File 1356/1912 Pt 1 'Turco-Persian Frontier:- negotiations at Constantinople.' [‎262r] (533/885)

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Part III.— Conclusion.
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. .
June 3, 1911.
There are two principal points involved in this
question, namely, at what place should the
boundary be made to strike off from the Shatt-
el-Arab, and, until it does strike off from the
course of that river, should it he drawn in mid
channel, or should it be drawn along the left
(eastern) bank.
As explained in part I of this memorandum,
the British Besident in the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. and
Lieutenant Wilson, who was Acting Consul for
Arabistan, have urged that the boundary should
be made to strike off from the Shatt-el-Arab at a
place more advantageous to Persia (and the
Sheikh of Mohammerah) than a line recom
mended by the British and Itussian Mediating
Commissioners in 1850, and they have also
urged that the boundary should, so long as it
follows the course of that river, be drawn in mid
channel, and not along the left (Persian) bank as
recommended by the Mediating Commissioners.
In support of this point of view they advance,
amongst other reasons, the argument of long-
established usage.
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. , on reconsideration, supported
the views of these Officers in a letter, dated June
1911, from which extracts follow -
In so far as concerns the wording of the Treaty of
Erzeroum (1847), the Earl of Crewe recognises that it
might be taken to imply the right of Turkey to
control the Shatt-el-Arab from bank to bank, subject
only to free liberty being accorded to Persia to
navigate it.
This view might find support in the suggestions of
the mediating commissioners in 1850, regarding the
boundary in the neighbourhood of Mohammerah. In
this connection I am to solicit reference to the corre
spondence ending with this Office letter of the
26th August, 1910, and to say that the Earl of Crewe
does not altogether share the opinion of his predecessor
on the question therein discussed. That the Turks are
in possession of the commissioners’ map, which would
appear to assign to them the whole river, is undoubtedly
inconvenient, as is also the circumstance that the two
Powers pressed the Porte in 1850 to accept the com
missioners’ line. But the Porte declined to do so, and
in his Lordship’s opinion the situation thus created must
be held to be governed by the communication made
to them in 1869, when the representatives of the
Powers handed in a map on which no line at all was
drawn. This identic map seems to have been the
l