layard 38975.

96 Rawlinson was told by the Indian government to subordinate himself to Canning but Aberdeen's Foreign Office was slow to legitimize this: Rawlinson to FO, 24 Feb. 1846, FO 78/656. Palmerston took a different view and he began writing to him regularly in 1846: ibid. 78/656,704.

97 Rawlinson, Rawlinson, p. 139.

98 Rawlinson to Canning, 7 Feb. 1844, FO 195/237.

99 Rawlinson to Palmerston, 31 Mar. 1847, and to Cowley, 28 June 1847, FO 195/272; Rawlinson to London, 27 Feb. 1845, IOR L/P&S/9/14.

100 Rawlinson to Canning, 19 Aug. 1846, FO 195/237.

101 Saldanha, Précis, pp. 52–9; Jones, Memoirs, pp. 363–5.

102 Rawlinson was optimistic that Najib would take them up in 1845, and he did begin a canal, but it was frustrated by various local crises: to Canning, 16 Apr. 1845, FO 195/237, Kemball to Cowley, 15 Sept. 1847, FO 195/272.

103 Rawlinson to Canning, 13 May 1846, FO 195/237.

104 Jones, Memoirs, pp. 363–5.

105 Saldanha, Précis, p. 54; Jones, Memoirs, pp. 363–5.

106 Marsden, B. and Smith, C., Engineering empires: a cultural history of technology in nineteenth-century Britain (Basingstoke, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. 3; Lynn, ‘West Africa’, p. 28.

107 Ceylan, Ottoman origins, pp. 191–3; Saldanha, Précis, pp. 181–6. Najib did not get on well with the French consul, Loève-Weimars, as Rawlinson enjoyed reporting: e.g. to Canning, 21 Feb. 1844, FO 195/237, to Wellesley, 17 Feb. 1847, FO 195/272.

108 Bernard, W. D., Narrative of the voyages and services of the Nemesis, from 1840 to 1843 (London, 1844)Google Scholar.

109 McLean, D., ‘Trade, politics and the navy in Latin America: the British in the Paraná, 1845–1846’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 35 (2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 360.

110 Hobhouse to Lynch, 4 Dec. 1839, Broughton 7.

111 As claimed by consul Crow in 1907: Issawi, Fertile crescent, p. 258.

112 Holland, Robert, The blue-water empire: the British in the Mediterranean since 1800 (London, 2012)Google Scholar.

113 Markham, Memoir, p. 29; Jones, Memoirs, p. xxix.