Page 57 - Arabiab Studies (IV)

QasimT Piracy

and the General Treaty of Peace
(1820)

Patricia R. Dubuisson

By 1800, the British East India Company at Bombay was interested
in achieving stability in the Arabian/Persian Gulf, which served as
an imperial trade and mail route. The first obstacle encountered
was what the British called piracy on the part of the Qawasim
tribal confederacy of al-$Ir area of Oman. This topic has been dealt
with before, notably by J. G. Lorimer and more recently by J. B.
Kelly.1 The unresolved questions which prompt the present essay
concern the nature of QasimT maritime activity and, concomitantly,
the historical significance of the General Treaty of Peace in 1820
between the British and the shaykhs of what was later called the
Trucial Coast.2
Depredation against cargo vessels is an historical feature of any
important seaway. The Gulf had for centuries been an important
trade route, and probably always had had its share of piracy, for
which we have clear documentation since the seventeenth century.
Late in that century, Muscat was notorious for its attacks against
Portuguese and Persian commerce. Piracy proliferated in the 18th
and early 19th centuries, as the British and French competed for
supremacy in Indian waters. Boats using harbours along the west
coast of India plagued trade to and from that subcontinent.
European imperial powers also plundered each other; between
1803 and 1809, for example, French privateers sank or captured
over 15,000 tons of the English Company’s shipping.3 A distinction
was—and is—made between ‘privateering’ and ‘piracy’.4 The latter,
whether European or native, was regarded as criminal. In the case
of the Qawasim, it was often attributed, like the Bedouin ghazw, to
the Arabs’ ‘predatory disposition’. The former was legitimized by
contracts with the navies of the imperial powers competing in
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