IOR/L/PS/10/531/1

This part contains correspondence and India Office Minute Papers relating to the Imperial Ottoman Bank in Mesopotamia [Iraq], mainly concerning the Baghdad branch.

It includes papers regarding:

• The decision of the British Government, on the recommendation of local British political authorities, to close the Baghdad branch of the Imperial Ottoman Bank for the duration of the First World War, on the grounds that the Bank was identified with enemy interests, and it continued to do enemy business up to the date of the British occupation of Baghdad, and was recognised by the Turkish authorities as a Government bank.
• The proposal of the London Agency of the Bank to send their representative Mr Critchley to Baghdad to enquire into the interests of the Bank’s shareholders and clients in Mesopotamia, and their later proposal to send Mr H R Saltmarsh and Mr E E Humphries instead of Critchley.
• The proposal of the Civil Commissioner, Baghdad, that the Baghdad branch of the Bank should be allowed to re-open.
• Permission being granted to the Imperial Ottoman Bank at Basra to correspond with its Constantinople [Istanbul] Office.
• The visit of Lord Goschen, a director of the Imperial Ottoman Bank, to Mesopotamia.
• A query by Drysdale and Company Limited about whether the Imperial Ottoman Bank at Baghdad was ‘a safe and sound’ institution, in response to a customer asking the company to accept payment at the Imperial Ottoman Bank in Baghdadthe proposal that the Baghdad and Mosul branches of Bank should be permitted to settle transactions dating back to the period before the British occupation.

The correspondence largely consists of correspondence between the India Office and the following: the Foreign Office; Sir William Plender, appointed by the Treasury as Supervisor of the Imperial Ottoman Bank’s London Agency; the Imperial Ottoman Bank, London Agency; the Viceroy of India, Foreign Department; and the Civil Commissioner, Baghdad (telegrams addressed from ‘Political, Baghdad’). The file also includes copies of Foreign Office correspondence with the London Agency of the Imperial Ottoman Bank, and Sir Reginald Wingate, High Commissioner, Egypt.