ملف ١٩٢٨/٤٥٣٥ الجزء ١٠ "الخليج الفارسي: المفاوضات الأنجلو-فارسية ١٩٢٨-١٩٣٠. مسألة إزالة المقيمية البريطانية من بوشهر". [و‎‎١‎١‎٥] (٤٦٠/٢٢٥)

No. 13 of 1927.
GOVERNMENT OF INDIA.
FOREIGN AND POLITICAL DEPARTMENT.
NEAR EAST
SECRET.
Subject :—Arabian Coast Air Route to India.
To
The Right Honourable the EARL of BIRKENHEAD,
His Majesty's Secretary of State for India.
Simla, the 8th September 1927.
IS
My Lord,
We have the honour to refer to your Lordship’s telegram [No. 1882, dated
8th July 1927, in which our considered views are invited on the suggestions contained
in Despatches Nos. 137-S. and 156-S. of April 30th, and May 9th, from the Political
Resident, Bushire, in connection with the proposed air route along the Arabian
shores of the Persian Gulf.
2. Colonel Haworth in the active assistance he has rendered to the air survey
parties, his suggestive analysis of the difficulties to be overcome, and his compre
hensive survey of Arabian politics in the Gulf, has made a valuable constructive
contribution to the study of the problem. So impressed is he by the rise of the
Wahabi power and by the insecurity to which a chain of air-stations along the
Arab coast might be exposed owing to internal dissensions and the danger of Wahabi
interference in the petty Sheikhdoms with whom we are in special relations, that
he has been forced to the conclusion that our long-established policy of abstention
from all but naval commitments should now be discarded and replaced by the
definite assumption of responsibility for the orderly succession of Sheikh to Sheikh,
for his maintenance in power and for the protection of his territories by land as well
as sea.
3 1 view of our very friendly relations with the Wahabi ruler and of our
power of blockade which, as Colonel Haworth points out, holds the Sheikhs on the
coast and even inland at our mercy, these may not at first sight seem serious en-
lareements of our existing commitments. But experience ha,s taught us how
difficult or rather how impossible, it is to set bounds to any active interference m
the internal affairs of native rule. Even the guarantee of a non-violent succession
would have wide implications. For the Arab littoral of the Gulf is a region ca mg
for strong Sheikhs, in which in the past most strong Sheikhs (other than eldest sons;
have forced their way to power. If we prohibit the brutal checks which have
hitherto operated against unbearable tyranny and almost equally unbearable
weakness in the rulers of these Arab Sheikhdoms, and insist on the blind working
of primogeniture or other capricious rule of succession, then we are morally bound,
and would soon become forced by the very stress of our interests, to interfere m
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