IOR/R/15/2/762

The file comprises copies of correspondence, extracts of Government reports and other papers relating to the drawing up of defence policies for the various states in the Persian Gulf, in anticipation of the start of a global war. The file’s principal correspondents are: the Political Resident in the Persian Gulf (Lieutenant-Colonel Trenchard Craven William Fowle); the Political Agent at Bahrain (Hugh Weightman); representatives of RAF Air Headquarters at Habbaniyah in Iraq (including Air Officer Commanding, Air Vice Marshal John Hugh Samuel Tyssen); various representatives of the Government of India and India Office.

The file includes:

• a letter from the Political Resident in the Persian Gulf to the India Office, dated 18 January 1938 enclosing a ‘Note on the Defence of the Persian Gulf in the Event of a Major War’, which contains: the Resident’s assessments of the strategic importance of the Gulf; details of communications and the air route in the Gulf; hypothetical war situations (attacks, hostile countries); British interests in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the Trucial Coast and Muscat (ff 13-36);
• correspondence dated December 1938 to January 1939 relating to a visit to the Persian Gulf of military officials, for the assessment of the region’s defence requirements and proposed defence schemes, including recommendations from a Major Price of the need for a volunteer defence force at Bahrain, and the posting of a permanent adjutant to Bahrain (ff 68-73);
• correspondence dated December 1938 to March 1939 concerning an assessment of maritime trade in the Gulf during wartime, including a copy of a questionnaire issued by the Commander-in-Chief of the East Indies Station (ff 81-82), with a reply and completed questionnaire from the Political Agent at Bahrain (ff 90-94);
• correspondence dated April to July 1939 concerning ‘Appreciations’ of defence schemes for Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Sharjah and Dibai [Dubai], including: extracts from a report issued by the Oversea Defence Sub-Committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence (ff 112-115); and approval from the Government of India of the Persian Gulf defence schemes, subject to remarks made in an enclosed note from the Chief of the General Staff of India (ff 117-118).