IOR/R/15/1/665

The volume contains correspondence between the Political Resident in the Persian Gulf (Trenchard Craven Fowle, Percy Gordon Loch, Charles Geoffrey Prior), the Political Agent at Bahrain (Percy Gordon Loch, Tom Hickinbotham, Hugh Weightman, Reginald Alban), and representatives of the Bahrain Petroleum Company (BAPCO) (Milton Lipp, John Black, GWR Smith, Hamilton Ballantyne, Max Thornburg) primarily regarding the six monthly submissions of BAPCO's abstracts of accounts and rosters of employees and the forwarding on of this information to relevant parties including the Government of India and the Shaikh of Bahrain (Shaikh Ḥamad bin ‘Īsá Āl Khalīfah).

Other matters discussed in the volume include:

• the prohibition on the import of arms and ammunition into Bahrain, and the handling of occasional violations of this prohibition by new BAPCO employees;
• allegations made by Indian employees of BAPCO of mistreatment and poor working conditions including the publication of articles in Indian newspapers on the situation, along with a subsequent investigation into and response to the allegations by the Political Resident in the Persian Gulf;
• the potential effect of British BAPCO employee's being called to active service in World War Two, and BAPCO's contributions to both local defence matters in Bahrain and the war effort in general;
• the issuing of visa's to oil company employees at Bahrain, and matters relating to the behaviour of oil company employees travelling between Persia and Bahrain.

A series of file notes which were maintained as a record of the correspondence in the volume can be found at folios 185-196