Powers in the Berlin Conference of 1885, requiring the notification of any such action in the future to the Signatory Powers, in order to enable them to substantiate any counterclaim of their own, and stipulating for the effective exercise of authority in the region concerned. This Agreement only applied to Africa, nor even there did it cover the interior extension of Frontiers. But it has not been without influence in imparting some measure of propriety to proceedings not everywhere over-imbued with scruple. The most recent instances in which the Hinterland doctrine has been before the public have been the dispute between Great Britain and Venezuela as to the inland boundary; the provisions by which the Great Powers, when leasing naval bases on the coast of China, acquired at the same time an interior zone; and the steps taken a short while ago to define, by means of an Anglo-Turkish Boundary Commission, the Hinterland of Aden, where Turkish troops from the Yemen were constantly encroaching upon the tribes within the British Protectorate.
The reference to China invites attention to yet another form of Frontier extension that has found favour in recent times. This is the grant of Leases, in order to veil an occupation not as a rule intended to be temporary. Great Britain has sometimes made use of this expedient in Native States in India, Quetta, and afterwards Nushki, having been taken from the Khan of Kelat on a quit rent in perpetuity. I also, while Viceroy, negotiated the perpetual Lease of the interior province of Berar by the Nizam of Hyderabad, though this was an act exclusively of administrative and financial convenience, and had nothing to do with exterior Frontiers. Some of the territories of the Sultan of
