Page 69 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

The making of Gulf port towns before oil 49

As the need for security from external threats increased, the network of
tribute relations which moulded security pacts and cemented alliances
between Gulf tribes became increasingly complex. At the turn of the
nineteenth century, the al-Qawasim of Sharjah still played off the Imam
of Muscat and the Wahhabis one against the other. At the same time both
the Imam and the rulers of Najd received tribute from the Al Khalifah who
had just occupied Bahrain and provided for their own security with the
subsidies collected from their possessions in Qatar. After Bahrain was
occupied by Omani forces in 1800, the Al Khalifah regained the islands by
becoming tributaries of ‘Abd al-‘Aziz ibn Muhammad al-Sa‘ud. Yet, by
1805 they started to appeal to the Imam of Muscat and to the British
resident in Bushehr to shake off the Wahhabi yoke. 16
The long and troubled eighteenth century came to a close only after
1820 with the restoration of ‘peace and security’ at sea by British gunboat
diplomacy. As after the 1780s the Royal Navy became in control of
African and Asian routes, British naval power started to be deployed in
the Gulf. Armed by the desire to protect trade and by the moral imperative
to defeat piracy, British vessels intervened as early as 1775 at the request of
the East India Company factory based in Bushehr. Between 1809 and
1820 British naval expeditions against Ras al-Khaymah crushed the power
of the al-Qawasim, setting in motion a system of maritime truces which
culminated with the establishment of the Perpetual Maritime Peace of
1853. Along with piracy, these maritime truces supported the abolition
of the slave trade with the African coast which supplied large numbers of
labourers to the pearl industry. 17 By placing the Gulf waters under Royal
Navy patrols, the new treaty system isolated further the coastal principal-
ities from the political influence of their hinterlands. The new apparatus of
imperial control was minimal. It relied on a network of British native
agents, usually local merchants, posted in regional ports under the author-
ity of the British resident in Bushehr who answered to the Government of
India. The residency had started its activities in 1763 as a commercial
subsidiary of the factory of the East India Company in Basra. In 1822 it
acquired political status after the headquarters of the Company was
moved to Baghdad and Bushehr following the Persian occupation of
Basra in 1788. 18

16
Onley, ‘The Politics of Protection’,44–5; Fattah, The Politics of Regional Trade, pp. 56–8.
17
A. B. Khalifa, ‘Slaves and Musical Performances in Dubai: Socio-Cultural Relevance of
African Traditions’, unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Exeter, (2003), pp. 89–92.
18
M. Yapp, ‘British Policy in the Persian Gulf’ and R. M. Savory, ‘A.D. 600–1800’ in
A. Cottrell et al., The Persian Gulf States: A General Survey (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1980), pp. 70–100 (pp. 72–7), 14–40 (p. 37). On the British naval
expeditions against the al-Qawasim see C. Belgrave, The Pirate Coast, pp. 28–37, 133–49.