Page 73 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

The making of Gulf port towns before oil 53

of the region. In the sixteenth century forts had served the expansion of
Portuguese mercantilism in the Persian Gulf. As the seats of local gover-
nors who were tributary to the King of Portugal, they linked together key
regional ports and provided shelter for merchants and cargo along trans-
regional and trans-oceanic routes. For the leading shaykhs of emerging
tribal principalities, the ability to build permanent defences was commen-
surate to their control of pearl banks and sea trade, which in turn
depended on the support of tribal contingents and mercenary armies
(al-‘askariyyah). The town of Ras al-Khaymah developed into the model
fortress town of the era under its al-Qasimi rulers, whose fleets patrolled
commercial routes, imposed the payment of safe passages and seized
cargo. Before it was destroyed by the Royal Navy in 1820, the settlement
was protected by a shallow lagoon from the sea and surrounded on three
sides by walls which were defended by cannons and by 7,000 armed
men. 30 While the al-Qasimi ports of the eastern Gulf became the show-
case of the defensive architecture which boomed under tribal mercantil-
ism, in the west the strongholds of the Al Sabah and Al Khalifah had more
precarious defences. Until the early nineteenth century, the rulers of
Kuwait and al-Zubarah had neither artillery to protect their outposts nor
large ships to carry out sea raids, although they commandeered the loyalty
of large numbers of tribal fighters. 31 Their military capabilities had some-
what increased by the 1820s and 1830s as suggested by the use of guns and
artillery for the defence of Muharraq.
The imposition of the Pax Britannica imparted a new direction to Gulf
urbanisation. While fortifications lost much of their military and political
importance, British policies favoured the growth of port settlements by
stabilising the boundaries of tribal influence across the region and by
lending political support to rulers in exchange for their military quies-
cence. Leading shaykhs could no longer pursue territorial expansion out-
side their domains, particularly as a result of the treaties negotiated after
the 1880s which entrusted the Government of India with the conduct of
the foreign affairs of Gulf ports. These agreements prevented ‘the cessa-
tion or the disposal of their territories by means of sale, lease, mortgage, or
by other means, without the agreement of the United Kingdom’. 32 British
influence was also instrumental in reshaping the hierarchy of regional
ports. As the Bushehr residency came to control the external relations
of the Gulf principalities, Bushehr and Manama consolidated their

30
Brucks, ‘Memoir Descriptive of the Navigation of the Gulf’ (1829–35), fiche 1096, p. 541,
V 23/217 IOR.
31
Slot, The Arabs of the Gulf, pp. 250–1.
32
Albaharna, The Arabian Gulf States, pp. 70–5 (p. 73).