Without a satisfactory terminus on the Persian Gulf the Bagdad Railway would lose its greatest possibilities as a great transcontinental line; with such a terminus it might become a menace to vital British interests in that region. British imperialists had been interested in control of the Persian Gulf since the seventeenth century, when the East India Company established trading posts along its shores. The British navy cleared the Gulf of pirates; it buoyed and beaconed the waters of the Gulf and the Shatt-el-Arab. A favorable treaty with the Emir of Muscat, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, provided Great Britain with a “sally port” from which to organize the defence of the entrance to the Gulf; later, Muscat became a protectorate of Great Britain. From time to time treaties were negotiated with the Arab chieftains of southern Mesopotamia, extending British influence up the Shatt-el-Arab and the Tigris and Euphrates to Bagdad. Under these circumstances, it was apparent from the very beginning that, whether or not the Balfour Government consented to British participation in the Bagdad enterprise, there would be no surrender of the privileged position enjoyed by Great Britain in the Persian Gulf. Foreign merchants might be admitted to a share in the Gulf trade, but the existence of a port under foreign control hardly could be approved.[24] Lord Lansdowne, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, speaking before the House of Lords, on May 5, 1903, made the position of the Government clear: “I do not yield to the noble Lord [Lord Ellenborough] in the interest which I take in the Persian Gulf or in the feeling that this country stands, with regard to the navigation of the Persian Gulf, in a position different from that of any other power.... The noble Lord has asked me for a statement of our policy with regard to the Persian Gulf. I think I can give him one in a few simple words. It seems to me that our policy should be directed in the first place to protect and promote British trade in those waters. In the next place I do not think that he suggests, or that we would suggest, that those efforts should be directed towards the exclusion of the legitimate trade of other powers. In the third place—I say it without hesitation—we should regard the establishment of a naval base, or of a fortified port, in the Persian Gulf by any other power as a very grave menace to British interests, and we should certainly resist it with all the means at our disposal. I say that in no minatory spirit, because, as far as I am aware, no proposals are on foot for the establishment of a foreign naval base in the Persian Gulf.”[25]