Page 16 - Gulf Precis (I-A)_Neat

[ VIII ]
Travels in Arabia—
By Carstcn Niebuhr from 1762-[an abridgement printed on Pinkertou'a Fog ages
and Travels, Volume X—Read especially Chapter Cl to CVI1 which contain
accounts of tho principal characters of the period in the Persian Gulf—including
Moer Mohaun ].
Travels in Asia and Africa—
By Abraham Parsons about 1771—1775 (published in 1808).
[Contains an interesting account of tho Uushire, Karralc and Basrah affairs from
1768 to 1 775—Read this with Low’s History of the Indian Navy, Chapter V,
Volume I].
Life and Correspondence of Sir John Malcolm—
By J. W. Ivaye, Volume I, Chapter VII, about the Persian Embassy (1800—1801),
The Summary and Selections, with the appendices and the works referred
to above will, it is hoped, supply a complete material for writing an exhaustive'
and connooted history of the East Indian Company’s connection with tho
Persian Gulf from 1G00 to 1800, when the foundation of tho British com­
mercial supremacy in the Gulf was laid, that paved the way to the establish­
ment of political preponderance in the 19th century. Tho Selections give us
vivid pictures of the struggles, anxieties, troubles, victories of the sturdy
Britons that fought their way through tho most tremendous difficulties, and
obstacles, that would have unnerved and driven back but the most enter­
prising and doggedly persevering characters. It was a long hard obstinate
struggle of nearly two centuries, from which only the bulldog tenacity and
courage of the British nation could have emerged successful. At the boginning
of the 17th century the British could get a footing on Persia only through a
distant outlying village, Jask ; the beginning of the 19th century found them
the masters of Persian Gulf. It is the drama of this interesting period of the
British connection with the Persia and the Persian Gulf, that will be found
unfolded, however inadequately, in this Suvwiary and Selections.

J. A. SALDANHA;

J