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Kuwait
TREATIES WITH THE BRITISH
The increased European presence resulted in large part from widespread
Qawasim piracy in the early nineteenth century. The British asked
the sultan in Oman, to whom the pirates owed nominal allegiance,
to end it. When the sultan proved unable, British ships launched
attacks on Qawasim strongholds in the present-day UAE as early
as 1809; the navy did not succeed in controlling the situation
until 1819. In that year, the British sent a fleet from India
that destroyed the pirates' main base at Ras al Khaymah, a Qawasim
port at the southern end of the gulf. From Ras al Khaymah, the
British fleet destroyed Qawasim ships along both sides of the
gulf.
The British had no desire to take over the desolate areas along
the gulf; they only wished to secure the area so that it would
not pose a threat to shipping to and from their possessions in
India. Knowing that the sultan in Oman could not be relied upon
to control the pirates, the British decided to leave in power
those tribal leaders who had not been conspicuously involved with
piracy; they concluded a series of treaties in which those leaders
promised to suppress all piracy.
As a result of these truces, the Arab side of the gulf came to
be known as the "trucial coast." This area had previously been
under the nominal control of the sultan in Oman, although the
trucial coast tribes were not part of the Ibadi imamate. The area
has also been referred to as "trucial Oman" to distinguish it
from the part of Oman under the sultan that was not bound by treaty
obligation.
In 1820 the British seemed primarily interested in controlling
the Qawasim, whose main centers were Ras al Khaymah, Ajman, and
Sharjah, which were all small ports along the southeastern gulf
coast. The original treaties, however, also involved Dubayy and
Bahrain. Although Dubayy and Bahrain were not pirate centers,
they represented entrepôts where pirates could sell captured goods
and buy supplies. The inclusion of these ports brought two other
extended families, the Bani Yas and the Al Khalifa, into the trucial
system.
During the next 100 years, the British signed a series of treaties
having wide-ranging provisions with other tribes in the gulf.
As a result, by the end of World War I, leaders from Oman to Iraq
had essentially yielded control of their foreign relations to
Britain. Abu Dhabi entered into arrangements similar to those
of Dubayy and Bahrain in 1835, Kuwait in 1899, and Qatar in 1916.
The treaty whose terms convey the most representative sense of
the relationship between Britain and the gulf states was the Exclusive
Agreement of 1882. This text specified that the signatory gulf
states (members of the present-day UAE) could not make any international
agreements or host any foreign agent without British consent.
Because of these concessions, gulf leaders recognized the need
for Britain to protect them from their more powerful neighbors.
The main threat came from the Al Saud in central Arabia. Although
the Turks had defeated the first Wahhabi empire of the Al Saud
around 1820, the family rose again about thirty years later; it
threatened not only the Qawasim, who by this time had largely
abandoned Wahhabi Islam, but also the Al Khalifa in Bahrain and
the Ibadi sultan in Oman. In the early 1900s, the Al Saud also
threatened Qatar despite its Wahhabi rulers. Only with British
assistance could the Al Thani and other area rulers retain their
authority.
The Al Saud were not the only threat. Despite its treaty agreement
with Britain, Bahrain on several occasions has claimed Qatar because
of the Al Khalifa involvement on the peninsula. The Omanis and
Iranians have also claimed Bahrain because both have held the
island at various times. Furthermore, the Ottomans claimed Bahrain
occasionally and tried throughout the latter part of the nineteenth
century to establish their authority in Kuwait and Qatar.
The British wished to maintain security on the route from Europe
to India so that merchants could safely send goods between India
and the gulf. Britain also sought to exclude the influence in
the area of other powers, such as Turkey and France.
East-West trade through the Persian Gulf dried up in the nineteenth
century after the opening of the Suez Canal, which provided a
direct route to the Mediterranean Sea. Gulf merchants continued
to earn substantial income from the slave trade, but international
pressure, mostly from Britain, forced them to abandon this by
1900. Thereafter, the region continued to profit from the gulf
pearl beds, but this industry declined in the 1930s as a result
of the world depression, which reduced demand, and as a result
of the Japanese development of a cheaper way to "breed" pearls,
or make cultured pearls.
Oman, which was technically cut off from the gulf after 1820
when it lost the southern portion of the present-day UAE, fared
little better during the late nineteenth century. The fifth sultan
in the Al Said line, Said ibn Sultan, ruled for almost the entire
first half of the nineteenth century, increasing Omani influence
and revenue tremendously. The resulting prosperity, however, was
short-lived. The Omani fleet could not compete with the more technologically
advanced European ships; thus the sultan gradually lost much of
the income he had earned from customs duties on the Indian trade.
At the same time, the increasing pressure to restrict the slave
trade eliminated much of the revenue the Omanis had earned from
East Africa.
The final blow to Oman's economic and political viability came
after the death of Said ibn Sultan. When the Al Said could not
agree on a successor, the British acted. They divided the Al Said
holdings and gave Oman proper to one of the claimants to the throne
and awarded Omani possessions in East Africa to another. Thus,
after 1856, there were two Al Said rulers. The one in Muscat,
with a weakened merchant fleet and no East African revenues, was
left with little support. Because of the different centers of
power, the country became popularly known as Muscat and Oman.
The sultan's financial weakness contributed to his difficulty
in maintaining his hold on the interior. The devout Ibadi population
of the interior had long resented the more secular orientation
of the coastal centers. As the sultan grew weaker, groups in the
interior raised revolts against him on several occasions. Only
with British help could the sultan remain in control, and his
growing dependence on outsiders caused his relations with the
Ibadi population to deteriorate. Whereas other gulf rulers used
the British to protect them from their more powerful neighbors,
the sultan needed the British to protect him from his subjects.
Data as of January 1993
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