Page 111 - Historical Summaries (Persian Gulf) 1907-1953

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English connection with these waters there may
bo found the germ of the larger responsibility
and in 11 uenee which this country was afterwards
to assume there. The Persians, who at all
periods of their history abhorred and dreaded the
sen, were glad to secure an undertaking from the
East India Company at tiie time of the expulsion
of the Portuguese from Hormuz, to maintain two
ships in the Gulf to protect trade, and six years
later the Surat Council went in excess of this
stipulation in sending five vessels to revive and
increase the trade with Persia, and carry on naval
operations against the Portuguese.
The rivalry of the Dutch soon became as em­
barrassing as that of the Portuguese had been.
They sent eight ships to Bussorah, where the
English had opened trade in 1035, and almost
ruined the factory there ; at Buuder Abbas they
proved such bad neighbours that the Company
were forced to removo the bulk of their property
to Bussorah, and though the factory was retained
until 1701, for the last century of its existence it
was the scat of a very insignificant business.
Tho closing of the establishment at Bunder
Abbas was almost immediately followed by
the opening of a factory at Bushire, which
has sinco become the political and commercial
head-quarters of the British in the Cult'. The
Firman of Karim Khan, under which the
Bushiro factory was established in 1703, was
granted to one Price, as “Governor-General for
the English nation in the Gulf of Persia,” and
to a certain Benjamin Jervis, Resident, in
1 response to a demand for' “a grant of their
ancient privileges in these kingdoms.” It con­
cedes not only an unbounded, but a virtually
exclusive, liberty of trade to the English. A site
for a factory, as well as a garden and burial
ground, was granted. Tho servants ol the
English were to he exempt from the local juris­
diction, and the English wen? to hoist their own
colours, ns they had been allowed to do at
Bunder Abbas, and to havo twenty-one guns for
saluting. Taken in connoetion with a new
Firman, granted in 1788 by Karim Khan’s
nephew, who expressed his desire that the
English morehants should “ sleep in the cradle
of security and confidence,” it shows that towards
tho ond of the eighteenth century England had
attained a position in the Gulf to which none of
her competitors could lay claim.