Page 133 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

Restructuring city and state 113

The age of reform
The government which emerged in Bahrain in the 1920s represented a
new stage in the evolution of the infrastructure of informal empire which
Britain had established throughout the Gulf in the nineteenth century.
British involvement in the internal affairs of Bahrain had started in
1816 when William Bruce, the British Resident in Bushehr, established
official relations with the Al Khalifah family. Soon after Bruce’s visit to the
islands the first Indian native agent was appointed in Manama, Sadah
1
Anandadas. In 1861 Muhammad ibn Khalifah was recognised as the
independent Ruler of Bahrain under British protection but it was only in
1880 and 1892 that the external relations of Bahrain were placed firmly
2
under British control. That Bahrain was the only principality of the Arab
coast to acquire a modern administration before the discovery of oil is
testimony to the renewed strategic and economic significance of the
islands during and after World War I. In 1914 the Government of India
used Manama as a basis for military operations to protect the advance of
the British Indian army towards Mesopotamia, then under Ottoman
control. The prospects of oil exploitation also played a part in the new
trajectories of imperial politics. Although the question of the role played
by oil is still open to debate, it is significant that in 1914 the possibility of
oil reserves in Bahrain prompted the Bushehr Residency to stipulate the
first ‘informal’ oil agreement with Shaykh ‘Isa, which prevented him from
undertaking the exploitation of oil resources or entering negotiations with
3
foreign governments. Five years later, the application of the Bahrain
Order-in-Council (which was issued in 1913) integrated Bahrain into
the sphere of informal empire as an overseas imperial territory and
laid the foundations for the establishment of the new administration.
Under the provisions of the Order, Bahrain became the lynchpin of the
new ‘forward’ policy advocated by the Government of India in the Gulf
following the imposition of British control over Iraq.

1
Onley, The Arabian Frontier of the British Raj, p. 138; M. G. Rumaihi, Bahrain: Social and
Political Change since the First World War (London and New York: Bowker, 1976), p. 10.
2
The relations between the British government and the Al Khalifah have been studied fairly
extensively. For further details see Rumaihi, Bahrain, pp. 11–14; T. T. Farah, Protection
and Politics in Bahrain, 1869–1915 (Beirut: American University, 1985), pp. 18–130.
3
Rumaihi, Bahrain, p. 14. For a general discussion of British oil policies in the Persian Gulf
in this period see Yapp, ‘The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’ and ‘British Policy
in the Persian Gulf’ in Cottrell et al., The Persian Gulf States, pp. 41–69 (pp. 59–60) and
70–100 (84–6); M. Kent, Oil and Empire: British Policy and Mesopotamian Oil, 1900–1920
(London: Macmillan, 1976), pp. 117–57; A. Keating, Mirage: Power, Politics and the
Hidden History of Arabian Oil (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2005), pp. 43–88.