TURKEY, THE GREAT POWERS
AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY
A Study in Imperialism
CHAPTER I
AN ANCIENT TRADE ROUTE IS REVIVED
Many a glowing tale has been told of the great Commercial
Revolution of the sixteenth century and of the
consequent partial abandonment of the trans-Asiatic trade
routes to India in favor of the newer routes by water
around the Cape of Good Hope. It is sometimes overlooked,
however, that a commercial revolution of the nineteenth
century, occasioned by the adaptation of the steam
engine to land and marine transportation, was of perhaps
equal significance. Cheap carriage by the ocean greyhound
instead of the stately clipper, by locomotive-drawn
trains instead of stage-coach and caravan, made possible
the extension of trade to the innermost and outermost
parts of the earth and increased the volume of the world's
commerce to undreamed of proportions. This latter commercial
revolution led not only to the opening of new
avenues of communication, but also to the regeneration of
trade-routes which had been dormant or decayed for centuries.
During the nineteenth century and the early part
of the twentieth, the medieval trans-Asiatic highways
to the East were rediscovered.
The first of these medieval trade-routes to be revived
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