File 37/1905 Pt 5 'Aden Delimitation' [‎5v] (15/606)

To Sir E.
Monson,
No. 66,
February
12, 1903.
This information was forwarded to the India Office The department of the British Government to which the Government of India reported between 1858 and 1947. The successor to the Court of Directors. and to His Majesty s
Ambassadors at Constantinople, St. Petersburgh, and Washington. ^ ^ OAKES
Foreign Office, January 31, 1901.
w ♦
To Sir F.
Bertie, No.
28, January
11, 1905.
Minutes,
J anuary
1905.
Proces-
verbal, April
20, 1905.
[Continuation of Memorandum of January 31, 1901.]
IN February 1903 the French Ambassador asked Lord Lansdowne L)r information
as to our difficulties with the tribes in the neighbourhood of Aden, adding that France
had no interest in the matter except to this extent—that there were French claims upon
a spot called Sheikh Said opposite the Island of Perim.
Lord Lansdowne gave him a rough sketch of the circumstances which had created
somewhat strained relations between His Majesty’s Government and the Turkish
authorities m the Yemen, and told him that the territory of the tubes m which we had
an interest did not extend so far to the west as Sheikh Said, but wished him, however,
to understand that he expressed no opinion as to the validity of the Irench claims to
Sheikh Sa'id.
On the 11th January, 1905, the French Ambassador told Lord Lansdowne that he
had observed that we were engaged in a discussion with the Turkish Government as
to the boundary of the Aden cantons, and that he wished to take this opportunity of
reminding him that France had certain claims at Sheikh Said. The French Govern
ment had no desire to raise the question, but it was desirable that we should be aware
that it existed.
Lord Lansdowne replied that, without making any admissions as to the rights of
France at Sheikh Said, he was able to say at once that the frontier line as we proposed
to draw it would strike the coast at a point considerably farther south than that place.
It was therefore not necessary that the question of Sheikh Said should be discussed
between them.
It was then suggested that the matter should be referred to the Defence Committee,
as Sheikh Said if fortified would render Perim untenable and close the narrow strait,
though it would not dominate the wide strait, but the suggestion does not appear to
have been acted on.
Sheikh Said is in the Subaihi territory, and, in connection with the boundary
agreement of 1905, the Turkish Government has undertaken never to alienate to a
third Power the Subaihi territory lying between Husn Murad and Kudam, in which
Sheikh Said is situate. Two masonry pillars in cement were built by the British
Commission, and the Turkish had a cairn of rough stone erected in the vicinity of
Sheikh Said.
Foreign Office, September 23, 1911.
G. E. P. HERTSLET.