IOR/L/PS/20/CA5

Confidential printed abstracts of letters received by the India Office from the Government of India, and from senior officials in certain areas outside India, during the year 1865. The letters are dated December 1864-December 1865. The abstracts each have one of the following titles:

• Abstracts of Letters received from India
• Abstracts of Secret Letters received from India
• Abstracts of Military Letters received from India
• Abstracts of Letters received from the Resident at Aden/Political Resident at Aden
• Abstracts of Secret Letters received from the Resident at Aden/Political Resident at Aden
• Abstracts of Letters received from the Political Resident at Zanzibar
• Abstracts of Letters received from the Governor of the Straits Settlements.

Each abstract contains summaries of one or more letters from the specified source, each with a title giving the subject of the letter. Letters from India are divided within each abstract by the branch or department of the Government of India they originated from. The correspondence covers issues including:

• Land issues, including: issues of land tenure and tenant rights; land settlement operations; forestry; mining; the sale of ‘waste lands’; and plantations of cash crops including cotton and tea
• Pay, pensions, recruitment, and other personnel issues in the Indian Civil and Military establishments
• Public works, including railways, roads, reservoirs, land reclamation, canals, harbours and harbour defences, hospitals, prisons, and barracks
• Revenue and expenditure
• Issues concerning Princely States, including land cessions for railways; issues of succession; pensions; and an attempted plot against the Gaekwar Maharaja of Guzerat [Gujarat]
• Military operations, in particular an attack on Bootan [Bhutan] leading to the occupation of the Dooars [Duars, mountain passes]; and also operations against Munneepooree [Manipuri] insurgents at Luckeepore [Lakhipur] and ‘outlaws’ in Kattywar [Kathiawar]
• Other military affairs, including claims of military units for rewards for service during the ‘Mutiny’ [Indian Uprising of 1857]; the health of troops; and the movement, organisation, supply, and reduction of military units
• The Indo-European Telegraph linking India to Britain via Persia [Iran] and the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman, in particular breakages and repairs of telegraph lines
• Postal services between India and the Persian Gulf
• Education
• Banking
• Judicial affairs
• Food shortages
• Emigration from India to French colonies and St Croix [Danish West Indies]
• Frontier affairs, including the closure of the Kohat Pass following conflict among the Afreedees [Afrīdī tribe]
• Civil conflict in Afghanistan [also spelled Affghanistan], including the flight of chiefs from Cabul [Kabul] to India and the question of British policy towards refugee chiefs
• The activities of rival colonial powers, including French activity in East Africa, the Comoro Islands [Comoros], and the Gulf of Siam; proposed exchanges of territory in India with France; and Russian activity in Bokhara [Bukhara]
• Affairs in Burmah [Burma/Myanmar], including the settlement of the border with Siam [Thailand] in Tenasserim [Tanintharyi] and exploration of the Salween river
• Affairs in and around Aden Settlement, including: relations with neighbouring states, in particular the Foodlee [Faḍlī Sultanate] and Lahej [Laḥij Sultanate]; the security of roads leading to Aden and the proposed creation of a mounted police force; the garrison and defences of Aden; a cholera outbreak and shortage of grain
• Conflict between the Sultan of Muscat [Thwaynī bin Sa’īd Āl Bū Saʿīd] and the Wahabees [Waḥḥabī movement], and the question of maintaining a British naval force in the Persian Gulf
• Affairs in East Africa, including the slave trade in Zanzibar and the Red Sea and the imprisonment of British and other nationals by Emperor Theodorus [Tewodros II] of Abyssinia [Ethiopia]
• Affairs in and around the Straits Settlements, including attacks on British subjects in Perak and Panai.

The primary correspondents are:

• The Viceroy and Governor-General of India
• The Government of India
• The Resident in Aden
• The Resident in Zanzibar.

The abstracts were printed and bound in London, and each one includes the following colophon: ‘LONDON: Printed by GEORGE E. EYRE and WILLIAM SPOTTISWOODE, Printers to the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty. For Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.’