'Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf. Vol I. Historical. Part IA & IB. J G Lorimer. 1915' [‎1406] (1561/1782)

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Your Excellency muBt be aware, from my last six months' series of despatches, of
the general spirit by which the Pasha An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders. is actuated. His hostility must be ascribed
in its origin to his innate hatred of all Europeans, while it was no doubt called into
more open activity by finding that British privileges interfered with his pecuniary
gains and that my assertion of those privileges impeded the exercise of what he would
fain have considered an irresponsible power. Tardily wakening to a sense of the
impolicy of having incurred so formidable a danger as might arise out of the exertion
of your Excellency's influence against him at the Porte, he is far from exhibiting at
present the same disposition to invade our rights and to forget that which may be
due to our honour and our interests which he displayed during his former happy
state of confidence in the complete immunity of his contract,—but at the same lime
there is nothing like cordiality, or even conciliation, in his demeanour. He has been
frightened into a truce, which is only broken by an occasional sortie, but he is by
no means inclined to lay aside his arms, and I can only preserve the positior of
comparative security in which I have been placed through your Excellency's valmble
support, by constant alertness and by showing that I am prepared to repel atbck
in whatever quarter it may be offered.
Colonel Rawlinson's* own views with reference to the future of M«so-
potamia may be inferred from the following extract from a letter address
ed by him to the Government of India in 1852 :
The British Government has undoubtedly at present, owing to the efficient establsh-
ment which she has kept up for the last sixty years in Turkish Arabia A term used by the British officials to describe the territory roughly corresponding to, but not coextensive with, modern-day Iraq under the control of the Ottoman Empire. , a parammnt
local influence, and there are two European eventualities, not perhaps imminent, but
certainly to be looked for in due course of time, which may render that influene of
great importance (o India. One of these eventualities is the resumption 1 of tiose
schemes of ambition and aggrandisement which would probably inaugurate the rign
of a new Russian Emperor; the other is the dismemberment of Turkey, which in
the present sinking condition of the Empire would be the almost certain consequmce
of a European war.
I have thus considered it my duty, since my nomination to the Political Apeicy
of Turkish Arabia A term used by the British officials to describe the territory roughly corresponding to, but not coextensive with, modern-day Iraq under the control of the Ottoman Empire. , to adopt a general conciliatory conduct, and to strengthen and
extend our local influence, as far as that end may be attainable without giving umbrage
to the Turkish authorities.
It peems no far-fetched supposition that the enthusiasm and activity
of the officers associated with the Political Agent A mid-ranking political representative (equivalent to a Consul) from the diplomatic corps of the Government of India or one of its subordinate provincial governments, in charge of a Political Agency. in navigation and survey
work may have had their source in great aspirations inconsistent with
Turkish sovereignty over Mesopotamia and that some inkling of the
forward policy which they entertained may have reached the Turks and
the Arabs. The conviction that Britain entertains designs on Mesopo
tamia and the jealousy with which the Turkish authorities regard direct
dealings between the British representative and Shaikhs of the Arab
tribes, two notable features of the situation in Turkish ; Iraq at the present
day, would in that case date from this period of rapid political and
commercial movement.
♦Writing on the i3th June 1853 to the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs,
Colonel Rawlinson submitted a lengthy memorandum in regard to the possible
contingency of the dismemberment of the Turkish Empire, and advocated strongly
the occupation by tioopb from India of the whole strip of territory from the Lower
Z-ab and Annah to the sea.