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ASIA
world as India, and no countries have been so systematically and continuously drained of their wealth as the Eastern possesof Great Britain. And yet it may he doubted Material sions if any century 0f ^eir chequered history can show a p r0 r S ? %? development more astonishing record of agricultural and industrial in. mala. than the 19th, and especially the concludino- decades of it. It is a record which can only be referred to here in sufficient detail to illustrate the part played by India, Burma, and Ceylon in the economy of the Asiatic continent as a whole. The main arteries of Indian railway communication connecting Bombay with Calcutta, Calcutta with Lahore in the extreme northwest, together with a part of the Madras system,northwere Indian already in existence in 1870
- but
the great railways. western network was as yet in its infancy, and the “battle of the gauges ” had yet to be fought out ere a continuity of gauge measurement for all the main Indian lines was finally adopted. In 1899 the number of miles open for traffic and under construction was 22,500 and 3568 respectively. The advancement of irrigation works has also been notable, especially on the Punjab, where for one million acres that were . irrigated in 1868 no less than 5,200,000 were irrigated Irrigation. in f899_ The result of the increase in the area of production has been a general increase in agricultural products, and a special development of the growth of wheat for exportation. Under AS the indirect influence of a depreciation thebeen silverlately curcu j!‘ura , renc y 0f Indian the wheat of the Punjabofhas progress. compete successfully with that of other countries in the English markets, and to undersell that of home production. Tea has lately superseded coffee cultivation in Ceylon, and cocoa has superseded cinchona. Many districts in India have been found suitable for tea growth which in 1880 were still under forest. More than half a million of acres are now taken up with tea industry in India alone. The conservation of forests has gradually expanded to the dimensions of a state department with most gratifying results. Out of the 960,000 square miles which constitute British India Forest (apart from the native states) 114,000 square miles are conserv- now under the India controltoofforeign the Forest The ancy. exports from portsDepartment. amount to over 64,000 tons of teak wood alone, and the forest revenue is yearly expanding. Many special woods from Burma have found their special application in England, and the forests of Burma (as yet undeveloped) promise to be a fruitful source of future revenue. (See India and Burma.) The recent researches of the Geological Survey of India have proved that country to be rich in mineral -wealth. Vast areas to be covered with rocks that are the matrix of Geological known gold, copper, lead, tin, iron, coal, salt, oil, &c., have and been mapped out, and actual mining operations on mineral of these areas have proved that the geologists develop- many are not mistaken. Since 1890 the coal production of ments. India has increased from a million and a half to four million tons per annum. Enormous tracts of country are auriferous ; but of these all that is being worked is one small patch in Mysore, and yet from this patch gold to the value of 222 lakhs of rupees (a million and a half sterling) was mined in 1899. Petroleum to the extent of 19 million gallons was extracted in the same year, chiefly from the Burma oil wells. The salt mines of the Punjab yielded 66,000 tons of rock salt. Mica to the value of £85,000 was exported from the mines at Hazaribagh, and rubies worth £50,000 to £60,000 were removed from the gembearing strata of Mogok (Burma). The mining industry of India is still in its infancy, and yet it employs 263,000 persons, and turns out material to the value of three millions per year. This development of the mineral resources of India is of very recent date, and yet but a fractional part of the vast deposits of coal, gold, and other minerals has been touched. New industrial developments in many other directions remain to be recorded. (See India.) The Political Geography of Asia. The period since 1875 has been an era of boundary-marking in Asia, of defining the politico-geographical limits of empire, and of „ou .. determining the responsibilities of governments. Russia, . U .al Persia, Afghanistan, Baluchistan, India, and China ° p f have all revised their borders, and with the revision i Asia. 4 fS 3 the political In acquired a newrelations and morebetween assured these basis. countries have The advance of Russia to the Turkman deserts and the Oxus demanded a definite boundary between her trans-Caspian conquests and the kingdom of Afghanistan. This was determined on the north-west by the Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission of 1884-86. A boundary was then fixed between the Hari Rud (the river of Herat), and the Oxus, which is almost entirely artificial in its construction. Zulfikar, where the boundary leaves the Hari Rud, is
about 70 miles south of Sarakhs, and the most southerly point of the boundary (where it crosses the Kushk) is about 60 miles north of Herat. From the junction of the boundary with the Oxus at Khamiab, about 150 miles above the crossing-point of the Russian Trans-Caspian railway at Charjui, the main channel of the Oxus river becomes the northern boundary of Afghanistan, separating that country from Russia, and so continues to its source in Victoria Lake of the Great Pamir. Beyond this point the AngloRussian Commission of 1895 demarcated a line to the snowfields and glaciers which overlook the Chinese border. Between the Russian Pamirs and Chinese Turkestan the rugged line of the Sarikol range intervenes, the actual dividing line being still indefinite. Beyond Kashgar the southern boundary of Siberia follows an irregular course to the north-east, partly defined by the Tian-Shan and Alatau mountains, till it attains a northerly point in about 53° N. lat. marked by the Sayan range to the west of Irkutsk. It then deflects south-east till it touches the Kunlon affluent of the Amur river at a point which is shown in unofficial maps as in about 117° 30' E. long, and 49° 20' N. lat. From here it follows this affluent to its junction with the Amur river, and the Amur river to its junction with the Usuri. It follows the Usuri to its head (its direction now being a little west of south), and finally strikes the Pacific Coast on about 42° 30' N. lat. at the mouth of the Tumen river 100 miles south of the Amur bay, at the head of which lies the Russian port of Vladivostok. At two points the Russian boundary nearly approaches that of provinces which are directly under British suzerainty. Where the Oxus river takes its great bend to the north from Ishkashim, the breadth of Afghan territory intervening between that river and the main water-divide of the Hindu Kush is not more than 10 or 12 miles ; and east of the Pamir extension of Afghanistan, where the Beyik Pass crosses the Sarikol range and drops into the Taghdumbash Pamir, there is but the narrow width of the Karachukar valley between the Sarikol and the Muztagh. Here, however, the boundary is again undefined. Eastwards of this the great Kashgar depression, which includes the Tarim desert, separates Russia from the vast sterile highlands of Tibet; and a continuous series of desert spaces of low elevation, marking the limits of a primeval inland sea from the Sarikol meridional watershed to the Khinghan mountains on the western borders of Manchuria, divide her from the northern provinces of China. From the Khinghan ranges to the Pacific, south of the Amur, stretch the rich districts of Manchuria, a province which connects Russia with the Korea by a series of valleys formed by the Sungari and its affluents—a land of hill and plain, forest and swamp, possessing a delightful climate, and vast undeveloped agricultural resources. Over this land of promise leading to the sea-girt peninsula of Korea, Russian influence is rapidly extending ; as it is also over the western Chinese province of the new dominion, including Kashgar and Sarikol. Coincident with the demarcation of Russian boundaries in Turkestan was that of Northern Afghanistan. From the Hari Rud on the west to the Sarikol mountains on the east her northern Afghan limits were set by the Boundary Commissions of 1884- political 86 and of 1895 respectively. Her southern and eastern boundboundaries have been further defined by a series of minor commissions, working on the basis of the Kabul aries. agreement of 1893, which lasted for nearly 4 years, terminating with the Mohmand settlement at the close of an expedition in 1897. The Pamir extension of Afghan territory to the north-east reaches to a point a little short of 75° E. long., from whence it follows the water-divide to the head of the Taghdumbash Pamir, and is thenceforward defined by the water-parting of the Hindu Kush. It leaves the Hindu Kush near the Dorah Pass at the head of one of the minor Chitral affluents, and passing south-west divides Kafiristan from Chitral and Bajaor, separates the sections of the Mohmands who are within the respective spheres of Afghan and British sovereignty, and crosses the Peshawur-Kabul route at Landi-Khana. It thus places a broad width of independent territory between the boundaries of British India (which have remained practically, though not absolutely, untouched) and Afghanistan; and this independent belt includes Swat, Bajaor, and a part of the Mohmand territory north of the Kabul river. (See Afghanistan.) The same principle of maintaining an intervening width of neutral territory between the two countries is now definitely established throughout the eastern borders of Afghanistan, along the full length of which a definite boundary has been demarcated to the point where it touches the northern limits of Baluchistan on the Gomul river. From the Gomul Baluchistan itself becomes an intervening state between British India and Afghanistan, and the dividing line between Baluchistan and Afghanistan has been laid down with all the precision employed on the more northerly sections of the demarcation. (See Baluchistan.) Baluchistan can no longer be regarded as a distinct entity amongst Asiatic nations, such as Afghanistan undoubtedly is. Baluchistan independence demands qualification. There is British Baluchistan par excellence, and there is the rest of Baluchistan
