Such was not the case, however, with the establishment of German steamship service to the Persian Gulf. Here British trade had been dominant for centuries. The German railway invasion had not as yet reached Mesopotamia, and German trade in this region was negligible. The establishment of a German steamship service to Basra would be equivalent to the throwing out of an advance guard and reconnaissance expedition on behalf of German trade. Incidentally it would mean the destruction of the practical monopoly which had been enjoyed by the British in the trade of Irak. It was considered of no slight importance, therefore, when, in April of 1906, the Hamburg-American Line announced its intention of establishing a regular service between European ports and the Persian Gulf. An office of the Company was immediately opened at Basra, and in August the first German steamer, with a German cargo, made its way up the Shatt-el-Arab. Soon afterward the Hamburg-American Line inaugurated, also, a service between British ports and Mesopotamia, and it provided a regular schedule of sailing dates, a luxury to which merchants doing business in the Near East had not heretofore been accustomed. With the aid of a government subsidy the German company cut freight rates in half. This rude disturbance of the _status quo_ in the shipping of the Persian Gulf dealt a severe blow to British companies engaged in the carrying trade between European ports and Mesopotamia. After a futile rate war the British lines, represented by Lord Inchcape, came to an agreement, in 1913, with their German competitors, ending a rivalry which had been the cause of considerable concern on the part of their respective foreign offices.[32] In order to coöperate with the attempts of Germans to have a share in the trade of the Mesopotamian valley, the German Government established a consulate at Bagdad in 1908. The services of this consulate, supplementing the pioneer work of the Hamburg-American Line, had immediate results in the development of commercial relationships with the Land of the Two Rivers. The value of exports from Basra to Germany increased from about half a million dollars in 1906 to slightly in excess of a million dollars in 1913; German goods received at Basra during the same period increased from about half a million dollars to almost nine million dollars. Herr von Mutius, the German Consul at Bagdad, conducted an active campaign of education and propaganda, urging upon business men at home the importance of participating further in the development of the economic resources of the land of the Arabs.[33]