IOR/R/15/2/941-944

The Trucial Coast subject files from 1951 contain correspondence and other papers relating to affairs on the Trucial Coast; more specifically affairs at Kalba and Fujairah, and the islands of Abū Mūsá and Tunb. The principal correspondents across these files are: the Political Resident in the Persian Gulf (Lieutenant-Colonel William Rupert Hay); the Political Agent at Bahrain (William Scott Laver; Cornelius James Pelly; Lieutenant-Colonel Louis Alexander Gordon Pinhey); and the Political Officer on the Trucial Coast, sometimes referred to as the Residency Agent at Sharjah (Arthur John Wilton).

Subjects covered by the files include:

• the assassination of the ruler of Kalba in July 1951 (IOR/R/15/2/941);
• discussion amongst British officials over whether they should select a new ruler of Kalba or allow the sheikhdom to revert to Sharjah (IOR/R/15/2/942);
• discussion amongst British officials over whether the British Government should enter into a treaty agreement with, thus recognising the independence of, the Sheikh of Fujairah (IOR/R/15/2/943);
• questions of sovereignty of the islands of Abū Mūsá and Tunb, and a Persian challenge to Sharjah’s sovereignty of Abū Mūsá in February 1951 (IOR/R/15/2/944).

These subject files were likely once part of another set of subject files numbered File 22 in the Bahrain Political Agency files, also entitled ‘Trucial Coast’ (IOR/R/15/2/616-625), but later moved and given separate references. See: Penelope Tuson, The Records of the British Residency and Agencies in the Persian Gulf (London: 1979), p 48 for further explanation.