IOR/R/15/1/58

This file consists of contemporaneous copies of outgoing letters from the Political Residency in the Persian Gulf, Bushire. The Resident at this time was David Anderson Blane. Recipients of the Resident's letters include: Captain John Campbell, Assistant in Charge of the British Mission in Persia; Major Robert Taylor, Political Agent, Bussorah [Basra]; Charles Norris, Chief Secretary to the Government of Bombay; Commodore William Sowden Collinson, Commander of the Indian Naval Squadron in the Persian Gulf; John FitzGibbon, 2nd Earl of Clare, Governor and President in Council, Bombay; Major Hicks, Commander of the Marine Battalion, Bombay; Stratford Powell, Adjutant-General of the Army, Bombay; Edmund Hardy, Quartermaster-General of the Army, Bombay; Lieutenant Samuel Hennell, Assistant to the Resident in the Persian Gulf, Bushire; G S Moore, Brigade Major of the King's Troop. The file contains one letter addressed to the Resident from the Assistant Surgeon at Bushire, James Pringle Riach.

Subjects covered in this file include: the Resident's recent visits to the ports of Shargah [Sharjah] and Bahrein [Bahrain]; the recent visit to Bushire of His Royal Highness the Prince of Fars, who met with the Shaikh of Bushire, and later, with the Resident; relations between the British and the Persians; financial and administrative matters relating to the Residency; an outbreak of plague in Bushire, after which the Residency staff are forced to decamp to the Island of Corgo; the response of the Residency to disturbances at Muscat, following the departure of the Imam [Sa‘īd bin Sultān Āl Bū Sa‘īd] for Zanzibar; the alliance between the British Government and the Imam of Muscat; acts of aggression and piracy which have reportedly been committed by Rashid bin Hameed [Shaikh Rashid I bin Humaid Al Nuaimi], Chief of Eyman [Ajman]; the claims of Sultan bin Sughur [Sulṭān bin Saqr Āl Qāsimī, ruler of Ra's al-Khaymah and Sharjah] to places taken by him from the Imam of Muscat.

Several of the letters in this volume have been crossed through with red crayon; a small number of these items are incomplete.