'File 19/212 I (C 41) Bahrain Transit Trade' [‎75r] (174/576)

5.
Government. The second point is that news has been
received that a Karachi shipper offered the British India
Steam Navigation Company 35,000 "bags of rice on the sole
condition that they will alloi/ him overside delivery,i.e
enable him to secure free transhipment. The conjunction of
these two factors has much alarmed the Bahrain Government j
and the merchants since they see their entrepot trade "being
conducted under their noses and in their port without the
Government "being able to obtain revenue from it or the
merchants their trade. I should mention,that for a variety
of reasons it is,practically speaking,only possible for
Nejd and Hasa merchants to profit by this direct traffic,
and the Bahrain merchants though liable to the competition
of others in the home market find themselves shut out of
.
the trade of the mainland.
11. Since Shaikh Isa T s letter prescribed no time limit
and since it was not a formal treaty but a private arrange
ment and since he received no compensating advantage,it is
clearly open to the sen to rescind a concession granted by
the father. Bahrain,as we have frequently stated,is an
Independent Irab State and has a perfect right to levy such
dues and make such arraiigements in its territorial waters
as may seem good to it. As I have mentioned above,the
Resident himself stated that the usual practice of States
was to take what could be taken without killing the goose
that lays the golden eggs
12. When the concession was originally forced upon Shaikh
Isa,much play Y/as made of the argument that other ports
such as Bombay charged nothiing for transhipment. What is
done elsewhere is of little value^in a place like the Persian
Gulf,which is a law unto itself,but apart from this the
argument is fallacious for the transhipment referred to in
these ports is that of cargo on a through manifest for
onward transmission by another steamer port. Bahrain is
A
strictly speaking the destination of transhipment cargo here,