The most valuable of the Foreign Office ‘Peace Conference’ handbooks, entirely devoted to the Persian Gulf. An excellent example of the public issue of 1920.
In the Spring of 1917 the Foreign Office started work on a series of handbooks for the use of British delegates attending the Peace Conference. Published in 1918 and 1919, the handbooks were only issued to officials and all were marked ‘Confidential’ on the upper wrapper. By late 1919 it was decided that revised versions should be made available to the British public, printed in greater numbers and in green wrappers rather than the blue-grey of the confidential issue.
The present handbook, No. 76, focuses on the Persian Gulf, dividing it into three geographic areas: the ‘Arabian Coastal Region’ (the Eastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, from Kuwait to Oman), ‘Head of the Gulf’ (Basra Province and Khuzestan Province) and ‘Persian Littoral’ (the Iranian coast). Each is described in detail, with sections on, inter alia, islands, ports, river systems, population and language. Separate sections on climate and sanitary conditions consider the region as a whole.
The second chapter ‘Political History’ is arguably the most important part of the handbook. Despite being predictably and unquestioningly pro-British, it offers a fascinating history of the Gulf States up to 1914, with concise histories of Muscat, Trucial Oman (modern-day United Arab Emirates), Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait. While various important treaties and agreements with Britain are mentioned, only one is printed in full (as the lone appendix, pp.78-81), the ‘General Treaty with the Arab Tribes of the Persian Gulf, 1820’, which saw the rulers of the Trucial Coast (now United Arab Emirates) agree to the complete suppression of piracy. This was a significant moment, not for its move against piracy (the prevalence of which has been strongly challenged by revisionist histories) but more for the cementing of diplomatic ties between the Arab rulers and British India.
Macro, 186 (inaccurately noting a Handbook of the Persian Gulf, Foreign Office, London, 1918); Wilson, p.73 (noting the version in the Peace Handbook series, 1920 but giving the date of publication incorrectly as 1918).
