IOR/L/PS/10/1268

The file contains correspondence and other papers relating to political control in the Persian Gulf and Middle East, specifically the division of responsibility for this region between the India Office and the Government of India, the Foreign Office, and the Colonial Office.

It includes papers relating to the following recommendations of Sir Hugh Trenchard, Chief of the Air Staff, made in an Air Staff Memorandum dated 8 May 1928: that the responsibilities of the Colonial Office should be extended to include Koweit [Kuwait], the Trucial Chiefs, and all political questions concerning the countries contiguous with Arabia; that one department of the Government, with the Air Ministry as advisers on air matters, should be made responsible for political and administrative action in Arabia, or at least in Iraq, Aden and Transjordan; and that the India Office and the Government of India should consider relieving themselves of their direct political and administrative responsibilities connected with Arabia. The related papers include those relating to the counter-proposal of the Government of India that a degree of the control removed from them following the report of the Masterton-Smith Committee of 1921 should be restored, and that they should now resume the position in the Gulf that they held before the First World War with regard to Bahrein [Bahrain], Kuwait, Muscat and the Trucial Chiefs.

The file also includes papers concerning the following:

• The proposals of Sir John Cadman (Chairman of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company and the Iraq Petroleum Company) in a letter to the Prime Minister of August 1929 that control of the Middle East should be centralised under a single department of HM Government
• Lord Trenchard’s motion in the House of Lords of 20 May 1931 to ask whether HM Government would make a statement concerning an enquiry into the unification of control and policy in the Middle East
• Lord Lamington’s motion of 27 April 1932 to ask HM Government whether the desirability of having the affairs of the Arabic speaking peoples of Arabia, Egypt and the Sudan being dealt with by one Government Office had been considered
• Lord Lloyd’s motion of 21 March 1935 to call attention to the economic and political situation in the Persian Gulf.

The main correspondents are as follows: the India Office; Hastings Lionel Ismay, Assistant Secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence; the Government of India Foreign and Political Department; the Foreign Office; and the Colonial Office. Other correspondents include: the Air Ministry; the Admiralty Military Branch; the Political Resident in the Persian Gulf; Lord Trenchard; and John Cadman.

Other papers in the file include India Office internal correspondence, India Office Political Department minute papers, memoranda, newspaper cuttings, extracts from minutes of the House of Lords, and the following:

• Notes by the India Office for the Sub-Committee on Political Control of the Committee of Imperial Defence Persian Gulf Sub-Committee, entitled ‘De Facto Position as Regards Political Arrangements in the Persian Gulf’ and ‘Distribution of (British) Administrative Responsibility in the Persian Gulf’
• Draft minutes of the 249th meeting of the Committee of Imperial Defence on 14 July 1930
• Papers of the Committee of Imperial Defence Standing Official Sub-Committee for Questions Concerning the Middle East.

The file 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.