'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.' [‎150v] (305/386)

42
16 .
No, 118-C. (External); dated Camp Alwar, the 10th December 1903.
From—The Government of India, Foreign Department,
To The Right Ho.n’ble St. John Bkodkick, His Majesty’s Secretary of State for
India.
On the 3rd December I telegraphed to you from Bushire that owing to
the discourtesy of the Persian Government, I had been unable to land at that
place in the course of my recent cruise in the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. ; and I added that
I would despatch a full account of this unfortunate incident by post. I there
fore submit the present explanation.
Before leaving Bushire I drew up in conjunction with Sir A. Hardinge,
His Majesty’s Minister at Tehran, who was with me throughout, and with
whom I acted in co-operation at each stage, a brief historical narrative of the
events that led up to the final impasse. I forward this for your information,
and the present letter is in the nature of a commentary upon it.
You will observe that there were practically four stages in the contro
versy :—
(1) The Persian Government had themselves originally accepted for
Bunder Abbas the very procedure which they afterwards repu
diated in the case of Bushire. This procedure is in accord with
the practice of all civilised nations, and may be said to have
become a principle of international acceptance. A sovereign or
the representative of a sovereign of one country visiting another,
is entitled to treat as his own residence, the residence of the
Ambassador, Minister, or local representative of his Govern
ment : and the claim of a foreign Government that its officers
shall not exchange courtesies with the visitor in the house so
occupied is both unprecedented and intolerable.
(2) At an early stage, indeed on the very day when Sir A. Hardinge
had left Tehran, the Persian Government attempted to escape from
this arrangement, to which they had voluntarily consented. So
little did I contemplate any ulterior motive in their action that
in this case, and indeed throughout, as the narrative shows, I
readily conformed to the modification proposed by them, and upon
the advice of the British Minister accepted pro Jhrmix the official
residence which they pressed upon me.
(3) This acceptance rested, however, upon the assumption that the offer
w’as a genuine one, and that it was not intended, under the guise
of a compliment, to offer me a slight. When I learned at Koweit
that the official residence to be provided for me at Bushire w r as
a sham, and that the building selected for the purpose was to be
only nominally my head quarters, while in reality it remained the
head quarters of the Governor-General of Bars, and that this
arrangement had been devised in order to enable the latter to es
cape setting foot in the British Residency An office of the East India Company and, later, of the British Raj, established in the provinces and regions considered part of, or under the influence of, British India. and to pay me the first
visit not in a British but in a Persian house, there remaind no al
ternative but to require a reversion to the original plan. I did not
myself see till a later stage the telegraphic correspondence that
passed between Sir A. Hardinge and Mushir-ed-Dowleh on
this point. But the British Minister never for a moment con
templated that any difficulty could be raised at Tehran : it was
believed that the Persian Government were animated by a sincere
desire to treat me with distinction (and indeed I am convinced
from the preparations made for my reception at Bushire that this
had been their original intention); and Sir A. Hardinge was of
opinion that he wars basing my case on a principle of international
acceptance wdiich had only to be stated to be received.