IOR/L/PS/12/2887

The file mainly consists of papers relating to Iraq, mostly copies sent to the India Office of letters and telegrams from the British Embassy at Baghdad (Sir Francis Humphrys, George Ogilvie-Forbes, Archibald Clark Kerr, Oswald Scott, Maurice Peterson, Sir Hugh Stonehewer-Bird, Sir Basil Newton, and Sir Kinahan Cornwallis) to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Sir John Simon, Sir Samuel Hoare, Anthony Eden, Viscount Halifax, and Ernest Bevin) and the Foreign Office, with enclosed copies of laws and budget estimates of the Government of Iraq.

It includes papers concerning the following Iraqi laws:

• The Law Governing the Rights and Duties of Cultivators of 1933.
• The Law for the Development of Capital Works of 1934.
• The Capital Works of Development Five-Year Plan of 1936, and Three-Year Works Plan of 1936.
• The Ordinance for the Prevention of Harmful Propaganda of 1937.
• The Law Supplemental to the Baghdad Penal Code of 1938.
• The Tobacco Monopoly and Improvement Law of 1939.
• The Property Tax Law of 1940.
• The General Budget Laws for the financial years 1936-37 and 1937-38, and the Budget Law of 1940.

The file also includes:

• Papers regarding statements of the estimated receipts and expenditure of the Iraqi Government for the financial years 1935-36 and 1936-37, actual figures for the financial year 1934-35, and budget estimates for the financial year 1937-38, 1940-41 and 1941-42.
• Papers regarding the appointment of Iraq customs advisers, communism in Iraq, the murder of the Iraqi Minister of Finance in 1940, and the Iraqi elections of 10 March 1947.

In addition, the file includes: copies of three telegrams exchanged between the Political Agent at Kuwait and the Political Resident in the Persian Gulf at Bahrain, regarding the Iraqi Government’s formal invitation to Kuwait to send a representative to a Veterinary Conference on 30 November 1946; and copies of two telegrams from Laurence Grafftey Smith, British Minister to Saudi Arabia, to the Foreign Office, regarding relations between Ibn Saud and the Hashimite [Hashemite] King Abdullah of Jordan, and the prospect of closer union between Iraq and Syria.

The file includes a divider, which gives a list of correspondence references contained in the file by year. This is placed at the back of the correspondence.