In February 1937, a peace between the Hadramawt sultanates, the Qu[ain]aytī and Kathīrī and their tribes, totally unprecedented in the history of that region, was brought about essentially by the efforts of two men: Sayyid Sir Abū Bakr al-Kāf and Harold Ingrams, the first political officer in Hadramawt. This peace was known universally thereafter as “Ingrams Peace”, although the word “truce” is much in evidence in the contemporary documents studied below.

The prime object of this article is to examine in some detail some of the contemporary British documents directly or indirectly relevant to the phenomenon (for such it undoubtedly was!) of the late 1930s–early 1940s called “Ingrams Peace”. It is quite unashamedly a view of events through British eyes, through the eyes of the key players in the drama. They are allowed as far as is possible to speak for themselves. Let us first introduce the characters involved and set the scene.

Demand for scents, spices and comparable products from India and further east was a major incentive for the naval expeditions which led, after 1497 AD, to the creation of European empires in the Orient. There was the same demand in the ancient Mediterranean and Middle East, to which these goods travelled through the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf. People in Egypt and Babylonia in the classical period were both middlemen and consumers, and this paper draws attention to the existence of a few alabaster jars that reflect the trade. They are mainly in the Department of the Ancient Near East at the British Museum (previously called the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities), and are inscribed in Babylonian or Greek with the names of scents or spices. While these inscriptions are unusual, perhaps many more jars were once inscribed in ink which is no longer visible.

Providing convincing explanations for objects that are unique to Dvaravati is particularly challenging given that our knowledge of the polity is sketchy to say the least. One particularly fascinating group of such objects comprises a number of stelae depicting the Buddha apparently standing on the head of some beast or “monster”. The central Buddha figure is usually flanked by two gods, probably Indra and Brahma, or two bodhisattvas, or just two attendants. The “monster” has been interpreted as some combination of the vehicles of Visnu (Garuda), Siva (bull) and/or Brahma (hamsa or goose), or as Garuda, or Surya, the Sun God. There are no Indian prototypes for these objects, which are found only in the Dvaravati sculptural style.

The Jesuit Guy Tachard (1648–1712) first came to Siam with the Chaumont-Choisy embassy of 1685 as one of six Jesuits destined for missionary work in China. The group was headed by Fr de Fontaney (1643–1710). The decision of the Abbé de Choisy (1644–1724), who held the post of coadjutant ambassador, to withdraw from the diplomatic scene and effect a retreat prior to his ordination as a priest in Lopburi on 10 December 1685 enabled Tachard to replace him as interpreter of Phaulkon (c.1647–1688), the influential Levantine adventurer then holding the functions, though not the title, of minister of trade and foreign affairs (phra khlang) for King Narai (r.1656–1688). Tachard was then charged with secret negotiations with the court of Louis XIV, most particularly with Fr de La Chaize, the king's Jesuit confessor, and the Marquis de Seignelay, the secretary of state for the navy, to negotiate the lease of a port and the dispatch of persons of rank to occupy key posts in the Siamese kingdom. In Paris, he lost no time in publishing his account of the first French embassy to Siam, padding it with unacknowledged extracts from one of the other Jesuits in his party, Fr de Bouvet.