IOR/L/PS/10/666

This volume contains correspondence, reports, telegrams and minutes regarding negotiations and administration, largely between the India Office, Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Percy Cox, and the Government of India, after the occupation of Baghdad (Fall of Baghdad) on 10 March 1917. The negotiations concern the administrative organisation and political control of Mesopotamia, as well as the external and internal boundaries of Iraq (also spelled Irak in the volume).

Related matters of discussion include the following: the text of the Baghdad proclamation; the future administration of the territory by the Foreign Office instead of the Government of India; the regulation of the new territory; the responsibilities of the Chief Political Officer in the new territory; the Turco-Persian frontiers. The correspondence in the volume is internal correspondence between British officials. The principal correspondents are as follows: Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Percy Cox; Lieutenant-General Sir Stanley Maude; the War Office; the Secretary of State for India; the Political Department, India Office; the Under-Secretary of State for India; the Viceroy of India; the Government of India’s Foreign and Political Department; the Foreign Office; the Government of India.

In addition to this correspondence, the volume contains reports of the War Cabinet's Mesopotamia Administration Committee, as well as the following documents: memoranda on external frontiers and internal boundaries of Iraq (ff 17-18 and ff 20-25); a map of Arabia and the Persian Gulf (f 28);

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 front of the correspondence.