Page 49 - The Origins of the United Arab Emirates_Neat

The Aftermath of War: Perpetuation of Control 25

The Warren Fisher Report, which was approved by the Cabinet,
did a great deal to clarify questions of administrative policy. The
establishment of the co-ordinating committees, obviously necessary
because of the wider range that Gulf affairs had assumed within
the new Near Eastern political framework, broadened the scope
of control. Important changes occurred shortly after that brought
with them further administrative reorganisation: under the 1927
Treaty of Jeddah, Ibn Sa‘ud was acknowledged as an independent
ruler who thus had to deal directly with the Foreign Office rather
than with the Colonial Office; and in 1932 Iraq became independent.
After that the Colonial Office no longer had a major role to
play in Near Eastern affairs, and, a few weeks after Iraq’s admission
to the League of Nations, it recommended that its role in this
area be handed over to the Foreign Office. The India Office protested,
and the matter was put before the Cabinet.
The ease of the Foreign Office was based on the fear that,
with the increase in the number of Indians in the Government
of India, the Gulf would become Indianised, and on the belief
that many of Britain’s concerns in the Gulf—Iranian claims to
sovereignty, relations with Saudi Arabia, oil, and the air-route to
India—were also naturally Foreign Office concerns. The India Office,
on the other hand, insisted that there was no question of one
Department controlling the area, especially in view of the interdepart­
mental committees that had been set up; but argued that continuity
of policy (the Political Resident had often been hard pressed to
differentiate between internal and external matters) and the fact
that it had executed most of the work allocated to the Colonial
Office, made it the latter’s logical successor.
I11 July 1933 the Cabinet decided in favour of the India Office,
which, after 1 August 1933, assumed the functions previously per­
formed by the Colonial Office.26 The main advantage of the new
situation was that it saved the Political Resident from making
arbitrary decisions on the distinction between internal matters and
affairs of political importance.

TREATIES WITH ARAB RULERS

In the quarter-century before the outbreak of the First World
War, Britain, in accordance with its policy of maintaining its supre­
macy in the Gulf, had concluded a number of treaties with the
rulers of the shaykhdoms. In 1892, as a result of the fear that
Ottoman influence might be extended from Hasa, exclusive agree­
ments with the rulers of the five Trucial states27 and Bahrain28
were signed. In them, the rulers undertook not to enter into any