IOR/L/PS/5/451, ff 281-307

This item comprises copies of enclosures to a despatch from the Government of Bombay Secret Department to the Secret Committee, Number 89 of 1847, dated 28 October 1847. The enclosures are dated 9 September-25 October 1847.

The item chiefly comprises communications of the Chief Secretary to the Government, Bombay, to: Major Samuel Hennell, Political Resident in the Persian Gulf; Lieutenant Arnold Burrowes Kemball, Officiating Political Agent, Turkish Arabia [Ottoman Iraq]; the Secretary to the Government of India; and Commodore Sir Robert Oliver, Superintendent of the Indian Navy. Also included are: single communications from the Secretary to the Government of India and Hennell to the Chief Secretary to the Government, Bombay; two minutes of the President and Governor in Council and the members in Council, Bombay; and a copy (as published in the Bombay Gazette 21 October 1847) of the engagement entered into with the British Government by the ‘six Maritime Arab Chiefs…binding themselves to prevent, from and after the 10th December next, the exportation of slaves [enslaved persons] from the African Coast or Elsewhere on board of their vessels and those of their subjects’ (ff 288-289).

The communications are brief and largely administrative. They cover the following matters:

• Approval of Hennell’s negotiations with the Maritime Arab Chiefs and authorisation of the publication of the agreement in English, Arabic and Persian in the government Gazette
• The request, subsequent to a letter by Hennell, for the opinion of Commodore Oliver as to the best measures to follow up the treaties already in force for the suppression of the trade in enslaved persons from the east coast of Africa
• Concurrence in concern regarding the amended instructions issued by the Turkish [Ottoman] Government to the Pasha [Governor] of Baghdad regarding the disposal of enslaved persons liberated under the convention recently signed by the [Ottoman] Porte
• Approval of Hennell’s intention to quickly remove ‘rescued slaves’ from Bussorah [Basra] who do not wish to remain in Ottoman territory
• A translated extract of the report by the Agent at Shargah [Sharjah] on the recent ‘number of Abyssinian [Ethiopian] slaves imported into Oman’ (f 300) and approval of Hennell’s intention to rigorously enforce the terms of the convention when it comes into force ‘with equal strictures in the case of the importation of Abyssinians as in that of Negroes [Black Africans] and Soomalees [Somalis]’ (f 299).