'Final Record of a Meeting Held at the Foreign Office on Thursday October 5th [1933] to Discuss Relations between His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom and the Sheikh of Koweit' [‎5r] (9/50)

5.
(a) At present the obligations of His Majesty's
Government to Kowelt ^er0 represented by thoir undertaking
to grant "good offices 8 in respect of Koweit undor the
1899 Agreement, by their premise of 1907 that "the town of
"Koweit and its boundaries belong to Sheikh Mobarak-us-
"aiba. Baler of Koweit, and to his hsirs after him" and
their undertaking of 3r -d November 1914 that Koweit, in
the event of a victory over th« Harks, would be recognised
by us as an Independent principality under British protec
tion. Thw were tixis vsry general in terms, and, in ac
cordance with, our normal policy on the Arab littoral,
which dated fran a period in which it was possible to
protect a soa port by action from the s#a, but not to
afford effoctive help inland, we had consistently
endeavoured to limit cur obligations save as regards
"good offices" to Koweit town and, the inmediately ad-
Joining area. Recent experience had, however, shown that
in cases of intervention from outside it was in fact
necessary to give the Sheikh, at our discretion, and on
air own teims, a measure of active assistance up to the
limit of his frontiers and wltti the developcnent of aircraft
the problem of Inland defence was now less difficult. This
was to sane extent a strengthening of his strict treaty
position, as also possibly an extension of our strict treaty
obligations.
(b) With regard to the suggested establishment of a
Protectorate It was necessary to consider xtet the reactions
of the Sheikh would be, and also what effect the proclama
tion of a Protectorate might have on the other Arab rulers
of the Gulf, It wail4 in any case be wiser not to make an
overt proclamation of this nature since both in Bahrein and
in Qatar and along the Trucial Coast A name used by Britain from the nineteenth century to 1971 to refer to the present-day United Arab Emirates. it would probably rouse
apprehensions