Page 41 - The Origins of the United Arab Emirates_Neat

2 The Aftermath of War:
Perpetuation of Control

RECONSIDERATION OF POLICY
During the period preceding the outbreak of World War I, British
policy in the Gulf had primarily been concerned with asserting
Britain’s omnipotence and exclusive rights in the area. Following
a scries of elaborate agreements and conventions, assisted by the
strong personalities of Lord Curzon as Viceroy of India and Sir
Percy Cox1 as Political Resident in Bushire, the British position
was defined and confirmed. The possibility of the extension of
French interests to the Trucial Coast had been sharply terminated
in 1892 by the Exclusive Agreement with the rulers, and French
competition for control of the sultanate of Muscat and Oman was
virtually ended in 1904 with the Anglo-French Entente.2 The Anglo-
Russian Convention of 1907 had the effect of removing Russian
opposition to the British presence in the Gulf. The other two powers
that Britain regarded as a direct threat in the field were Germany
and the Ottoman Empire, and during the period from 1908 to
1914 much effort was made to diminish their respective positions.
The gravest menace came from the German policy of Drang nach
Osten, which culminated in the project of the Baghdad Railway
with a terminus in Kuwait; although British negotiations in the
years immediately preceding the war had been successful, and conven­
tions had been drawn up and initialled, the outbreak of hostilities
in 1914 prevented ratification. The conventions in question were
the Anglo-Turkish Convention of 1913, in which Kuwait was recog­
nised as an autonomous qada,3 of the Ottoman Empire, its boundaries

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