مذكرة عن احترام المصالح البريطانية في الخليج العربي. [ظ‎‎٦‎٧] (١٢٦/١٠٠)

106
The service that Great Britain rendered to
humanity by preserving the peace of the Gulf
during the nineteenth century has already been
indicated. It found formal embodiment in the
maritime truce at first imposed upon the warring
Chiefs on the coast in 1836, renewed from time
to time, and made perpetual in 1853. In her
etforts to put down the Slave Trade Great
Britain had no help from any other Power.
How extensive it was may be gathered from the
fact that in the early thirties the annual imports
of slaves into Kurrachee alone amounted to
between 700 and 800. The work of policing
the Gulf may be less arduous than it was in
old days, but the spirit of piracy is latent, and
a break in the continuity of British vigilance
would he followed by a return of the old dis
orders. The beneficial effects of our past policy
in this regard are frequently seen in the manu
mission at the Consulate of Muscat of slaves
claiming their freedom under Sir Bartle Prere’s
Treaty of 1873. *Tn one other noteworthy respect
Great Britain has contributed in a very sub
stantial degree to the peace of the Gulf and the
countries adjacent — in the help which the
British authorities, political and naval, have
given in the repression of the Arms Traffic.
The predominant position which Great Britain
has gradually acquired, and the policy evolved
from the rights and obligations upon which that
predominant position rests, are forcibly demon
strated in a series of official despatches and public
statements included in the records of the past
half century. Prom these a selection of three
has been made, viz., an extract from a despatch
from the Government of India, written in 1870
and entirely approved by the Duke of Argyll as
Secretary of State for India; a declaration made
by Lord Lansdowne in the House of Lords in
1903 ; and a despatch from Sir E. Grey to His
Majesty’s Ambassador at St. Petersburg!!, dated
August 1907.
I.
“ Apart from the positive engagements which
we have contracted with the Arab Chiefs, and
from which it is neither possible nor desirable
that we should recede, the present is not a time
when we can encourage the revival of old and
I he subject of * Quarantine is dealt with in a separate
Memorandum.