Page 70 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

50 Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf

The Gulf coast was integrated further into the sphere of British informal

empire in the second half of the nineteenth century. The Anglo-Persian

war of 1856–7 and the Indian Mutiny of 1857 consolidated the British

military presence in southern Iran. The fear of an Ottoman occupation of

Bahrain, which by then had become the basis of British commercial

operations in the Gulf, prompted the Government of India to stipulate

exclusive agreements with Gulf rulers. The first was signed with Bahrain

in 1880, followed by what became known as the Trucial States in 1892,

including Dubai, Abu Dhabi and the al-Qasimi strongholds. Kuwait and

Qatar entered treaty negotiations in 1899 and 1916 respectively. The

newly acquired control over the external relations of the Gulf principal-

ities coincided with a new phase of British imperial expansion in the

Ottoman Middle East, culminating in the military occupation of Egypt

in 1882. 19

The new global era of ‘steam and steel’, as Rhoads Murphey has aptly

called the age of European imperialism, transformed the Gulf into a

maritime station for British shipping to and from India. 20 The introduc-

tion of steam navigation along the rivers of Iraq, and its extension to the

Gulf, led to the concentration of commercial activities in leading entrepôt

centres served by British steamers, which ensured fast communications

with the Indian subcontinent. After 1862, ports like Basra, Manama and

Bushehr developed as intermediary stations between Iraq and Bombay as

the agricultural areas around Basra were gradually integrated into the

world economy and European goods started to make their appearance

in local and regional markets. As was to happen in the 1930s with the

introduction of Imperial Airways, the arrival of British steamships fostered

increasing interconnections between regional centres and their historical
emporia overseas. 21
British inroads in the Gulf recomposed the ‘tribal breakout’ of the
eighteenth century in a variety of ways. Politically, the Government of
India protected the position of local dynasties and restrained tribal con-
flict. It also sheltered coastal rulers from the renewed expansionist drive of

the second Sa‘udi ‘imarah after the capture of Riyadh by ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al

Sa‘ud (Ibn Sa‘ud) in 1902. After 1820 the residency adopted Bedouin
19
Yapp, ‘British Policy in the Persian Gulf’ pp. 77–84; Albaharna, The Arabian Gulf States,
pp. 25–57; Lienhardt, Shaikhdoms of Eastern Arabia, pp. 1–16.
20
R. Murphey, ‘On the Evolution of the Port City’ in Broeze (ed.), Brides of the Sea, pp. 223–
46 (pp. 241–2).
21
R. Kubicek, ‘The Proliferation and Diffusion of Steamship Technology and the
Beginnings of “New Imperialism”’ in D. Killingray, M. Lincoln and N. Rigby (eds.),
Maritime Empires: British Maritime Trade in the Nineteenth Century (Woodbridge: Boydell
Press, 2004), pp. 100–10.