IOR/L/PS/20/17

Report on the British Indian Commercial Mission to South-Eastern Persia written by Arthur Hills Gleadowe-Newcomen, President of the Commercial Mission to Persia. The purpose of the commercial mission was to report on the present position and future prospects of the trade of South-Eastern Persia with a view to increasing Indo-Persian Trade.

The report comprises five parts:

Part I – Introduction: inception of mission; route, including journey from Bombay [Mumbai] to Bander Abbas [Bandar-e ʻAbbās].

Part II – General: physical features of country; people; trade statistics and methods; banking industry; agricultural banks; Russian competition; consular matters; engineering (irrigation, railway and harbour construction, mining); customs and imports.

Part III – Trading centres: Bander Abbas; Saiadabad [Sa‘īdābād, or Sirjan]; Bahramabad [Bahrāmābād, or Rafsanjān]; Kerman; Khabis [Shahdād]; Gok [Bāgh Gūk]; Bam; Jiruft [Jīroft] and Rudbar; Yezd; Shiraz; Bushire.

Part IV – Imports and Exports, including chief articles of commerce (statistics, Russian trade, customs tariff) and development of trade.

Part V includes a number of appendices comprising statistical tables of imports and exports, telegraph rates, descriptions of trade routes, costs and times of transport routes, the itinerary of the mission and a map of the caravan routes of South East Persia.

The report was published in Calcutta by the Government of India Foreign Dept, 1906.