Page 256 - The Arabian Gulf States_Neat

194 THE LEGAL STATUS OF THE ARABIAN GULF STATES
And stating State practice as regards the justiciability of territorial
disputes, other than legal disputes, Hill then says:

The Root treaties made by the United States of America in 1908-9, for
instance, provide for the arbitration of legal disputes only, thereby excluding
territorial disputes in which the claims arc of non-lcgal character.1
If a reference be made to the decisions of international arbitral
awards, there also cannot be found much support for historic claims.
In the case of Eastern Greenland, for instance, the Permanent Court of
International Justice held that ‘historic claims to dominion over the
whole regions . . . lost weight and were gradually abandoned even
by the States which had relied upon them’.2 instead, the Court held:
International law established an ever closer connection between the
existence of sovereignty and the effective exercise thereof, and States success­
fully disputed any claim not accompanied by such exercise.3
It can clearly be seen from the foregoing principles that a historical
claim to territory which is unaccompanied by a proof of an effective
exercise of authority in the territory cannot, successfully, be relied
upon as a ground for the establishment of title to that territory.
Finally, it may be submitted that the independence of Bahrain from
Persia has been established since her secession from the Persian
dominion in 1783, and that by her secession, Bahrain satisfied the
requirements of statehood in international law, namely, the existence
of an independent Government exercising an effective authority on a
defined territory.4 The fact that Persia has not yet, from the point of
view of her constitutional law, recognised this independence is, as
pointed out above, irrelevant.5 Nor can it be argued that, as a result
of her becoming under British protection, Bahrain failed, for the
purpose of the validity of her secession from Persia, to fulfil the
requirements of statehood in international law.6 This is because the
sequence of events shows that the rulers of Bahrain established, effec­
tively, their independence from Persia long before they entered into
treaties of protection with Britain. Thus, the Treaty of Peace of 1820,
by virtue of which Britain assumed political responsibility in the Gulf,
was signed by the rulers thirty-seven years after their conquest of
Bahrain in 1783, while the first Agreement of protection of 1880, was
concluded by them ninety-seven years after that conquest.7 During

1 Hill, op. cit., p. 202.
2 Legal Status of Eastern Greenland, 1933, op. cit., p. 84. 3 Ibid.
4 Sec Lauterpacht, p. 31. These conditions, says the writer, ‘are definitive and
exhaustive They have nothing to do with the degree of civilization of the new
State, with the legitimacy of its origin, with its religion, or with its political system.
For irrelevant tests of recognition of statehood, sec ibid., pp. 31-2.

• See Adamiyat’s argument, op. cit., pp. 238-9. 7 See Chapter 3.