IOR/L/PS/12/3767

The file contains fortnightly intelligence summaries produced by the Political Agency at Bahrain for the years 1933-40. The reports, marked as secret, were sent to the Government of India, the India Office, and numerous British diplomatic, political, and military offices in the Middle East. There are occasional hand-written comments in the margins of the reports.

The reports are divided into short sections that relate to a particular subject. Contained within the file is intelligence on the following topics:

• Shipping
• The movements of British and Foreign subjects, and Arab notables
• Local affairs of Bahrain, as well as regional news from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the Trucial Coast, and the wider Middle East
• Economic matters and food supplies
• Bahrain Petroleum Company and other matters related to the oil industry
• Transport accidents
• The Bahrain ruling family
• Tensions between Abu Dhabi and Dubai
• The pearl trade
• Workers' strikes in Bahrain
• Local crime
• The slave trade
• Regional boundary disputes
• The impact of the beginning of the Second World War in Bahrain and local reaction to events in the war
• Weather and meteorological data.

A photograph of Charles Belgrave and the French Naval Officer, Contre Amiral Rivet is contained on folio 388. It was taken when the French Sloop Bougainville visited Bahrain on 14-16 February 1935.

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.