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The Berlin-Baghdad Railway, also known as the Baghdad Railway ((トルコ語:Bağdat Demiryolu), (ドイツ語:Bagdadbahn), (フランス語:Chemin de Fer Impérial Ottoman de Bagdad)), was built from 1903 to 1940 to connect Berlin with the (then) Ottoman Empire city of Baghdad, where the Germans wanted to establish a port in the Persian Gulf,〔McMurray (2001) page 2〕 with a line through modern-day Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. Completion of the project took several decades and by the outbreak of World War I, the railway was still 960 km (600 miles) away from its intended objective. The last stretch to Baghdad was built in the late 1930s and the first train to travel from Istanbul to Baghdad departed in 1940. Funding and engineering was mainly provided by German Empire banks and companies, which in the 1890s had built the Anatolian Railway (''Anatolische Eisenbahn'') connecting Constantinople, Ankara and Konya. The Ottoman Empire wished to maintain its control of Arabia and to expand its influence across the Red Sea into the nominally Ottoman (until 1914) Khedivate of Egypt, which had been under British military control since the Urabi Revolt in 1882. If the railway had been completed, the Germans would have gained access to suspected oil fields in Mesopotamia,〔See: Turkish Petroleum Company〕 as well as a connection to the port of Basra on the Persian Gulf. The latter would have provided access to the eastern parts of the German colonial empire, and avoided the Suez Canal, which was controlled by British-French interests. The railway became a source of international disputes during the years immediately preceding World War I.〔Bilgin. On the BR and Anglo-Ottoman relations, 1902-13. http://dergiler.ankara.edu.tr/dergiler/19/1273/14662.pdf〕〔http://oilpro.com/post/4759/following-the-tracks-to-war-britain-germany--the-berlin-baghdad-railway〕 Although it has been argued that they were resolved in 1914 before the war began, it has also been argued that the railway was a leading cause of the First World War.〔(Jastrow 1917)〕〔The Berlin-Baghdad Railway as a Cause of World War One. Maloney 1984 Centre for Naval Research (C) 2008 https://www.cna.org/sites/default/files/research/5500040100.pdf〕 Technical difficulties in the remote Taurus Mountains and diplomatic delays meant that by 1915 the railway was still short of completion, severely limiting its use during the war in which Baghdad was occupied by the British while the Hejaz Railway in the south was attacked by guerrilla forces led by T. E. Lawrence. Construction resumed in the 1930s and was completed in 1940. A history of this railway in the context of World War I history has lately emerged to describe the German interests in countering the British Empire, and Turkey's interest in countering their Russian rivals.〔Sean McMeekin, 'The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany's bid for world power. 2010, ISBN 978-0-674-05739-5〕 As stated by a contemporary 'on the ground' at the time, Morris Jastrow wrote〔page 97, Jastrow https://archive.org/details/warandthebagdadr001985mbp〕 "It was felt in England that if, as Napoleon is said to have remarked, Antwerp in the hands of a great continental power was a pistol leveled at the English coast, Baghdad and the Persian Gulf in the hands of Germany (or any other strong power) would be a 42-centimetre gun pointed at India." ==Overview== Had it had been completed earlier, the ''Berlin-Baghdad'' (and ultimately ''Basra'') railway would have enabled transport and trade from Germany through a port on the Persian Gulf, from which trade goods and supplies could be exchanged directly with the farthest of the German colonies, and the world. The journey home to Germany would have given German industry direct supply of oil. This access to resources, with trade less affected by British control of shipping, would have been beneficial to German economic interests in industry and trade,〔William Engdahl, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order ISBN 0-7453-2310-3〕 and threatening to British economic dominance in colonial trade. The railway also threatened Russia, since it was accepted as axiomatic that political influence followed economic, and the railway was expected to extend Germany's economic influence towards the Caucasian frontier and into north Persia where Russia had a dominant share of the market.〔Evans (1990) Page 83.〕 By the late 19th century the Ottoman Empire was weak, and cheap imports from industrialised Europe and the effects of a disastrous war had resulted in the country's finances being controlled by the Ottoman Public Debt Administration, composed of and answerable to the Great Powers.〔Earle (1923) page 10〕 The Europeans saw great potential to exploit the resources of the weakening empire, irrigation could transform agriculture, there were chrome, antimony lead and zinc mines and some coal. Not least there were potentially vast amounts of oil. As early as 1871 a commission of experts studied the geology of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and reported plentiful oil of good quality, but commented that poor transportation made it doubtful these fields could compete with Russian and American ones. During 1901 a German report announced the region had a veritable "lake of petroleum" of almost inexhaustible supply.〔Earle (1923) page 14〕 In 1872 German railway engineer Wilhelm von Pressel was retained by the Ottoman government to develop plans for railways in Turkey. However, private enterprise would not build the railway without subsidies, so the Ottoman Government had to reserve part of its revenues to subsidise its construction, thus increasing its debt to the European powers.〔Earle (1923) page 19〕 The process of construction of a rail line from Constantinople to Baghdad begun during 1888 when Alfred von Kaulla, manager of Württembergische Vereinsbank, and Georg von Siemens, Managing director of Deutsche Bank, created a syndicate and obtained a concession from Turkish leaders to extend the Haydarpaşa - İzmit Railway to Ankara. Thus came into existence the Anatolian Railway Company (SCFOA, or ARC).〔Earle (1923) page 31〕 After the line to Ankara was completed during December 1892, railway workshops were built in Eskişehir and permission was obtained to construct a railway line from Eskişehir to Konya, and that line was completed in July 1896.〔McMurray (2001) page 29〕 The two lines were the first two sections of the ''Baghdad Railway''. Another railway built at the same time by German engineers was the Hejaz railway, commissioned by Sultan Hamid II. The Ottoman Empire chose to place the line outside the range of the British Navy guns. Therefore, the coastal way from Alexandretta to Aleppo was avoided. The line had to cross the Amanus mountains inland at the cost of expensive engineering including an 8 km tunnel between Ayran and Fevzipaşa. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Baghdad Railway」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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