IOR/R/15/5/311

This file consists of correspondence regarding the trade in enslaved people in the Persian Gulf, and particularly in Kuwait (where there was no anti-slavery agreement between the British Government and the Ruler of Kuwait). Much of the correspondence is concerned with the preparation of information on the Gulf trade in enslaved people, for the benefit of the League of Nations’s Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery. Included in the file are the following:

• Details regarding the traffic of enslaved people into Kuwait from other parts of the Gulf and the standard of living experienced by them in Kuwait
• Instructions, issued by the Political Resident in the Persian Gulf, regarding the arms trade and the trade in enslaved people in the Gulf, which discuss the legal grounds for searching vessels in the Gulf
• Copies of letters from the Political Resident to the Foreign Secretary to the Government of India, which discuss various aspects of the trade in enslaved people in the Gulf, including principal routes, ‘domestic slavery’ (in Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the Trucial States respectively), and slavery in relation to Bahrain’s pearl industry
• A request from the League of Nations’s Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery for information on a) the practical effect of treaties concluded between the British Government and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf in relation to the suppression of the trade in enslaved people, and b) the conditions of slavery in the plantations, pearl fisheries and families in the Gulf states
• Copies of two League of Nations’s resolutions relating to slavery, adopted by the Council of the League of Nations on 4 July 1936 and 11 May 1938 respectively
• A circular memorandum, dated 1 August 1938 and issued by the British Residency and Consulate-General, Bushire [Bushehr], regarding the manumission of enslaved people in the Gulf.

The file contains the following principal correspondents: the Political Agent, Kuwait; the Political Resident in the Persian Gulf; the Secretary of State for India; the India Office; the Foreign Office; Sir George Maxwell, Vice-Chairman of the League of Nations’s Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery; Ruler of Kuwait, Shaikh Ahmad al-Jabir as-Sabah [Shaikh Aḥmad al-Jābir Āl Ṣabāḥ].