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The Preliminary Oil Concessions: 109

survey the shaykhdom, Fowlc approached the Anglo-Persian Oil
Company (APOC). He wished this company, in which the British
Government had held the controlling interest since 1914, to enter
the field before any other concern. As a result, on 1 August 1935
Sultan granted the D’Arcy Exploration Company, a subsidiary of
the APOC, a two-year option to explore for oil; the object of
the option was to secure the right to negotiate for an oil concession
within that period of time.4 Following this, the D’Arcy Exploration
Company opened negotiations for similar options elsewhere on the
Trucial Coast.
Hajji Abdallah Williamson, who led the negotiations, was to
be a leading figure in the development of oil on the Trucial Coast
until 1937, and was at first regarded warmly by the rulers and
the British authorities alike. A great adventurer whose life story
was as remarkable as it was varied, Williamson was an Englishman
who became converted to Islam towards the end of the nineteenth
century; after living as a bedouin in areas within what are now
Iraq and Saudi Arabia, during World War I he re-established
his ties with Britain, and in 1924 joined the APOC.5 His great
knowledge of Arabia made him ideally suited to the job of securing
options, and before long he was able to obtain the signatures
of the shaykhs of Sharjah and Dubai to agreements similar to
the one signed by Shaykh Sultan of Ras al-Khaimah.6
The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), as it became known
after 1935, thus became the first company to enter the Trucial
Coast through the options granted to its subsidiary. When the
APOC first showed an interest in the Trucial Coast, it was clear
to the India Office that any form of activity relative to oil should
be limited to British subjects. In 1935 a representative of the company
asked for permission to allow an American geologist of the Iraq
Petroleum Company (IPC)7 to go to Abu Dhabi for exploration
work. The India Office confirmed that it was ‘very anxious to
facilitate the task of the British element in the Iraq Petroleum
Company of establishing themselves in these areas’, but would not
‘welcome the despatch to the Trucial Coast of an American, or
of any foreigner’.8 Although all foreigners were included in the
general policy of excluding non-British interests, the principal fear
underlying the policy was that of infiltration by American interests.
American oil companies established themselves swiftly and efficiently
in Arabia, beginning in 1928, when the Standard Oil Company
of California (Socal) won the Bahraini concession from the shaykh
of Bahrain after the Iraq Petroleum Company, which, under the
Red Line Agreement of 1928,9 had priority rights there, had made
it clear that it was not interested. The discovery of oil in Bahrain
was followed in 1933 by Socal’s success in competing with IPC