IOR/R/15/1/209

The volume is comprised of correspondence related to twenty-four manumission or other slave-related cases, received by the Political Residency from the Political Agents at Bahrain, Sharjah and Muscat. The majority of the cases are of a straightforward nature. The Political Residency received the manumission statement of a slave from one of the Agencies, and Residency Staff authorise the slave’s manumission in return correspondence, based on the 1913 Guidelines for Manumission.

A number of other slave-related cases arise from exceptional circumstances. In May 1933 the Senior Naval Officer (Captain Denison) on board H.M.S. Bideford, and moored over half a mile off Dubai, reporteds to the Political Resident (then Lieutenant-Colonel Trenchard-Fowle) that a slave had boarded his vessel after making a hazardous swim from the coast (folio 91). In his statement the slave claimed that the previous year he had sought refuge with the Residency Agent in Sharjah (‘Īsá bin ‘Abd al-Latif), who sent for the slave’s owner. The slave was returned to his owner in return for a fee paid to the Agent (folio 93). Similar accusations against the Residency Agent at Sharjah were made by slaves at the British Consulate in Addis Ababa in August 1933. The Consulate wrote to the Political Resident, to ask if the claims of slaves seeking refuge being handed back to their owners were true.

Throughout the spring and summer of 1935 the Secretary to the Political Resident sent a series of letters to the Residency Agent in Sharjah requesting information on the status of a number of slave manumission cases. Having received no reply the Secretary wrote on 5 August 1935 that the Residency Agent “may furnish me with an early explanation of the long delay experienced and to report at the same time, the result of the action which you promised to take” (folio 232). No correspondence from ‘Īsá bin ‘Abd al-Latif was forthcoming. Later, on reference was made in a letter of 8 October 1935 from the Acting Residency Agent in Sharjah to the Secretary to the Political Resident, of the recent death of ‘Īsá bin ‘Abd al-Latif.