Page 57 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

52 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

income. In return Britain undertook to police the truce and to maintain the
maritime peace of the Gulf. The truce was extended in stages until 1853 when it
was made permanent. Eight years later Bahrain, which had been excluded
from the trucial agreements because of conflicting claims to suzerainty over the
shaikhdom by the Persians, Turks, Egyptians and Saudis, was brought within
the scope of the agreements and her independence recognized and guaranteed
by the British government. During the first half of the century a series of
agreements was also concluded with the Trucial Shaikhdoms and Bahrain, as
well as with the sultan of Oman and the governments of Persia and Turkey, for
the suppression of the slave trade in the Gulf.
In the 1880s and 1890s Bahrain and the Trucial Shaikhdoms entered into
further engagements requiring them not to alienate any portion of their ter­
ritories to other powers, and to place the conduct of their foreign relations in
the hands of the British government. An undertaking along similar lines was
given by the shaikh of Kuwait in 1899, and shortly after the outbreak of war
between Britain and the Ottoman empire in November 1914 the shaikhdom
was formally taken under British protection. The war was also responsible for
the integration of Qatar into the trucial system: in 1916 the ruling Al Thani
shaikh subscribed to the various undertakings which had earlier been given by
Bahrain and the Trucial Shaikhdoms, and in return he was assured of the
defence of his territories against attack by sea. A final series of engagements,
covering the arms traffic, the grant of oil and other concessions, and the
exercise of extra-territorial jurisdiction by Britain, was concluded with the
various shaikhdoms in the early decades of this century.
At the heart of the trucial system lay an obligation upon Britain not merely to
maintain the maritime peace of the Gulf but also to preserve the independence
and territorial integrity of the shaikhdoms which subscribed to the truce.
Without the existence of such an obligation there would have been no
justification for the restrictive engagements which Britain had taken from them
regarding the slave trade, the arms traffic, the conduct of their foreign affairs
and the grant of oil concessions. The obligation had been made explicit in the
case of Bahrain because the shaikhdom’s frontiers were defined by the sea and
could therefore be defended by naval means. A similar explicit undertaking, as
just mentioned, had been given with respect to the maritime frontiers of Qatar,
but not with regard to its landward frontiers, the limits of which were unde­
termined when the treaty of 1916 was concluded.
No such formal guarantee had been extended to the Trucial Shaikhdoms of
the lower Gulf, primarily because such a guarantee would have been counter to
the principle upon which British policy in the Gulf in the nineteenth century
was based, that of non-intervention in the affairs of the Arabian mainland. In
any case, the absence until well into this century of any firm notion of where the
inland frontiers of the shaikhdoms lay would have made such a guarantee
unrealistic. At the same time, however, it was acknowledged that an implicit