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place turning Bahrain from a sheikhdom to a modernised state, Prior believed ‘that

it will be impossible to dispense with Mr Belgrave’.
37

Before the discovery of oil in commercial amounts in 1932 in Bahrain, the

state was known mainly for its pearl industry and the employment of its youth in

the trade. Bahraini pearl merchants sold their wares in, Mumbai, London, and Paris.

The development of the oil industry, the arrival on the market of cultured pearls

from Japan, the modernisation of Bahrain, and the establishment of foreign

companies caused the pearl industry to decline and gradually to close.
38
Belgrave’s management of the Administration led to centralisation of power

and the title he adopted in government correspondences was the Adviser instead of

the Financial Adviser. This centralisation earned him titles like the ‘de facto Prime

39
Minister’ of Bahrain and its ‘chief executive’. His tight grip on the state’s affairs
and Administration resulted in discontent as early as 1934 and was noticeable in

early 1935. It was the Baharna who voiced their disapproval of some of the

Administration’s policies as Belgrave outlined to the Political Agent Colonel Loch.

Two figures from among the protesters would later become frontline members of

the nationalist movement of the 1950s: Abd-Ali Al-Alaiwat and Mohsin Al-Tajir.
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Their demands centered on three issues, the first being the reform of courts,

‘Proportional Representation on the Municipal Councils’ of Manama and Muharraq,

37 IOR/R/15/2/127, Prior to the Secretary to the Resident, 29 June 1929.
38 Hay, ‘The Impact of the Oil Industry on the Persian Gulf Shaykhdoms’, 361-72 (362); and C.D.
Belgrave, ‘Bahrain’, Journal of The Royal Central Asian Society, 15.4, (1928), 440-45 (442).
39 W. Wyatt, Confessions of an Optimist (London: 1985), 245; J. Onley, Britain and the Gulf Shaikhdoms,
1820-1971: The Politics of Protection (Doha: 2009), 18; and M. Field, The Merchants: The Big Business
Families of Arabia (London: 1984), 91.
40 IOR/R/15/2/176, Belgrave to Colonel Loch, 28 January 1935.

© Hamad E. Abdulla 10