In the context of international affairs, which one of the following is correct about Lord Curzon?

Correct — B, (b) He wanted to establish a British sphere of influence over the Persian Gulf and Seistan. Curzon came to the Viceroyalty in 1899 as the most travelled and most opinionated frontier strategist of his generation. He had ridden through Persia and Central Asia and written two heavy books out of it, Russia in Central Asia (1889) and Persia and the Persian Question (1892), and both argue one thesis: Russia’s advance across Central Asia was moving steadily nearer India, and the defence of India therefore had to be conducted far outside India — in Persia, Afghanistan and Tibet. The Persian Gulf was the maritime half of that scheme and Seistan, the border tract of eastern Persia lying against Afghanistan and Baluchistan, was its landward half, the corridor down which a hostile power could approach the Indian frontier. What Curzon actually did fits the option exactly. In 1899 an agreement was concluded with the ruler of Kuwait binding him not to cede or lease territory to any other power. In May 1903 the Foreign Secretary, Lord Lansdowne, declared in Parliament that Britain would regard the establishment of a naval base or fortified port in the Gulf by any other power as a grave threat to British interests. In November 1903 Curzon toured the Gulf in person and held a durbar at Sharjah, telling the assembled sheikhs that British influence there must remain supreme. Seistan he worked on by consulates, telegraph lines and trade routes, to keep Russian commerce and Russian agents out; when Britain and Russia finally partitioned Persia into spheres by the convention of 1907, the south-eastern zone reserved to Britain was precisely Kerman, Sistan and Baluchistan.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)He advocated a pacifist policy. — The exact opposite of the man. Curzon’s whole doctrine was the forward policy — meet the perceived Russian threat by pushing British influence outward, not by conciliation. In his own Viceroyalty he separated the trans-Indus districts from Punjab to create the North-West Frontier Province in 1901 so that the tribal frontier could be handled directly, and he sanctioned the Younghusband mission that marched into Tibet and forced a convention at Lhasa in 1904 because he suspected Russian intrigue at the Dalai Lama’s court. A pacifist policy is what his critics accused the home government of, never what Curzon advocated.
• (c)He wanted England and Russia to become friends against China. — This inverts the alignment of the period. The framework within which Curzon thought was Anglo-Russian rivalry across Asia — the contest usually called the Great Game — in which Russia was the rival to be excluded from Persia, Afghanistan and Tibet, not a friend to be recruited. China does not figure in his scheme as the enemy at all; the Chinese question that touched him was Tibet’s ambiguous relationship with Peking, which he tried to bypass by dealing with Lhasa directly. An option that makes England and Russia allies against China describes no policy Curzon ever held.
• (d)He wanted to lead a flag-waving mission to the USA. — No such episode exists. Curzon’s travels, and the books he made out of them, were in Asia — Russian Central Asia, Persia, Afghanistan, the Pamirs, the Far East and Korea — and the missions he despatched or led as Viceroy went to Tibet, Kabul and the Persian Gulf. His later career took him to the Foreign Office in 1919 and to the peace-making of the early 1920s, but nothing in it resembles a flag-waving mission to the United States. The option is filler, and its vagueness is the tell.

The idea being tested is the strategy usually called the defence of India in depth. British Indian governments from the 1870s onwards worried less about invasion than about influence: a rival great power established in Kabul, Tehran or Lhasa could destabilise the frontier without ever crossing it, so the answer was to ring India with territories in which no other power could gain a footing. Curzon is the most systematic exponent of that view. He divided the ring into three: Afghanistan, held by subsidy and by control of its foreign relations; Tibet, to be kept out of Russian reach; and Persia, where the Gulf coast secured the sea approach and Seistan the desert approach. The instruments were not usually annexation. They were exclusive agreements with local rulers, consulates, telegraph and post offices, subsidised steamer lines and trade routes — the apparatus by which a sphere of influence is built without a formal protectorate. The end of the story is the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907, which divided Persia into a Russian north, a neutral centre and a British south-east.

Key facts

• Curzon was Viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905; before that he travelled widely in Asia and wrote Russia in Central Asia (1889) and Persia and the Persian Question (1892).
• Seistan, or Sistan, is a border region of eastern Persia adjoining Afghanistan and Baluchistan, valued by British strategists as a landward approach to India.
• An agreement with the ruler of Kuwait in 1899 bound him not to cede or lease territory to any power other than Britain.
• In May 1903 Lord Lansdowne declared that Britain would regard a naval base or fortified port established in the Persian Gulf by another power as a grave threat to British interests.
• Curzon toured the Gulf in November 1903 and held a durbar at Sharjah, telling the sheikhs that British influence must remain supreme.
• The Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907 divided Persia into three zones — a Russian north, a neutral belt, and a British south-east comprising Kerman, Sistan and Baluchistan.
• Curzon’s frontier record inside India includes the creation of the North-West Frontier Province in 1901 and the Younghusband mission to Tibet, which produced the Lhasa Convention of 1904.

Common traps

• Answering from the domestic list — Bengal, universities, monuments — when the stem has restricted the question to international affairs.
• Reading Seistan as an unfamiliar word and rejecting the option for that reason. It is Sistan in eastern Persia, and the spelling is the paper’s own.
• Assuming any Viceroy could be described as pacifist. The word almost never fits a frontier administrator of this period.
• Confusing rivalry with alliance: Russia is the power to be excluded in every Curzon scheme, never the partner.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907 divided Persia into spheres. Which zone was reserved to Britain?

  • (a)The northern zone including Tehran and Isfahan
  • (b)The south-eastern zone including Kerman, Sistan and Baluchistan
  • (c)The whole of the Caspian littoral
  • (d)The central neutral belt only

  Answer(b) The south-eastern zone including Kerman, Sistan and Baluchistan

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which province was created by Lord Curzon in 1901 by separating the trans-Indus districts from Punjab?

  • (a)Sind
  • (b)Baluchistan
  • (c)The North-West Frontier Province
  • (d)The Central Provinces

  Answer(c) The North-West Frontier Province