'Memorandum on Bahrein' [‎26v] (52/62)

52
that their claim was valid. It even affirms the intention of the British
Government to continue to hold the sheikhs to the treaty engagements which
had been entered into with them as independent rulers. His Majesty's
Government are entirely unable to admit that an implicit acknowledgment of
the validity of the Persian claims is constituted by the reference in that note
to the considerations which led to the establishment and the maintenance of
tlhose treaty relations; nor can they agree that the dependence or otherwise of
Bahrein on Persia can in any way be affected by the fact that in entering upon
and maintaining their treaties with the sheikhs they were principally moved by
a desire to suppress piracy and the slave trade and to maintain the police of
the Gulf, duties which the Persian Government themselves were not in a position
effectively to perform. It is true that at that time Her Majesty's Government
were mainly influenced by the consideration that they, like Persia, were interested
in the safety of the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. for commerce, and that they would gladly have
accepted Persia's co-operation in maintaining order had her naval position
admitted of it; but, although they did not consider Persia's claims to ownership
to be valid, they were not at that time directly concerned in refuting them. The
special treaties by which they eventually agreed to accept the control of the
sheiklh's foreign relations were concluded at a later date.
11. I must in this connexion invite the Persian Government to take note
of the fact that there is no conceivable ground for the suggestion in the last
paragraph of the second section of your Government's note under reply that tJhe
independent status enjoyed by the rulers of Bahrein can in any sense be
represented as the result of " rebellion at a foreign State's instigation." This
suggestion is one which His Majesty's Government repudiate as entirely
unjustifiable. When in 1820, consequent on their suppression of the piratical
activities of the independent rulers of the trucial coast A name used by Britain from the nineteenth century to 1971 to refer to the present-day United Arab Emirates. of Oman, they found it,
necessary to consider tlhe position in regard to Bahrein, nearly forty years had
elapsed since tlhe conquest of this island by the ancestor of the present sheikh,
and during those years Persia had exercised no dominion in the islands and
appeared to have taken no measures to re-establish her position. They had
accordingly no hesitation in entering into negotiations and concluding a treaty
with the independent ruler without prior reference to the Government of the
Shah. Their object, as stated by Lord Clarendon in 1869, was the suppression
of piracy and tihe maintenance of peace in the Gulf; they strictly confined
themselves to the measures necessary to attain that object, and while it migiht
Hiave been open to them to establish their dominion over the sheikh, they did not
choose to do so, but contented themselves with an arrangement to secure the
safety of international shipping without imposing on themselves the burden of
administration. They maintained this position not only in 1820 but on other
occasions in subsequent years, and notably in 1848, when they declined to accede
to the sheiklh's request that his dominions should be incorporated in those of
Her Majesty the Queen. The treaty of 1820, by which the Sheikh of Bahrein
bound himself to abstain from plunder and piracy by land and sea, from the
slave traffic and from inter-tribal war was followed in 1847, in 1856, and 1861
by further treaties designed to secure the same objects—the suppression of
slavery, and tihe general pacification of the Gulf in the interests of international
shipping. The British Government concluded all these treaties with the sheikh
as an independent ruler, and consistently refused throughout to admit the
Turkish, Persian and other claims to sovereignty over his dominions. It was
not until the treaty of 1861 that Her Majesty's Government, in return for the
sheikh's undertaking to abstain from maritime aggression, war and piracy,
assured him in return of their support against similar aggression, nor till a
still later period in 1880 and 1892, that they took upon themselves the unqualified
liability for the foreign relations of that ruler, under which he has now invoked
their assistance in repelling what he not unnaturally regards as a wholly
unprovoked attempt on his independence by a foreign Government.
12. In conclusion, His Majesty's Government cannot refrain from
expressing their surprise that the Persian Government should have referred in
this correspondence to article 10 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, under
which the members of the League undertake to respect and preserve as against
external aggression, the territorial integrity and existing political independence
of all members of the League; and that they should seemingly imagine that ^
the terms of this article la^ an obligation on members of the League to support
Persian pretensions to an island which is separated from Persia by the whole
width of the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. , and over which Persia has exercised no authority
for 145 years.