Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/128

 Certain important conclusions may be drawn from these statistics:

1. British trade continued during the decade 1900-1910 to dominate the Near Eastern market. With total imports and exports in the latter year of over 277,000,000 marks it was in no immediate danger of being outstripped by its nearest rivals—a German trade of about 172,000,000 marks and an Austro-Hungarian trade of about 150,000,000 marks.

2. France, whose Near Eastern trade in 1900 had proudly held a position second only to that of the United Kingdom, was being obliged to accept a less prominent place in the economic life of the Ottoman Empire. During the first ten years of the new century French merchants obviously were being outmaneuvered by Germans, Austro-Hungarians, and Italians. In spite of a total increase of 17% in exports and imports between France and Turkey it was apparent that French trade was not keeping the pace; during the same period Austro-Hungarian trade showed an increased valuation of 81%, German trade of 166%.

3. Although it continued to dominate the Near Eastern market, British commerce, likewise, was losing ground. Between 1900 and 1910 it showed an increase of only 25% as compared with the Italian record of 172% during the same period. During the decade British exports, although showing an increased valuation, fell off from 35% to 22-1/2% of the total import trade of Turkey; for the same period German exports achieved not only an absolute gain of almost eighty million marks, but also a relative increase from 2-1/2% to 11-1/2% of the whole.

4. The advance of German trade was not equal to the advance of Italian trade in the Ottoman Empire during the same period. This explains, in part, the rapidly increasing political interest of Italy in the Near East and