Page 309 - UAE Truncal States_Neat
P. 309

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
                 284
   304   305   306   307   308   309   310   311   312   313   314