Page 67 - The Arabian Gulf States_Neat

INTRODUCTION 5
incrly the Pirate Coast), long before they had any contact with the
British Government. Formal relations between these Shaikhdoms and
the British Government were established after the East India Com­
pany’s expedition of 1819 against the Arab Shaikhs of Al-Qawasim
at Ras al-Khaimah. Subsequently, the rulers of these Shaikhdoms
concluded, in 1820, a General Treaty with the British Government in
which they agreed to abstain from piratical acts and to maintain ‘a
lasting peace’ between them and the British Government. This treaty
was followed by the Perpetual Treaty of Peace of 1853 and the Ex­
clusive Agreements of 1892 which today constitute the basis of British
special treaty relations with these Shaikhdoms.
The number of the independent rulers of the Trucial Shaikhdoms
varied from time to time in the past. Ras al-Khaimah, which was
incorporated for some years with Sharjah, secured, from 1921,
British recognition as an independent Shaikhdom. Fujairah, the
smallest Shaikhdom on the Gulf of Oman, established her indepen­
dence from Sharjah in 1901, but she was not recognised as an inde­
pendent Shaikhdom until 1952, when her Ruler acceded to the same
treaty obligations of the other Trucial Shaikhdoms with Britain.1

(b) The establishment of British influence in the Gulf
The recorded modern history of the Arabian Gulf begins with the
inception of the Portuguese influence in the region during the sixteenth
century. After about a hundred years of Portuguese predominance in
the Gulf, they were finally driven from it by the Persians—assisted by
the British—in or about 1622. In the beginning, British interest in the
Gulf was of a commercial character. It started in 1763, when the
British East India Company opened a Residency at Bushire, on the
Persian side of the Gulf. After eliminating the influence of its rivals,
the Dutch, the French and the Turks, the British Government man­
aged, during the eighteenth century, to consolidate its political influ­
ence in the Gulf. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, the British
Government assumed the task of suppressing piracy in the Gulf
which had exposed British trade with India to danger. British expedi­
tions against the Pirate Coast (now called Trucial Coast) resulted in

1 On the general history of the Trucial Shaikhdoms and their treaty relations,
see I.O., Bombay Secret Proceedings, op. cit.; Bombay Selections (Chronological
Table of events connected with the Joasmcc Tribe of Arabs and with the Debayc
(Boo Felasa) Tribe of Arabs, from 1765 to 1844, by Lieutenant A. B. Kemball,
Asst Political Resident in the Persian Gulf), pp. 129-39, 159-65; Saldanha, J. A.,
A Precis of Correspondence Regarding the Trucial Chiefs, 1854-1905 (1906);
Aitchison, pp. 197-202; Hay, Sir Rupert, The Persian Gulf States (1959), pp. 122-3;
Mann, C., Abu Dhabi: Birth of an OH Shaikhdom (1964); Wilkinson, J. C., ‘A
Sketch of the Historical Geography of the Trucial Oman down to the Beginning
of the Sixteenth Century’, Geographical Journal, vol. 130, Part 3, September (1964),
pp. 338-49.