Baku, Caspian Sea
Image: The seafront at Baku.
In January 1918 the War Office authorised a British Mission to be sent to the Caucasus, headed by Major-General Dunsterville. Leaving Baghdad, the Dunsterforce made their way slowly north through Persia, impeded by bad weather and the need to undertake essential famine relief work. After travelling over 600 miles, in August 1918, they finally reached the port of Enzeli on the southern shore of the Caspian. A few thousand troops take ships to Baku to find themselves, along with the North Staffs, defending the oil capital against the approach of a 14,000-strong Ottoman Army of Islam. Facing overwhelming odds, on 14 September they evacuate by sea back to Enzeli but once an Armistice is signed with Turkey, they return to Baku in November. Oil production is quickly re-instituted by the British and troops are charged with escorting the oil trains to the Black Sea port of Batumi.
“The journey from Tiflis to Baku is scarcely as interesting from the point of view of scenery as the journey from Batoum to Tiflis. Gradually the country begins to assume that flat and barren aspect which is characteristic of the shores of the Caspian and of the northern plateau of the stony table-land of Asia Minor. A strange spectacle awaits the traveller on his arrival at Baku. He sees before him an enormous barren sand waste, and beyond it the sea. No town is in sight. Suddenly the train reaches the end of this desert, and the traveller finds himself descending the plateau, and can descry the town of Baku fringing the Caspian. On his approach his nostrils become invaded with that odour of naphtha which will never leave them until Baku is miles away. It is a strange-looking town. The streets are broad and clean. There is a magnificent quay. Telephones, electric trams, all the newest inventions abound. If the houses were a little taller and a little more ugly, one might almost fancy oneself in an American city out West. There is the same suggestion of newness about everything, the same sanguine atmosphere. Everybody is hopeful. But the quantities of Persians and Tartars in their picturesque costumes, the camels in the market-place the Persian citadel, and the Russian soldiers and peasants dispel the illusion. No vegetation of any kind flourishes in Baku, owing to the acidity of the soil and the naphtha in the air; but the town is enterprising, and has laid out a park with earth imported from more fertile regions, the shrubs, trees and flowers being regularly renewed; the footpaths, however, are of asphalt. Baku is divided into two towns—the white and the black. In the black town are the oil refineries. It is separated by an enormous sandy waste, many miles in extent, from Baku proper, the white town, and is built entirely of wood, so that when it burns, as it often does, no valuable materials are wasted.”
– Edward Arthur Bayley Hodgetts, ‘Glorious Russia: its life, people and destiny’, 1916.
The oil fields of Binagardy, Baku, August 1918, National Army Museum Collection.
“The things that we make out of what comes out of the ground here boggles the mind,” says Jeremy Clarkson, as he and his colleagues drive 1000 kilometres from Batumi to Baku for an episode of The Grand Tour Season 3: Sea To Unsalty Sea. They go on to list some: toothbrushes, crayons, heart valves, parachutes, anti-freeze, vinyl records, cassette tapes, CDs, training shoes, guitar strings, balloons, sunglasses, life-jackets, anesthetics, enamel dentures, prosthetic limbs, shampoo, disposable ballpoint pens, smartphones, face creams, deodorants, lipstick, fishing rods, electric blankets, insect repellent, umbrellas, light switches, dishwashers, antiseptic, food preservatives, basketballs, putty, motorcycle helmets, boas, soft contact lenses, fan belts, satellite dishes, frisbees, heat, light and – as Richard Hammond has the last word – “most important of all, the amber nectar of the Gods, petrol.”
Backstreets of Baku.
Backstreets of Baku.
Entrance to Shahidlar Monument in Highland Park, a memorial to Turkish and Azerbaijani casualties in 1918, the site of the Muslim cemetery. Nearby is the memorial to British soldiers who fought them, who were originally buried in Baku's Christian cemetery. Both cemeteries were destroyed under the Soviet regime, with an amusement park built on the site, along with a monument dedicated to Sergei Mironovich Kirov, First Secretary of the Azjerbaijani Communist Party.
Hauling naval guns above the town, 1919. Photographs by Robert Cotton Money, Imperial War Museum collection.
The British troops had mixed feeling about Baku. One soldier with the 36th Indian Brigade wrote: ‘I got out to the oilfields about 10 miles from Baku yesterday. It’s quite impossible to imagine anything so infernal, so literally hellish, as that area. All the streams, all the roads, most of the buildings, and people, black and slimy with crude oil – heavy clouds of smoke everywhere, smells of oil everywhere... Then there are hundred of pipes and gutters and drains conducting oil away to the settling tanks and refineries from the wells, an absolute tangle of them. Large areas were destroyed by the Turk and the Bolsheviks and all the litter is lying around, shiny and black of course.’
There was a strong Bolshevik presence in the town, stirring up anti-British feeling, organising strikes and protests. The 1919 May Day demonstration in Baku attracts many thousands of workers. Leaflets were distributed in English and Hindi.
‘Away with the English Imperialists! Away with their paid agents! Away with the Bourgeois Counter-Revolutionaries! What can the English give you? Nothing! What can they take from you? Everything! Away with the English Imperialists!’ – leaflet of The News of the Council of Workmen, Red Army, Sailors, and Peasant Deputies of the Baku Area.
By September 1919, the British decide to leave the Caspian shore, pulling back to the western Caucasus. In April 1920, the Red Army invaded and installed a Soviet government.
Menu, Christmas 1918, from the papers of Cyril Sladden at the Imperial War Museum reference 60/98/3. He served with the Worcesters at Baku in 1918 – 1919.
