|
Oman 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
|
