Coll 34/3 'Slavery and Slave Trade: Red Sea and Arabia: Attitude of Ibn Saud' [‎40v] (85/886)

85. The League of Nations Committee of Experts on Slavery, constituted
under the Council resolutions of the 29th September, 1931, and the 28th January,
1932, in their report of the 1st September, 1932 (C.618, 1932, VI), devoted some
attention to Arabia, and suggested means of pressure on States still maintaining
the practice of slavery. The committee were, however, inclined to take a somewhat
over-optimistic view of the present position in this country, while their methods
of exerting pressure are likely to remain illusory so far as this country is con
cerned, in view of the widespread indifference to the League indicated in the
preceding paragraph.
V .—The Future.
86. The preceding sections have given a survey of the position of slavery
to-day in Saudi Arabia. The following is a summary of the main conclusions
reached :—
(1) Slavery as practised in Saudi Arabia, however morally reprehensible, and
although open to severe abuses, is neither so widespread nor in itself
so revolting an institution as to make its abolition a matter of
immediate urgency.
(2) Slavery forms an integral part of the life of the people, the great majority
of whom have every interest in its continuance, and its abolition would
cause a definite dislocation of the social structure.
(3) Ibn Saud has taken no effective measures to change the attitude of the
people towards slavery or to effect its abolition within his dominions.
(4) Great Britain alone of foreign Powers takes any active measures to this
end; these measures are more deterrents than positive reducing factors.
(5) On the other hand, economic causes have of late severely limited popular
demand for slaves and have reduced the slave-trade, particularly that
across the Red Sea, to negligible proportions.
87. It remains to consider three things : firstly, whether slavery may be
expected to die out of its own accord within a limited period of time; secondly,
whether any further action by His Majesty’s Government to hasten its extinction
is possible; thirdly, how tenable is the present position of His Majesty’s Govern
ment vis-a-vis Ibn Baud in the matter of anti-slavery action.
Extinction by Natural Causes.
88. In paragraph 31 above the causes of the recent decrease in the number
of slaves in the country were described. Some of these causes are permanent.
Motor-transport has come to stay, and the days of the rich camel-owners, with
their large holdings of slaves, have gone for good. The present internal security
may pass with Ibn Saud s disappearance from the scene, but improved communi
cations have surely swept away the days of the semi-independent desert “ robber-
barons, with their slave retinues. Modern ideas must spread eventually, however
slowly, a few persons exist in the country who have been drawn into the orbit of
Western civilisation by education or travel abroad and are animated more by
imported Western ideas of nationalism than by oriental ideas of social relations
and lengion. These tend to regard slavery as an out-of-date conception; the
Amu heisal, perhaps influenced by the Syrian element in the Government, is said
to be one of their number, and might one day be in a position to enforce his ideas.
Un ne other hand, the population as a whole, too remote and proud of race and
re igion to abandon what their fathers and the Prophet accepted in favour of an
a^ len and Lhristian conception, remain wedded to their tradition of slavery and
s ave-ownmg, m particular, to the idea of measuring success by the number of a
man s slaves. . the ambitions of most are at present constrained by economic
pressure; but indications of increased pilgrimages and of mineral exploitations
suggest that in a few years the country might reach a state, measured by its
standards, of relative prosperity. An increase in slave-holding, with a consequent
up to the slave-trade from the ever-open markets of the Yemen and Abyssinia,
seems on the whole the likelier tendency of the future.
89. Ibn Saud alone might be capable, if he so desired, of imposing on the
people a general anti-slavery measure. Such action by him is, however, more
un i mly now than m 1930. It would antagonise all the most influential of his