War and Peace in Qajar Persia: Implications Past and ... - Oguzlar.az

160 Richard SchofieldRelegating the ambitions of the commission,May–September 1852By this stage the mediating powers were already relegating their ambitionsfor the commission. After Palmerston’s observations, they realized that noprogress could be made on delimitation until such time as they were grantedarbitrating powers. Persia seemed prepared to consent to such an arrangement,providing its control of Khotour was restored and that delimitationwould be based squarely on the express (albeit vague) terms of the ErzurumTreaty. Constantinople’s absolute refusal to entertain any such notion persuadedBritain and Russia to pragmatically restrict the labours of thecommission to the construction of a map. Thereby a border zone would beallocated, ranging in width between 20 and 50 miles, within which a preciseboundary would be delimited by future common consent. Resumption offurther diplomatic efforts to agree upon delimitation would not be contemplateduntil completion of the said map. 29 Apparently satisfied by thisturn of events, Dervish Pasha rejoined the commission for the final stage oftheir survey, northwards from Zohab through Kurdistan to Mount Araratin the north, a task that would take until mid-September. Yet his unilateralwalkabouts would continue, with the mediating commissioners fairly certainthat stop-offs in Serdesht, Banna, Larijan and Ushni were designed toseduce Persian subjects away from their well-established allegiance to theShah. Nevertheless, on 14 September 1852, Colonel Williams reported toWhitehall the conclusion of the survey of the Perso-Ottoman frontier fromthe Gulf to Ararat. A few months later – early in 1853 – Williams informedthe British government of his intention to draw up a report in conjunctionwith Tchirikof, embodying the opinions and suggestions for delimitationof the mediating commissioners on every stretch of the surveyedborderlands.Now near farce would intervene to further bedevil the imperial project tonarrow the Perso-Ottoman borderlands. Incredibly, all the characteristicallymeticulous (and, by all accounts, copious) notes and memoranda that Williamshad collected for the borderland mapping, as well as his own final report,were lost to the muddy Thames at Gravesend, as his return voyage fromConstantinople made British territorial waters but, alas, no further. He atleast survived to tell the tale but the loss of the vast majority of data collectedbetween 1850 and 1852 meant that whatever slim chance they had ofclarifying the recent territorial history of the borderlands (and therefore thecontext for the 1847 treaty settlement) had now disappeared. It will be recalledthat the mediating commissioners’ original instruction had been to confineterritorial restitution to Mohammerah, Sulaymaniyeah and Zohab, in conformitywith the 1847 treaty, but elsewhere to respect the status quo asoriginally estimated in 1843. With the loss of Williams’s records, establishingwhat this territorial status quo might have meant in more detailed termson the ground was now a completely futile exercise. 30 Luckily, the detailed