Page:EB1922 - Volume 30.djvu/395

Rh afresh, this time on the right bank. His plan involved a long night march and assault on the enemy defenses, some 10 m. short of Kut, at daybreak. But one of his divisions did not arrive on time, and when delivered the attack failed; Aylmer was there- upon replaced by another general. He was given the K.C.B., and after returning to India he commanded a division there for some time. Gen. Aylmer was the author of an important tactical study on Protection in War (1912). AYUB KHAN (1855-1014), Afghan prince, son of Shere AH (see 3.77), died at Lahore April 6 1914.

AZCARATE, GUMERSINDO (1840-1917), Spanish politician and lawyer, was born at Leon, Spain, Jan. 13 1840, and was educated at the university of Oviedo, whence in 1858 he went to Madrid and graduated in law, science and philosophy (1861). After obtaining a post as assistant in a public office he returned in 1868 to Madrid as assistant professor of comparative juris- prudence and in 1872 was appointed professor. He was of the little band of Liberals who preferred to resign in 1875 rather than submit to the famous Orovio decree limiting the liberty of the chair. He was, however, reinstated six years later and became one of the central figures of the group headed by Don Francisco Giner, to which Spain owes most of its up-to-date educational institutions. He sat as deputy for Leon from 1886 to 1890, from 1891 to 1895, and for later periods. In 1892 he became professor of private law at Madrid. In politics he was a moderate republican. He was a keen student of English institu- tions and an admirer of English political life. In later years he accepted a share in official administration, notably as the head of the Institute de Reformas Sociales, which he had invested with his incomparable moral authority. He had also approved of the Reformist evolution of Senor Melquiades Alvarez. The austerity of his political views was such that on being defeated at the last general election he fought, he refused a seat as senator for life, which was offered him by the Government. He died at Madrid Dec. 14 1917.

AZCARRAGA Y PALMERO, MARCELO (1832-1915), Spanish soldier and politician, was born in Manila in 1832. He early saw service in Spain during the mutinous outbreaks in Isabella's reign (1854-6) and was next sent to Cuba and on a special mission to Mexico, later belonging to the expeditionary army against that country. He was promoted colonel in 1866 and entered the Ministry of War. He was employed by the Spanish republican Government of 1868 as chief of staff at Cartagena and later of the army of the North. After the accession of Alphonso XII. he became field marshal and Under-Secretary for War. He sat as deputy for Morella in the first restoration Parliament. In 1885 he was elected senator for Navarre and was Minister for War under Canovas (1891-2) and again in 1895, becoming head of the Cabinet in 1897 after Canovas's assassination. In Sept. 1904 he retired from the army at the age of 70 with the rank of general, and in Dec. of that year was again for a few weeks prime minister. Throughout his political career he was associated with the Conservatives but took little part in party struggles. He died May 30 1915.

AZERBÄÏJÄN. The republic of Azerbaijan had no political existence until the year 1917, when the Trans-Caucasian provinces of the Russian Empire, exposed to the enemies of Russia, found in the collapse of the empire the need and opportunity of striking out for themselves. Nor has Azerbaijan any national traditions or history; scarcely, till lately, had her people a racial consciousness, the name, even, did not apply to the present state. Under Russian administration Trans-Caucasia comprised six " Governments." Of these Baku, with a coastline on the Caspian Sea, and Elisavetopol, adjoining Baku on the west, united to form the republic of Azerbaijan. The territory included in the two " Governments" was, originally, the portion of the Persian province of Azerbaijan (see 3.80) ceded to Russia as long ago as 1813 under the predatory Treaty of Gulistan. Once a Russian possession, the ceded area lost all connexion with its previous name. But when in 1917 the two " Governments" combined to declare a joint independence the Persian name was adopted for the infant state from motives of policy it was hoped thus to attract to the new republic the Persian remainder of the old province of Azerbaijan, peopled chiefly by the same stock.

Geographical Position. Looked at broadly the republic occupies the lowlands of two great Caucasian river basins the Kuru and the Aras enclosed by the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus mountains, the watershed parting of the Black Sea, and the highlands of Armenia and Persian Azerbaijan. This fertile territory, rich also in oil, has a coastline to the Caspian exceeding 400 m., and stands athwart the chief line of communication between the Black Sea and central Asia. Two-thirds of its population is a homogeneous race of Tatar origin closely related to the Anatolian Turk. They speak a form of Turkish, but, unlike the Turk, are Moslems of the Shiah sect: with their Sunni kinsmen of Anatolia they have, however, a definite sympathy.

Area and Population. The area of the " Governments " of Baku and Elisavetopol together was about 32,000 sq. m.; their pop., by the Russian census of 1916, somewhat less than 2,600,000. This total comprised, in round figures, 1,740,000 Moslems, 540,000 Armenians, 230,000 Russians and other Europeans, and diverse elements as the remainder.

The territory claimed by the republic is not, however, alto- gether that of the " Governments " of Baku and Elisavetopol; but it is only of these that definite figures of area and population can be given. For districts containing in all some 15,000 sq. m., partly within and partly without the boundaries of the two " Governments," and carrying a pop. of nearly a million, are in dispute between Azerbaijan and the adjoining republics of Erivan and Georgia. Settlement of these disputes may give Azerbaijan a greater or lesser area and population than had the two " Governments."

Industries and Communications. The chief industry of the country is the production, refining, and exportation of oil and petroleum. Within 50 years the immense oil deposit discovered on the Apsheron peninsula had created the city of Baku, now the capital of Azerbaijan, with a pop. of 250,000. Indeed the production of oil in vast quantities in this region has had far- reaching indirect political results. It has given the state an importance out of proportion to its population, by placing wide adjoining regions in a position of dependence regarding the vital commodity of oil for light and fuel. Still more, it has profoundly affected the direction given to lines of railway, and the development of rail and other forms of communication.

By this process, and from the position of Baku as a port on the Caspian Sea a sea nearly twice as great in area as all the Great Lakes of America together the city became a centre with lines of communication, by rail and sea, radiating from it in all directions. From Baku the Caspian Sea is crossed by ferry steamers to Krasnovodsk; and thence a railway runs for nearly 2,000 m. through central Asia, skirting the Afghan frontier, and reaching the Pamirs. The city is in direct rail communication with Moscow; by railway, sea, river or canal every part of European Russia, in fact, is within reach. By sea N. Persia ports are only one day's steaming. Through Trans- Caucasia Baku is in direct railway communication with Erivan, Tabriz in N.W. Persia, Erzerum in Turkey, and Batum on the Black Sea. Batum, indeed, is complementary to Baku as the terminus not only of the Baku-Black Sea railway, and of the pipe-line for conveying oil, but as the one port by which the great inland centre of communication and oil production, embedded deep in western Asia, can have trade intercourse with the oceans and outer countries of the world. The interdependence of Baku and Batum was well enough with all Trans-Caucasia under one Government; with the two cities in separate states friction became inevitable.

Had there been no oil at Baku events in the Near and Middle East during the years 1913-21 would have shown a striking dissimilarity from the events which actually befell. Such is the important position Azerbaijan fills, by reason of Baku, on the confines of south-eastern Europe and western Asia.

External Influences. In the Pan-Islamic dreams cherished by the Young Turk leaders of Turkey, the republic, with Persian