IOR/R/15/2/1504

Correspondence, chiefly of a routine nature, exchanged between the Political Agency in Bahrain and the Bahrain branch of the Eastern Bank Limited. The file’s principal correspondents are the Political Agent and representatives (usually the manager) of the Bahrain branch of the Eastern Bank Limited (M Gunn; T J De La Mare; D Ham). The file is a direct chronological continuation of ‘Miscellaneous 16/10 Eastern Bank Ltd: Correspondence with ––’ (IOR/R/15/2/1503).

Covering the years of the Second World War, much of the correspondence relates to wartime circumstances and events:

• in December 1941, used stamp collections to raise funds for the air raid victims of German bombing raids on Portsmouth (ff 20-21);
• in October 1942, the introduction of cheque book charges, in response to the rising costs of paper and printing (f 37);
• in November 1942, an acute shortage of small coinage in India (f 38);
• in 1944, efforts to send money to the wife of a Bahrain Petroleum Company (BAPCO) employee who was resident in Beirut, in light of the Levant region no longer being part of the Sterling Bloc (ff 47-62).

Other correspondence covers: in 1941, the efforts of three BAPCO employees to set up a private trading company; also in 1941, changes to rates for the purchase of Agency demand drafts in India; in 1949, issues arising from the redirection of mail from the Political Agency to the Political Residency (based in Bahrain from 1947). The file also contains copies of reports and annual accounts for the Eastern Bank Limited, dated May 1944 (f 65, duplicate at f 69) and March 1945 (f 73), and a copy, in English and Arabic, of the Eastern Bank Bahrain’s rules for savings deposit accounts (ff 23-28).