IOR/L/PS/10/302/1

The volume is a chronological continuation of File 3877/1912 Pt 2 ‘Turkey in Asia: oil concessions’ (IOR/L/PS/301), and comprises papers concerning ongoing negotiations over oil concessions for the Mesopotamian vilayets of Mosul and Baghdad, in which the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC), Deutsche Bank, the British-backed National Bank of Turkey, and the Anglo-Saxon Oil Company (ASOC, a division of Royal Dutch Shell) are the principal claimants. The principal correspondents include: the Director of APOC (Charles Greenway); Foreign Office officials (Sir Louis Du Pan Mallet; Sir Eyre Alexander Barby Wichart Crowe); the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Sir Edward Grey); the Admiralty (William Graham Greene).

The papers cover:

• correspondence dated 1914 regarding a claim made by Roland H Silley, represented in the correspondence by his solicitors Treherne, Higgins and Company, to concessionary rights in Mesopotamia;
• proposals for APOC to represent the D’Arcy Group, the original British claimants to oil concession rights in Mesopotamia;
• an agreement made between representatives of the British and German Governments, the National Bank of Turkey, ASOC, Deutsche Bank and the D’Arcy Group (APOC), dated 19 March 1914, for the ‘Fusion of Interests in Turkish Petroleum Concessions of the D’Arcy Group and of the Turkish Petroleum Company’ (f 271);
• efforts, in late October and November 1914, to maintain the agreement of 19 March 1914, in spite of Britain now being at war with Turkey, including a letter from Greenway, dated 2 November 1914, stressing the importance of carrying through the concessions arrangements without delay (ff 156-161);
• a minute, with no indication of author, dated January 1915 which offers a concise précis of the history of oil concessions in Mesopotamia, and the background to the agreement of 19 March 1914 (f 143);
• in 1915, discussion amongst Foreign Office officials over the validity of the agreement signed on 19 March 1914, in response to events of the First World War.