IOR/R/15/2/651-765

The Second World War subject files cover a wide range of topics affecting Bahrain in the time leading up to, during, and in the aftermath of, the Second World War. The files may be broadly arranged under the following categories:

• oil production at Bahrain, managed by the Bahrain Petroleum Company (BAPCO), including: the maintenance of and increase in oil production at Bahrain; licences for the export of oil from Bahrain; coke exports; security and protection of the oil field and refinery at Bahrain, from sabotage and aerial raids; oil denial schemes; recruitment, leave and morale of BAPCO employees in Bahrain; conscription of BAPCO employees;
• oil operations elsewhere, including: oil operations at Dhahran in Saudi Arabia, managed by the California-Arabian Standard Oil Company (CASOC), and oil exploration in Qatar, carried out by Petroleum Concessions Limited (PCL)/Petroleum Development (Qatar) Limited, which was suspended in 1942;
• security and defence arrangements at Bahrain and across the wider Persian Gulf region, including: creation of the Persian Gulf States (Emergency) Order in Council (1939); armaments for Bahrain; appointment of a Defence Officer for the Persian Gulf; passive air defence measures; blackout precautions; recruitment of a special police and volunteer defence forces;
• circulars and memoranda, distributed to a wide range of political authorities in the Persian Gulf and wider region, containing information relating to: neutral and enemy shipping restrictions; Navicert regulations; the Combined Intelligence Centre Iraq (CICI); action to be taken with reference to a number of countries, including Japan, France, Bulgaria.

Some files were also created in response to specific events occurring in or in close proximity to Bahrain, with a potential impact on security and defence arrangements in Bahrain:

• the Italian bombing raid over Bahrain and Dhahran in October 1940 (IOR/R/15/2/669);
• the Anglo-Iraqi war of May 1941 (717);
• the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran in 1941 (722);
• Japan’s advances across the Indian Ocean during 1942 (706);
• the United States’ growing presence in Bahrain from 1944 onwards, a result of increases in BAPCO oil production, and the use of Bahrain as a route to the Far East by the United States Army Transport Corps (743-744, 757, 761);
• Allied victory celebrations in Bahrain in the wake of the end of hostilities in Europe in June 1945 (745).