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By Root 632 0

even attacked EIC and Royal Navy ships with their formidable fleet of about sixty larger ships, several hundred smaller ones, and some 20,000 men.26 By the second decade of the nineteenth century the British were becoming seriously concerned. There were economic matters: the Qawasim were hindering trade in the Gulf, or so they claimed, and competing quite successfully in trade between India and the Gulf. Nevertheless, Mumbai's trade with the Gulf actually rose threefold in the first twenty years of the century, which seems to make the hindering trade argument rather specious. Politics also played a part here. The British were becoming closer to Oman, with its valuable dependency of Zanzibar, under Sayyid Sultan. The British defined one party to a rivalry between two indigenous Gulf states as pirates, and acted accordingly. As Philip Francis said at the time in the House of Commons, 'whenever the Governor General and Council (of India) were disposed to make war upon their neighbours they could at all times fabricate a case to suit their purpose.'27

Ra's al-Khayma was stormed and taken in December 1819, and a victor's peace imposed next month. Sayyid Said of Oman, who ruled from 1804 to 1856 (he moved to Zanzibar in 1832), had helped the British and now was rewarded. Oman received privileged treatment in the General Treaty of Peace of 1820. All Gulf traders were now to be subject to the new order. Friendly Arab ships had to carry a register setting out where they were going, how big the ships were, and how many arms they carried. This register, eerily reminiscent of the Portuguese cartaz of the sixteenth century, was to be produced on demand to any British ship that they came across.28 'Unfriendly' ships were confiscated.

The always quotable George Curzon explained what had happened. The situation in the Gulf was anarchical in the early nineteenth century.

Arab corsairs desolated its shores and swept its water with piratical flotillas; slave-hunting flourished; and security either of trade or dominion there was none. The hands by which this long-standing anarchy was subdued are also those by which present differences are composed, and maritime peace assured that is one of the most successful achievements of practical statesmanship. The pacification of the Persian Gulf in the past and the maintenance of the status quo are the exclusive work of this country; and the British Resident at Bushire is to this hour the umpire to whom all parties appeal, and who has by treaties been instrusted with the duty of preserving the peace of the waters.29

He refers here to the way in which what the British called the Pirate Coast was transformed into the Trucial States, by which the various 'states' and tribal confederations of the Gulf were brought under British hegemony by means of signing 'truces'. These states were required to end the slave trade by sea, and to refrain from acting as 'irresponsible buccaneers' at sea. However, crucially, Curzon was quite clear that what happened inland was of no concern to Britain: its only interest was to safeguard trade.

The truce has not prevented, it was neither designed nor expected to prevent, warfare by land. These petty tribes exist for little else but internecine squabble, blood-feuds, puny forays, and isolated acts of outrage or revenge. With their internal relations Great Britain, who claims no suzerainty over Arabia, would have been foolish to interfere. All that she took upon herself to do was to secure the maritime peace of the Gulf....30

This modulated approach to the area continued in force until oil entered the picture in the twentieth century.

Curzon is describing here one part of the way in which Europeans, and especially the British, were able to control the Indian Ocean. Steam ships, the Suez Canal and better ports were most important, but there also was the matter of mapping the ocean. It would be easy to assume that once John Harrison produced a chronometer in the 1770s which could be used to work out longitude there were no more problems, and European ships could