IOR/R/15/1/203

The volume contains miscellaneous slave trade correspondence, distilled from a number of original subject files, covering a disparate range of slavery related from a four-decade period.

• The contents of the original subject file 5/194 I relate to an incident in 1924 in which twenty-five members of the same family (the figure is initially stated as being 21) are kidnapped from Baluchistan, and sold and distributed on the Arabian Peninsula. The correspondence in the file relates to two men who are relatives of the family members, who spend several years trying to trace their relatives. In November 1925, the Political Resident (Lieutenant-Colonel Francis Prideaux) wrote to the Residency Agent at Sharjah (‘Īsá bin ‘Abd al-Latif) requesting his help in tracing family members in the region, it being understood that two were in Dubai, were in Abu Dhabi, and a further two in Umm al-Qaywayn (folio 29). Prideaux wrote to the Shaikhs of Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Umm al-Qaywayn to request their help in each case. In March 1928, ‘Īsá bin ‘Abd al-Latif wrote to the Political Resident (now Lieutenant-Colonel Lionel Haworth) stating that he had managed to retrieve two of the relatives in Dubai (folios 70-73). In January 1931 he wrote to state that another one of the relatives had been retrieved, also from Dubai, and given a manumission certificate (folios 81-85);
• Correspondence formerly contained in the original file 5/104 IV relating to Samuel Zwemer of the Theological Seminary in New Jersey, requesting the help of the Political Resident (Lieutenant-Colonel Trenchard Fowle) in 1936, in locating the papers of a colleague of his, one William Solomon, who was manumitted from slavery by the Muscat Political Agent in 1896. In response to Zwemer’s request, the British Consulate General wrote to Zwemer, stating that all papers in Muscat dated prior to 1909 had been destroyed. This case was directly related to correspondence in ‘5/104 II, III – Miscellaneous slave trade correspondence’ (IOR/R/15/1/202, folios 67-72) in which Samuel Zwemer made the same request two years previously;
• Subject 4 of file 5/104 IV relates to the manumission of a slave at Bushire in 1906. The slave’s statement (folio 159) being the earliest of its type found in the Bushire Residency files.