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

Narrowing the frontier 169Perhaps the most obvious lesson to be drawn was, however, that to lead effectivelya territorial definition exercise, a specific mandate is required for thetask. Britain and Russia were trying to lead a process without adequate powers.As mediators, they could only try and bring together the local disputantsbut ultimate control remained with Persia and the Ottomans.It is not surprising that establishing a boundary in a frontier zone wouldprove so difficult. The basis for this project was to estimate the territorialbalance in a transition zone marked by fluidity and impermanence. If Britain’sintervention here in the borderlands was characterized by an attempt to cementvariable political structures and to freeze situations in time, it would do analogousthings elsewhere in the region. Making protectorate-style arrangementsin the decades that followed with the most powerful families of the coastalsettlements of the western and southern Persian Gulf littoral would have asimilar effect of fossilizing prevailing political power structures in stone whenfluidity had previously been a defining feature. At least in the latter case thestate of affairs that Britain decided to render permanent had been clearlyrecognizable. Never mind that adopting the territorial balance that just happenedto prevail in 1843 was highly questionable in itself; there was no waythat Britain and Russia could have characterized this accurately in the firstinstance. And despite the fact that the 1843 territorial status quo continuedto be the guiding principle for narrowing the Perso-Ottoman frontier, noonecould convincingly re-establish where it lay, even in an approximate sense.Adjusting to a more rigid frontier also troubled and confused the Persiansand Ottomans. Whereas neither had been generally disturbed by the customarymigrations of tribes across the historic borderland zone, each would increasinglycharacterize these as deliberate and unwarranted territorial transgressionsacross a line (or at least a frontier of considerably less width). A hardeningterritorial rivalry had developed by the late 1860s. Sure enough, before thistime some transboundary movements of tribes had annoyed central authoritybut more for the inconvenience they caused than any developed sense ofterritoriality. For instance, in the years before Britain and Russia intervenedin the frontier dispute, the Ottoman government complained about havingto take responsibility for seasonal transboundary movements of Persian Kurds.As Britain’s Consul in Erzurum commented: “The pasha again repeated thatsome decided steps must be taken by Persia to retain the Koords when restored,for that Turkey could not undertake annually to employ troops to force thePersian tribes to quit the Turkish territory and return to Persia.” 57Evolving Persian and Ottoman views and conduct throughout thenineteenth century require attention. For Constantinople this was a longestablishedthough distant frontier zone. Bringing greater territorial stabilityto the borderlands through the quadripartite border treaty and thesubsequent surveying commission also represented an opportunity forOttoman central authority to actually extend control there, never mindjust getting better acquainted with the region. Before the 1850–1852Turco-Persian Boundary Delimitation Commission had even sat down to