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118 Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf

with the task of enforcing a new political and sanitary regime in the town as
the antidote to Bahrain’s social and political malaise.
Bray’s rhetoric inspired his successor, the vigorous Major Dickinson
who had also served in Mesopotamia. Familiar with Arab customs,
Dickinson transformed the British agency once a week into a tribal majlis
where notables were seated on carpets and invited to air grievances and
13
discuss matters of public concern. The policy of rewards advocated by
Bray also came to fruition. In 1922, Shaykh Hamad, then still heir appa-
rent, and a handful of prominent urban notables such as ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-
Qusaybi and Yusuf ibn Ahmad Kanu gained the rank of khan bahdar, a
honorific title awarded to British Indian Muslims for services rendered to
the Crown. Under Dickinson the agency became increasingly involved in
the reorganisation of local government in Manama. The new course of
policy was inaugurated in 1919 by the temporary dissolution of the Majlis
al-‘Urf, the indigenous council for commercial arbitration, following alle-
gations that Shaykh ‘Isa had dismissed one of its members unfairly. When
it was reconvened in January 1920, the agency appointed half of its
members, a right which was also extended to the new baladiyyah in July. 14
Although reforms were generally understood to be beneficial to British
interests, the Bombay Government, the Political Residency in Bushehr
and the Foreign Office in London supported the initial modernisation
of Bahrain with uncertainty and ambivalence. The vigorous involvement
of political agents in local affairs continued apace with Major Daly,
who reformed the customs and established the Department of Land
Registration. For their part, British government offices continued to
question the suitability of reform in the wider context of imperial policies
in the Gulf. As early as 1919, the deputy political resident in Bushehr
gave an unusually clear-cut assessment of the British presence in the
region measured against the uncertain British commitment to the mod-
ernisation of Bahrain:

Until very recent times our claims to predominance in the Persian Gulf, though
well enough founded on our performances in the role mentioned above [of keeper
of the Maritime Truce] were not really much supported by any exertions of ours in
the direction of lighting and buoying, although British statesmen were in the habit
of assuming this for public consumption … the fact remains that Great Britain
has been the maritime police of the Gulf, and very little more. Is it, or is it not,
desirable that we should take a pronounced step further, and assume the

13
‘Bahrain’s Political Diary, December 1919’ in Political Diaries of the Persian Gulf, 1904–
1958, 20 vols. (Farnham Common: Archive Editions, 1990), vol. VI, p. 511.
14
‘Administration Report of the Persian Gulf Political Residency for the Year 1922’ in
The Persian Gulf Administration Reports, 1873–1949, vol. VI, p. 53; Rumaihi, Bahrain,
pp. 170–3. See R/15/2/12 IOR on the dissolution of the Majlis al-‘Urf.