IOR/R/15/1

The East India Company concluded an agreement with the Shaikh of Bushire in April 1763 and was granted a Firman three months later in which the company was given a monopoly on the import of woollen goods into Persia and other favourable conditions for trade in the form of exemptions from export and import duties and protection for Company personnel and property. The new factory was however abandoned for a period of time from 1769 and re-established in 1775. The Resident at Bushire was immediately responsible to the Agent and Council at Basra through whom the whole of his correspondence with the Governor and Council at Bombay was normally channelled. This arrangement lasted until 1778 after which date the status of Basra was reduced from Agency to Residency, and the Resident at Bushire reported direct to Bombay though from 1807 sometimes also corresponding with the central Government at Calcutta or even with the Home Government in London.

By the 1820s the diplomatic role of the Residency had been taken over by the British Envoy at Tehran and the function of commercial relations with Persia had become of only secondary importance. Thereafter the responsibilities of the Residency could not be clearly defined but it acted chiefly as an agency dealing with political relations with the Arab littoral. The Resident was forbidden to interfere in Persian politics but his first priority was the maintenance of maritime peace in the Gulf waters. This anomalous position led to administrative complexities. The Residency was made intermittently responsible to the Envoy at Tehran, to the Government of India, or to the Government of Bombay. Despite temporary confusions, Bombay continued to be chiefly responsible for the Residency until 1873. During this time it kept the Home Government informed about Gulf affairs and forwarded copies of its correspondence with the Resident and other Gulf officials to London in two ways – either in the form of Proceedings or as Enclosures to Letters. The development of political affairs in the Gulf became an increasing concern for both the Foreign Office and the India Office. The control of the Persian Gulf territories was transferred to the Government of India in 1873.

This arrangement persisted until 1920 when a whole new set of political motives and assumptions had made some sort of re-organisation urgently necessary. The First World War had proved the importance of the Middle East in the context of British Imperial policy as well as the disastrous effect of the complex administration in the area. In 1918 there were as many as eighteen different British authorities involved in the area and between them were divided the huge responsibilities of the administration of Mesopotamia, the conduct of relations with the increasingly powerful house of Sa’ud and the settlement of political arrangements in the Hijaz and near Eastern territories, as well as relations with the Gulf States. The problem was compounded by the fact that during the war the Resident at Bushire, Sir Percy Cox, was mostly absent on other political duties in the Middle East. In 1921 an interdepartmental committee was set up under the chairmanship of Sir James Masterton-Smith, Under-Secretary, Ministry of Labour, to discuss the formation of a new department to deal with the mandated and other territories in the Middle East. The Committee reported and recommended that in future the control of policy in relation to the Arabian littoral of the Gulf should be transferred to the Colonial Office and exercised through the newly created Middle Eastern Department, but the Resident continued to report to the Foreign Office and the Government of India for other areas of responsibility.

The end of the Mandate in Iraq and the unification of Saudi Arabia and subsequent transfer of relations with Ibn Sa’ud to the Foreign Office prompted the Colonial Office itself to suggest in 1933 that it should no longer have any more responsibility for Gulf affairs. However, the Cabinet could only reach a temporary decision on 26 July 1933 that the Resident should address the India Office on matters hitherto addressed to the Colonial Office and the position of the Government of India in relation to Gulf work was to remain unchanged, correspondence being repeated to it as before.

After the Second World War, the transfer of power in India necessitated the transfer of Gulf affairs from the Government of India to the Foreign Office. Between April 1947 and March 1948, the posts at Bushire continued to be administered by the Government of India while political control was exercised through the Commonwealth Relations Office. From 1 April 1948 the Foreign Office assumed full responsibility for the Residency and Agencies in the Gulf. By then the Residency at Bushire had been transferred to Bahrain in 1946.