IOR/L/PS/12/4090

Correspondence, memoranda, minutes, and notes relating to slavery and slave traffic in the Red Sea and Arabian Peninsula. Principal correspondents include officials at the India Office, Foreign Office, Colonial Office, Treasury, and Admiralty. Further correspondence, included as enclosures, comes from officials at the British Agency in Jeddah, the Residency in Aden, the Residency in Bushire, the Government of Bombay, the Government of India (Foreign and Political Department), as well as the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in the Kingdom of Hejaz, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in France, the Royal Legation of Saudi Arabia in London, the High Commissioner for Palestine, the Chief British Representative in Trans-Jordan, Ibn Saud, the ruler of Najd, Hejaz (after 1925), and its Dependencies, and John Hobbis Harris, Organising Secretary to the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society.

The file contains, often as enclosures, reports of proceedings by commanding officers of British vessels in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, Parliamentary Notices of questions relating to the issue of slavery, extracts from Le Matin, a French daily newspaper, and a copy of the October 1934 issue of The Slave Market News.

Matters covered by the papers include:

• Reports on slave traffic in the Red Sea, including cases where suspected vessels have been seized
• Slave traffic within the Arabian Peninsula and along the Omani coast
• Cost of repatriating manumitted slaves
• French and Italian cooperation in the fight against slavery
• Protests to appropriate authorities in Arabia about the trade
• British subjects allegedly owning slaves
• Individual cases of slave seeking refuge with the British.

Also of note are the following memoranda:

• 'Memorandum on Slavery and the Slave Traffic in the Kingdom of the Hejaz and of Nejd and its Dependencies' by William L Bond, British Agent at Jeddah, 6 March 1930 (folios 215-221; this document is referred to often in the correspondence contained in IOR/L/PS/12/4088)
• 'Memorandum on Slavery in Saudi Arabia' by Sir Andrew Ryan, British Agent at Jeddah, 15 May 1934 (folios 31-44)