'SUMMARY OF THE PRINCIPAL EVENTS AND MEASURES OF THE VICEROYALTY OF HIS EXCELLENCY LORD CURZON OF KEDLESTON, VICEROY AND GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF INDIA IN THE FOREIGN DEPARTMENT. I. JANUARY 1899-APRIL 1904. II. DECEMBER 1904-NOVEMBER 1905. VOLUME IV. PERSIA AND THE PERSIAN GULF.' [‎35v] (75/386)

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, . _ re a noil v hrono'ht to a clear issue by the arrival in
Arabian J c ''" 1 ( f ! '! 1 ?"^ Frunchm en.burnished with credentials from the French
Bahrein m 190*1 ot 1 . , t - ifc rf S en o<a(»-e in pearling operations.
Government, wliose dec are thwarted by the refusal of the Shaikh of
Thf purpose ^'''l^^ionf tmt the prospect of the scheme being
Bahrein to grant t e ® f t , pvench Government made it necessary
renewed with the fu l oogmsanceot the tion was accordingly
t° f lay /To Hk MaWs Government b, the Government of India in 1904.
referred to His M 3 ^ y Crown, to whom the case was stated, was
^h°e P S thU foX idlers might he excluded from the territorial waters
of the Arab Chiefs and that there was a fair prospect of establishing, under
international law, the exclusive rights of the Arabs to pearl hanhs situated
outside territorial limits; it was considered, however, that he right of the
S to exclude foreigners from deep waters, where they Ijad not themselves
been accustomed to fish, was not sustainable, 'the Law Officers held that the
BrUish Government were entitled, by virtue of the special relations existing
between them and some of the Arab principalities, to appear as the icpiesenta-
tive of the latter should an international question he raised ; but it was recom
mended that the affair should not he brought to a direct settlement, and tnat the
interference of foreigners should be resisted by indirect means, so far as possible
In 1898 a concession for deep-water pearl fishing in Persian waters was granted
by the Persian Government to a pair of continental adventuiors and, having
lapsed, was renewed in 1899 through Russian influence in favour of one of them,
who then endeavoured to place the concession in Russia. In 1899 and 1900 the
subiect of this concession, of which the local limits were doubtful was discussed
with the Persian Government, and they were informed that Her Males y s Gov
ernment could not recognise any contract winch might interfere with the rights
exercised by Chiefs under British protection; to this the Persian Minister for
Foreign Affairs replied that the Persian Government could only grant a conces
sion in so far as their own rights extended, and that it was out of the questiou
that British interests should be affected.
The question of the arms trade in the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. was one in which the
Indian Government had a direct military interest, for in 1898 rifles and
ammunition obtained from the Persian
Arms trade. Gu j f ^ reac | ie( j the Kurram Valley on
the North-West Frontier Region of British India bordering Afghanistan. of India, and by 1901 the import of rifles from the
Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. towards India, especially into Waziristan, had become considerable.
In 1899 the importation and exportation of arms was already prohibited by the
governments of all the states and principalities surrounding the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran.
except those of Oman, Trucial Oman A name used by Britain from the nineteenth century to 1971 to refer to the present-day United Arab Emirates. and Koweit. In 1900 the Shaikh of
Koweit was induced by the representative of the Government of Lidia to pro
hibit the arms trade in his territories also, and in 1902 the Trucial Chiefs were
persuaded to take similar action : in both cases the arrangements were embodied
in formal and permanent agreements between the Shaikhs and the British
Government. The trade still remained free in Oman, where the Sultan was
precluded from suppressing it by his commercial engagements with European
powers, and from Mnskat rifles were smuggled in increasing quantities to the
opposite coast of Mekran and to the Bunder Abbas and Minab districts of
Persia, whence they found their way to the Indian frontier tracts. In l l .,02
Lord Curzon’s Government proposed that Prance, the United States and Holland
should he approached with a view to the modification of the commercial treaties
by which the Sultan’s liberty of action was circumscribed, and at the same time
they undertook to compensate the Sultan for the diminution which might ensue
in his customs receipts from the discontinuance of the arms tratfic. In view
however of the unpropitious relations of Prance and Britain in regard to Oman,
where the French flag question was still unsettled, r.o action was found possible
by His Majesty’s Government; and measures in Oman were restricted to impe
ding, by all possible means, the export of arms from Maskat to countries where
their introduction was unlawful. The value of the arms imported into Maskat
(and for the most part illicitly re-exported) amounted in 1901-05 to Us. 10,14,165,
the highest figure ever reached; and nearly half of the trade was by this time
in the hands of French merchants. There was reason, moreover, to think that