IOR/L/PS/10/596

Correspondence and other papers relating to the export of dates from Mesopotamia [Iraq] during Britain’s military occupation of Mesopotamia in the First World War. The file includes: correspondence dated 1916 relating to the lifting of a general prohibition on the export of dates from Mohammerah [Khorramshahr] and Basra (as well as from Muscat), in view of Mesopotamia’s status as enemy territory; in 1917, proposals to prohibit the export of dates from Mesopotamia to destinations other than Britain or its wartime allies; in 1917, the supply of dates to British troops in France, including arrangements for purchase and freight by the War Office; a copy of a printed British diplomatic and consular report entitled ‘Turkey. Report for the Year 1913 on the Trade of Basra’, edited at the Foreign Office and Board of Trade (ff 293-303); reports in early 1918 that the demand for dates in Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf exceeded supply, leading to the Foreign Office’s initial decision to decline a request from the Government of the USA for the Hills Brothers Company of New York to export dates from Mesopotamia, a decision that was reversed in March 1918; price controls on dates for export, arranged in 1918; correspondence dated 1919 on the future policy of restrictions on dates exported from Mesopotamia.

The volume’s principal correspondents are: the Chief Political Officer of the Mesopotamia Expeditionary Force, Percy Zachariah Cox; the Foreign and Political Department of the Government of India; the Foreign Office; the War Office; the Ministry of Food.

The volume contains a single item in French, being a note from the French Ambassador in London (f 69).

The volume includes a divider which gives the subject number, the year the subject file was opened, the subject heading, and a list of correspondence references by year. This is placed at the back of the correspondence.