Development of Russian-Persian Trade along the Central Asian Border at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Introduction. The paper examines the history of infrastructure cooperation between the Russian Empire and Persia at the turn of the twentieth century, which included the construction of a cart road between two important economic centers of the Southeastern Caspian — Ashgabat and Mashhad. The project was intended to intensify trade processes between Russia and Persia’s Khorasan through Transcaspian Oblast. Goals. The article seeks to show the role of the Ashgabat–Mashhad road in the shaping of bilateral trade and economic relations in the late imperial era. To facilitate this, the work shall consider the road’s construction progress and features, articulate its impacts on mutual trade turnover within the specified period, reveal roles of financial, organizational, geopolitical factors during the Russian-Persian infrastructure project’s implementation. Materials and methods. The study analyzes quite a variety of sources, including both published and unpublished ones (the latter discovered in federal archives). The study employs the structural historical, comparative and systems methods. Results and conclusions. The Ashgabat – Mashhad road, Transcaspian Railway and other transport routes constituted a unified transport infrastructure system that connected Russia’s Central Asian territories to Northeast Persia. This did contribute to the intensification of mutual trade in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, the low quality of construction works on the Persian section, Russia’s lack of efficient construction control tools in the territory of Persia, resistance from Great Britain, and other factors led to delays, additional financial costs and decreased efficiency. These prompted the Russian Government to completely convey the existing route to a Russian concessionaire for the latter to arrange a large-scale modernization of the required transport corridor. Inter alia, the discussion included a possibility of constructing a railway to be funded by Russian subjects. Still, Russia’s participation in World War I deprived the Government of any opportunity to begin implementing the designed project. © 2025 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.