IOR/L/PS/10/318

Copies of correspondence and other papers relating to the mining of red oxide on the island of Abū Mūsá in the Persian Gulf, before and after the First World War. The volume’s principal correspondents are: the Political Resident in the Persian Gulf (Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Percy Zachariah Cox); Foreign Office officials (chiefly Eyre Alexander Barby Wichart Crowe); representatives of the British firm Frank C Strick & Company Limited (including Frank Clarke Strick); representatives of the German firm Robert Wönckhaus & Company.

Correspondence dated 1912 to 1913 refers to informal negotiations between Foreign and India Office representatives, the German Ambassador to London, and Robert Wönckhaus & Company, over the payment of compensation to Robert Wönckhaus & Company for loss of income and the relinquishment of concession rights for the mining of red oxide at Abū Mūsá, in the wake of the withdrawal of the concession by the Ruler of Sharjah, Shaikh Seker [Shaikh Ṣaqr bin Khālid Āl Qāsimī] in 1907.

Correspondence dated 1914 concerns assessments, submitted by representatives of Frank C Strick & Company Limited, and analysed by the British Government’s Board of Trade, on the value and deterioration in quality of the red oxide left by Robert Wönckhaus & Co at Abū Mūsá.

Correspondence dated 1921 to 1923 relates to: Frank C Strick & Company’s concession negotiations with the Shaikh of Sharjah, over red oxide extraction at Abū Mūsá, mediated through the Political Resident in the Persian Gulf; reports of concession negotiations undertaken by Persian commercial interests for red oxide mining on the island of Hormuz [Jazīreh-ye Hormoz, also referred to in the volume as Ormuz]; diplomatic exchanges between representatives of the British and Persian Government (some in French) over historic Persian claims to the islands in the Persian Gulf, including Abū Mūsá and Tamb [Tunb].