IOR/R/15/2/922

The file comprises correspondence and accounts relating to the secret service expenditure available to the Political Residency and the Political Agencies in the Persian Gulf, including instructions on how it should be recorded and what it should be used for, as well as copies of the annual statements submitted by the Political Agent at Bahrain for the account.

Also included in the file are details of the arrangements made with local individuals to provide information and intelligence to the political authorities (including payments to be made to them for services rendered) and a proposal from the Political Agent at Bahrain in 1940 for a wartime system of collecting information on possible enemy agents in the area (additional expenditure for implementing the system is also proposed).

Further correspondence relates to the period immediately following the end of the Second World War and the need for additional secret service expenditure to support the ‘opening up’ of the Trucial Coast, following the granting of oil concessions in the region. These additional costs were required primarily for establishing and expanding the political authorities’ contacts with the rulers of the smaller shaikhdoms and other tribal rulers.

Also included is a detailed list of all the expenses incurred in hosting a lunch party for the Commander-in-Chief, East Indies Station (Vice-Admiral Sir Arthur Palliser) on his visit to Bahrain in January 1948.

A series of file notes that were maintained as a record of the correspondence in the file can be found at folios 129-150.