Page 14 - The Postal Agencies in Eastern Arabia

PART I

THE INDIAN AND PAKISTANI ADMINISTRATIONS

INTRODUCTION

Those unfamiliar with the area and with its political history
over the past 400 years may well wonder how Britain, through the East
India Company and the Government of India, and - later - through her
own Foreign Office, bee; *«:•<■* Evolved in the affairs of Western
Eastern Arabia and the ; ■ :n involvement all the more
considering that at no . ''ritain hold any territorial ••
in the area.

The conscquen- . her involvement reflect great
credit and, in this age of : f r;liable self-denigration, it is wo;
recording what Lord Cur/on wrote in ‘‘Persia and the Persian Qtu tiorf
in 1892:

“I have shown the Persian Government along its Northern
shores exercising a more vigorous and undisputed sovereignty
than at any period since the reign of Shah Abbas: upon its
southern coast the Turks endeavouring to extend a precarious
influence over Arabia; and small Arab States retaining either
wholly or only in part their original independence; while
between all parties intervenes the sworded figure of Great
Britain, with firm and just hand holding the scales.

It is no exaggeration to say that the lives and properties of
thousands of human beings are secured by this British
Protectorate of the Persian Gulf, and that were it either
withdrawn or destroyed both sea and shores would relapse
into the anarchical chaos from which they have so
laboriously been reclaimed.”

and to remember his words in his speech to the Trucial Chiefs in
November, 1903:

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