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Restructuring city and state 119

responsibility for a gradual education of the Gulf populations on the lines of
Western civilisation? 15

The unease with which the imperial order viewed the social and political
modernisation of Bahrain continued to transpire from the correspond-
ence between the various departments of the British government through-
out the 1920s. Somewhat ironically, the political residency of Bushehr
often defended the position of Belgrave against what continued to be
referred to in India and London as the ‘excessive westernisation’ of the
country. In 1927, the Foreign Secretary remarked that ‘a British financial
adviser, British Police Superintendent [Belgrave] and British customs
manager [De Grenier], this is more British than Katal, which is a border
state [one of the native states of India].’ 16 Two years later, the political
resident explained the necessity for the continuation of British involve-
ment to the Indian Government in these terms: ‘Mr De Grenier [the
customs director] collects the revenue of the state and Belgrave [the
financial advisor] preserves them. If the efficient collector and conserver
are removed, what is to happen to a state which has become accustomed to
a far higher expenditure than ever before in its history?’ 17
In the 1930s and in the 1940s, the debate about what constituted British
interference in Bahrain (and Gulf) affairs continued. Yet it was the discov-
ery of oil in commercial quantities in 1932 and the beginning of oil exports
in 1934 that provided the political motives and the material resources
for the continuation of administrative reforms under Charles Belgrave.
Moreover, from the mid-1930s new geopolitical considerations prevailed.
Bahrain, alongside Iran and Iraq, became crucial to British planning in
preparation for World War II as its oil reserves supplied British imperial
possessions east of Suez, including India. As Middle Eastern oil and the
defence of imperial interests had become closely connected, the Foreign
Office included the islands in the Persian Gulf defence scheme in 1938. 18
Besides oil reserves, the strategic importance of Bahrain as an air station
between Great Britain, India and the Far East reshaped the basis of the
British presence in the islands. As these strategic considerations gained
the upper hand after the end of World War II, Bahrain was transformed
into the harbinger of British power in the Gulf region. In 1947 the
Residency was transferred from Bushehr to Manama following the

15
G. H. Bill to Officiating Political Resident Bushehr, 17 June 1919, DN2A/4/26–27,
Dickinson Papers, Middle East Centre, University of Oxford (kindly supplied by James
Onley).
16
Quote from Rumaihi, Bahrain, p. 183.
17
Political Resident Bushehr to Secretary of State for India, 29 June 1929, R/15/2/127 IOR.
18
M. Kent, Moguls and Mandarins: Oil, Imperialism and the Middle East in British Foreign
Policy (London: Cass, 1993), pp. 157–8.