Page 106 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

The Retreat from the Gulf 103

defence commitment to the lesser Gulf states was academic by the end of 1971,

not just because the conventional wisdom about Britain’s military and financial
capabilities had prevailed but even more because the government of the day
had, by its behaviour over the preceding eighteen months, prejudiced beyond
redemption the usefulness of such a commitment. Defensive commitments to
another country are, ipso facto, concerned with the preservation of that
country’s territorial integrity. By conniving at the Persian occupation of Abu
Musa and the Tunbs, and by endeavouring to procure the surrender of Abu

Dhabi territory to Saudi Arabia, the Heath administration had subverted this
principle and thereby debased the value of any defence undertaking that might
have been given the fledgling UAE.
In a way, the manner in which Britain left the Gulf was fitting, if not exactly
edifying, for it was comparable to the manner in which she had entered it
three and a half centuries earlier. The English East India Company began

trading to Persia in the second decade of the seventeenth century, establishing
factories at Shiraz, Ispahan and Jask (near the entrance to the Gulf). A century
earlier the Portuguese had preceded the English into these waters, and they
had made the island of Hormuz the citadel of their power in the region. Shah
Abbas I, the greatest of the Safavid rulers of Persia, was determined to expel
them from the Gulf, and to this end he enlisted the aid of the East India
Company to supply the ships he lacked to transport his army for the assault

upon Hormuz. At the outset of 1622 ships of the East India Company ferried
the Persian army from the mainland to Hormuz, fought and defeated the
Portuguese fleet, and imposed a blockade upon the island. The fall of Hormuz
bi ought the English the rewards they had been promised for their help — a
trading factory at Bandar Abbas and lucrative commercial privileges in Persia.
Mutatis mutandis the same mercenary spirit presided over Britain’s retreat from
the Gulf in 1971.