File 24: Passport Control

There are five surviving files containing correspondence dating mainly from the 1930s and 1940s, about passport control at Bahrain. Each file contains correspondence and other papers relating to the handling of individual cases by the Political Agent, Bahrain, in cooperation with the Government of Bahrain and other British passport authorities in the Persian Gulf, India and London, with regard to the grant or refusal of British entry and transit visas for Bahrain to certain foreigners. The individual cases they discuss concern suspicious, criminal, destitute or otherwise undesirable British, Indian, Arab and other foreign persons who had travelled, returned or been sent to Bahrain. In anticipation of the outbreak of the Second World War (1939-1945), even greater controls were exercised over travellers in the Persian Gulf. The first file in the series (British Library shelf mark IOR/R/15/2/633) contains lists of suspicious persons who were not to be granted exit visas for travel from Bahrain and other Persian Gulf ports to India. These lists were compiled by the Bahrain Agency and other British passport authorities in the Gulf, at the request of the Government of India.

The Passport Control subject files belong to the Confidential Office file series and are arranged according to their Confidential Office file number. Each individual file reference consists of the subject number '24' followed by an oblique stroke and a unique, sequential file number, for example: file '24/1'.

Unrestricted

The Political Agent, Bahrain, in cooperation with other British passport authorities and the Government of Bahrain, was responsible for making sure that undesirable foreigners attempting to land at Bahrain were refused the grant of a British visa by all relevant issuing authorities.