Page 309 - UAE Truncal States

Chapter Eight

maritime peace agreement.20 It was, however, laid down by the
Governor-General, Francis Rawdon, (later first Marquis of Hastings)
firstly, that a permanent military establishment in the Gulf was
undesirable unless the cost of the upkeep could be recovered from
the Omanis or from other local sources and secondly, interference in
the internal affairs of the Arab States was to be avoided at all cost.
Yet at the same time both the authorities in Bombay, in particular the
new Governor, the Hon. Mountsluart Elphinslone, and the Com­
mander of the expedition, Sir William Grant Keir, displayed enough
of the spirit of a great power to insist on their right to search the
entire Gulf, the Arab as well as the Persian shores, for piratical
hideouts;27 and they insisted on the right to recognise, depose, or
replace any of the Rulers of the maritime Arab tribes as they saw fit.
Thus the outcome of the expeditions of 1819/20 and indeed of the
policy of the following years was not one of straightforward
retribution and punishment of those who had attacked British
shipping but one of preparing the ground for seeking and retaining
influence over the tribes by a show of force as well as demonstrating
sympathetic leniency and offering co-operation and friendship.
As the British forces made contact with one shaikhdom after
another, preliminary agreements were made with each Ruler. The
content of these agreements varied from case to case, but all served
the general objective of securing the surrender of vessels, fortified
towers, guns and British Indian prisoners, while the tribes were at
the same time assured that pearling and fishing vessels would be
restored to them. Such an agreement was signed on 6 January 1820 by
Sultan bin Saqr, Ruler of Sharjah since 1803.28 He signed also on
behalf of 'Ajman and Umm al Qaiwain. On the 8th, Hasan bin
Rahmah signed a preliminary agreement by which he also renounced
his rule over Ra’s al Khaimah town, which became the British
garrison, while he remained Ruler of Khatt and Falaiyah at some
distance from the coast. The Hinawi Rulers of Dubai (on whose
behalf the Hinawi Sultan of Muscat intervened) and of Abu Dhabi
signed preliminary agreements, as did the Rulers of Bahrain, where
some Qawasim had frequently found a market for plundered goods.
The agreement of 1820 between the Government of Bombay and
the various shaikhs of the Arab coast was therefore not a document
in which defeat was ratified as a basis for the future relationship
between the British interests in the Gulf and the Arabs; but its aim
was to minimise possible conflicts of interest between the two
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