IOR/R/15/1/230

The volume contains correspondence related to slave trading activity in the Persian Gulf, including intelligence reports on suspected slave traders, and the movement of suspected slaves across the Gulf by traders. The volume also includes a number of reports on the extent and nature of the slave trade in the Persian Gulf during the period in question. Two reports are written by the Political Resident (Sir Hugh Biscoe) in 1930. The first describes the extent of the slave trade in the Persian Gulf (folios 34-40), with details on the principal slave trade routes and sources of slaves, including the Makran coast and the Nejd and Hejaz regions of Arabia. The second report investigates the character of domestic slavery in the Persian Gulf (folios 43-50). Domestic slaves, wrote Biscoe, include those employed as bodyguards to the shaikhs, house servants and coffee makers. Biscoe noted that the lots of these slaves were generally good, contrasting their lot to the 'industrial slaves', i.e. those employed as pearl divers or date plantation workers. Biscoe described the region's indebted pearl divers as being 'virtual slaves.' Another report, written by Charles Belgrave, Advisor to the Ruler of Bahrain, describes the pearling industry around 1930, and the measures taken by the previous Political Agent at Bahrain (Major Clive Daly) to improve the lot of indebted pearl divers (folios 23-26). The volume also contains a report, written in 1934 by the then Political Agent in Bahrain, Lieutenant-Colonel Percy Loch, on the slave trade in Nejd/Hejaz regions (folios 159-60). Loch writes that slaves taken from the Baluchistan-Makran region generally end up in this part of Arabia. A list of slaves manumitted at Sharjah between 1936 and 1938 is also included (folios 174-80).