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Abstract
Genealogies of the term ‘Middle East’ conventionally focus on a juncture around the 1890s, when it gained new geopolitical currency, promoted by various European and American officials with reference to a space centred around the Arabo-Persian Gulf. This article argues instead that the ‘Middle East’ label should be seen as the culmination of a longer process, led less from London than from India. Over the previous century, this consolidation of ‘British’ India as a distinct regional actor was accompanied by the conceptualisation of its borderlands, including that Gulf-centred space. This space become a theatre for economic and political monitoring strategised from India, seeking to transform what was represented as a pirate-infested margin into a pacified buffer zone. Control and exploitation of pearl fisheries, the main economic activity for Gulf populations, was central to these efforts. Imperial strategy around the Gulf pearl was a key tool in founding an informal Indian empire in the Gulf and its hinterlands, in that very space to which the name ‘Middle East’ would subsequently be given.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Maxine Berg, W. G. Clarence-Smith, Mark Condos, Simon Macdonald and Giorgio Riello for generous assistance in the preparation of this article and for comments on an earlier draft.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
Notes
1 On this kind of approach see, C.R. Koppes, ‘Captain Mahan, General Gordon, and the Origins of the Term “Middle East”’, Middle Eastern Studies Vol.12, No.1 (1976), pp.95-8; K. Culcasi, ‘Constructing and Naturalizing the Middle East’, Geographical Review Vol.100, No.4 (2010), pp.583-97.
2 ‘Locusts and wild honey (…) and the Persians, Arabians, and other people of the dry Middle East have always included them, and do yet, in their bill of fare’, Harper's Bazaar Vol.16, No.10 (10 March 1883), p.154.
3 The New York Times (9 July 1898), p.26.
4 T.E. Gordon, ‘The Problem of the Middle East’, The Nineteenth Century Vol.47, No.277 (March 1900), p.413.
5 V. Chirol, The Middle Eastern Question or Some Political Problems of Indian Defence (London: John Murray, 1903). The book is made up of articles published in the Times in 1902 and 1903. See also A.T. Mahan, ‘The Persian Gulf and International Relations’, National Review Vol.40 (September 1902), p.39, reprinted in A.T. Mahan, Retrospect and Prospect (Boston: Little, Brown, 1902), p.237.
6 See for example, M. Bonine, A. Amanat and M. Gasper (eds), Is There a Middle East? The Evolution of a Geopolitical Concept (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012).
7 On the economy of the Gulf and the importance of pearling, see F. Bishara, B. Haykel, S. Hertog, C. Holes and J. Onley, ‘The Traditional Economy of the Gulf’ in J.E. Peterson (ed.), The Emergence of the Gulf States: Studies in Modern History (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), pp.187-222; F. Heard-Bey, From Trucial States to United Arab Emirates: A Society in Transition (London: Longman, 1996), pp.202-7, 250; M.S. Scott Hopper, Slaves of One Master: Globalization and Slavery in Arabia in the Age of Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), pp.80-104; D.A. Agius, Seafaring in the Arabian Gulf and Oman: People of the Dhow (London: Routledge, 2009), pp.143-154.
8 X. Beguin Billecocq, Les Emirats ou la fabuleuse histoire de la Côte des Perles (Paris: Relations internationales & culture, 1995); R. Donkin, Beyond Price. Pearls and Pearl-Fishing: Origins to the Age of Discoveries (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1998); A. Farn, Pearls: Natural, Cultured and Imitation (Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1991); S. Malaguzzi, The Pearl (New York: Rizzoli, 2001); R. Carter, Sea of Pearls: Seven Thousand Years of the Industry that Shaped the Gulf (London: Arabian Publishing, 2012); R. Le Baron Bowen, ‘The Pearl Fisheries of the Persian Gulf’, Middle East Journal Vol.5, No.2 (1951), pp.161-180.
9 Within this abundant historiography, see, among others, S. Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York: Knopf, 2015); G. Riello, Cotton: The Fabric that Made the Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); E. Rappaport, A Thirst for Empire: How Tea Shaped the Modern World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017); T. Brook and B. Tadashi Wakabayashi (eds), Opium Regimes: China, Britain and Japan, 1839–1952 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); D. Valenze Milk: A Global and Local History (Yale: New Heaven University Press, 2011); W.G. Clarence-Smith, Cocoa and Chocolate, 1765–1914 (London: Routledge, 2000); W.G. Clarence-Smith and S. Topik (eds), The Global Coffee Economy in Africa, Asia and Latin America, 1500–1989 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
10 See for example Beckert, Empire of Cotton.
11 For a general overview, see T. Metcalf, Imperial connections: India in the Indian Ocean Arena, 1860–1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007); S. Bose, A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006); K. McPherson, S. Arasaratnam, H. Furber and S. Subrahmanyam (eds), Maritime India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); R.J. Blyth, The Empire of the Raj: India, Eastern Africa, and the Middle East, 1858–1947 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).
12 Metcalf, Imperial Connections, pp.1, 6.
13 J. Onley, The Arabian Frontier of the British Raj: Merchants, Rulers, and the British in the Nineteenth-Century Gulf (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). For a general overview see also, J.B. Kelly, Britain and the Persian Gulf, 1795–1880 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968).
14 On the history of the Wahhabi State, see M. Al-Rasheed, A History of Saudi Arabia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
15 J. Jones and N. Ridout, A History of Modern Oman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), chap. 1 and 2.
16 F. Bishara, B. Haykel, S. Hertog C. Holes and J. Onley, The Traditional Economy of the Gulf, pp.187-222.
17 On this topic, see J. Peterson, ‘Britain and the Gulf: At the Periphery of Empire’, in The Persian Gulf in History (London: Macmillan, 2008), pp.277-294; C.E. Davies, The Blood-Red Arab Flag. An Investigation into Qasimi Piracy, 1797–1820 (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1997), pp.5-11.
18 On the strategic importance of the Gulf over the Red Sea, see E. Ingram, Commitment to Empire: Prophecies of the Great Game in Asia 1797–1800 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981).
19 On this real and imaginary threat, see G. Crouzet, Genèses du Moyen-Orient. Le Golfe Persique à l’âge des impérialismes (c.1800–c.1914) (Ceyzérieux: Champ Vallon, 2015), pp.95-106; A. Das, Defending British India against Napoleon. The Foreign Policy of Governor-General Lord Minto, 1807–13 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2016), pp.150-152.
20 For an analysis of this discourse, see Crouzet, Genèses du Moyen-Orient, p.53; P. Risso, ‘Cross-Cultural Perceptions of Piracy: Maritime Violence in the Western Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf Region during a Long Eighteenth Century’, Journal of World History Vol.12, No.2 (2001), p.293-319. Two sources are particularly important to understand this discourse: J.G. Lorimer, Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman and Central Arabia, 2 vol. (Calcutta: Government Printing, 1908–1915), C.R. Low, The History of the Indian Navy (1613–1863), 2 vol. (London: R. Bentley, 1877).
21 On the pirate as a fluid legal construct, see L. Benton, A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400–1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp.112-120.
22 L. Subramanian, The Sovereign and the Pirate: Ordering Maritime Subjects in India’s Western Littoral (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2016); J.L. Anderson, ‘Piracy and World History: An Economic Perspective on Maritime Predation’ Journal of World History Vol.6, No.2 (1995), pp.175-99. On the history of piracy as a symptom of the rivalries between imperial powers and thalassocracies in the Indian Ocean World, see Anne Pérotin-Dumon, The Pirate and the Emperor: Power and the Law on the Seas, 1450–1850, in J. Tracy (ed.), The Political Economy of Merchant Empires: State Power and World Trade 1350–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp.196-227.
23 On discourses on race in India and beyond, see S. Kapila, ‘Race Matters: Orientalism and Religion, India and Beyond, c. 1770-1880’, Modern Asian Studies Vol.41, No.3 (2007), pp.471-513.
24 On this discourse in the nineteenth century, see for example, J.S. Buckingham, ‘The Pirate Coast was an ideal place for sea robbers’, Travels in Assyria, Media, and Persia, 2 vol. (London: Colburn & Bentley, 1830), vol.1, p.210; J.R. Wellsted, ‘This plundering or piratical disposition is so general among the Arabs of these parts’, Travels to the City of the Caliphs, along the Shores of the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean, Including a Voyage to the Coast of Arabia and Tour on the Island of Socotra, 2 vol. (London: Henry Colburn, 1840), vol.1, p.99; ‘I question if any part of the globe presents a more tortuous or irregular outline than the north-east portion of Arabia’, Travels to the City, vol.1, p.100.
25 On this ‘piratical geography’, see S. Layton, ‘Discourses of Piracy in an Age of Revolutions’, Itinerario Vol.35, No.2 (2011), pp.81-97; Crouzet, Genèses du Moyen-Orient, p.78-80.
26 On the Qasimi, see M. Al-Qasimi, The Myth of Arab Piracy in the Gulf (London: Croom Helm, 1986). For another point of view and defending the existence of piracy in the Gulf, see Kelly, Britain and the Persian Gulf.
27 See for example Buckingham on the conversion of the Qasimi to Wahhabism: ‘They obeyed the call with all the enthusiasm which new religions are so frequently found to inspire, and directed their views to war and conquest; their leaders easily persuaded them that God was on their side, and that therefore the legions of hell itself could not prevail against them’, Buckingham, Travels in Assyria, vol.2, p.213.
28 On this attack, see Crouzet, Genèses du Moyen-Orient, p.105.
29 On discussions concerning the invention of the pirate myth, see ibid., pp.74-82; M. Al-Qasimi, M., The Myth; S. Layton, ‘Discourses’.
30 On the discourse in Bombay on the Gulf pirates post 1800, see F. Warden, Historical Sketch of the Joasmee Tribe of Arabs from the Year 1747 to the year 1819, in R. Hughes Thomas (ed.), Selections from the Records of the Bombay Government, NS xxiv (Bombay: Bombay Education Society Press, 1856), pp.299-312.
31 On these two interventions, see Crouzet, Genèses du Moyen-Orient, pp.113-114, 141-145.
32 On the chronology of the Gulf mapping surveys, see Crouzet, Genèses du Moyen-Orient, pp.192-206.
33 J.F. Standish, ‘British Maritime Policy in the Persian Gulf’, Middle Eastern Studies Vol.3, No. 4 (1964), pp.324-354.
34 J. Onley, Arabian Frontier; J. Onley, ‘Britain’s Informal Empire in the Gulf, 1820–1971’, Journal of Social Affairs Vol.22, No.87 (2005), pp.29-45.
35 For an analysis of this discourse, see Crouzet, Genèses du Moyen-Orient, pp.79-86.
36 IOR/R/15/1/14, f. 67, April 1814, Bruce to Farish.
37 On the discussions around these preliminary treaties, IOR/R/15/1/21, ff 4-12, 16 January 1820, Keir to Bruce; IOR/R/15/1/21ff 21-26, 21 March 1820, Warden to Bruce. The preliminary treaties are reprinted in C.U. Aitchison, A Collection of Treaties, Engagements and Sanads relating to India and Neighbouring Countries, Vol. 10, Containing the Treatises, Etc; Relating to Persia and the Persian Gulf (Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1892).
38 ‘Sultan bin Suggur shall surrender to the general towers, guns, and vessels which are in Sharjah, Imam, Umm-ool-Keiweyn and their dependencies’, Aitchison, A Collection of Treaties, vol. 10, p.122.
39 See article 7 of the General Treaty: ‘If any tribe, or others, shall not desist from plunder and piracy, the friendly Arabs shall act against them according to their ability and circumstances, and an arrangement for this purpose shall take place between the friendly Arabs and the British at the time when such plunder and piracy shall occur’, ibid., p.128.
40 IOR/ R/15/1/14, f 77v, May 1814, Bruce to Warden.
41 The treaty was thus designated as the ‘General Treaty with the Arab tribes’.
42 See notably the treaty signed with the Sheikh of Ras al Khaimah: ‘Leave the boats which are for the pearl fishery and fishing boats, and the remainder of the vessels shall be at the disposal of the General’, Aitchison, A Collection of Treaties, vol. 10, p.124.
43 ‘The vessels of the friendly Arabs shall all of them have in their possession a paper (Register) signed with the signature of their chief, in which shall be the name of the vessel, its length, its breadth, and how many Karahs it holds. And they shall also have in their possession another writing (Port Clearance) signed with the signature of their chief, in which shall be the name of the owner, the name of the Nacodah, the number of men, the number of arms, from whence sailed, at what time, and to what port bound. And if a British or other vessel meet them, they shall produce the Register and the Clearance.’, Ibid, p.120.
44 IOR/R/15/1/27, ff 4v-6, Jan. 1823, MacLeod to Senior Officer commanding EIC vessels in the Gulf; IOR/F/4/1163/30468, ‘Papers regarding the political situation in the Persian Gulf, relations with local Chieftains, suppression of piracy’, 1827-1828; IOR/F/4/990/27718, ‘Papers regarding the political situation in the Persian Gulf, Muscat, Mocha, etc…’, vol. 5, Nov.1825-Aug.1826.
45 IOR/R/15/1/67, f 62, Hennel to Norris, 1835.
46 IOR/R/15/1/67, f19v, ‘List of demands to be made on the Chief of Aboothabee in compensation for the “outrages” committed by the Beniyas on the “peaceable Arabs” of the Persian Gulf’, 27 April 1835; IOR/ R/15/1/67, f 39v ‘General statement of the vessels detained or piratically seized by the Beniyas tribe and subsequently recovered by the Persian Gulf Squadron’, 21 May 1835.
47 The Sheikhs of Abu Dhabi, of Dubai, of Ras al Khaimah, of Sharjah, of Umm al Quwain and of Ajman.
48 IOR/R/15/1/67, ff 85v-86, Dec. 1835.
49 IOR/R/15/1/92, Brucks to Hennel, Nov. 1841.
50 ‘From the 1st of June A. D. 1843 (…), there shall be a cessation of hostilities at sea between our respective subjects and dependants, and that from the above date until the termination of the month May A. D. 1853, an inviolable truce shall be established, during which period our several claims upon each other shall rest in abeyance.’ Aitchison, A Collection of Treaties, p.134.
51 ‘Being fully impressed with a sense of the evil consequence arising from our subjects and dependants being prevented carrying on the pearl fishery without interruption on the banks, owing to the various feuds existing amongst ourselves, and, moreover, duly appreciating the general advantage to be derived from the establishment of a truce’, Ibid, p.134.
52 ‘That from this date, viz. 25th Rujjub 1269, 4th May 1853, and hereafter, there shall be a complete cessation of hostilities at sea between our respective subjects and dependants, and a perfect maritime truce shall endure between ourselves and between our successors, respectively, for evermore’, Ibid, p.136.
53 Qatar was associated in 1916. On the exclusive treaties, see Onley, ‘Britain’s Informal Empire’; M. Yapp, ‘British Policy in the Persian Gulf’ in Alvin J Cottrell (ed.), The Persian Gulf States: A General Survey (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), pp.70-73; H.M. Albaharna, The Arabian Gulf States: Their Legal and Political Status and Their International Problems (Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1975).
54 On this topic, see Z. Kurçun, The Ottomans in Qatar: A History of Anglo-Ottoman Conflicts in the Persian Gulf (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2002); F. Anscombe, The Ottoman Gulf: The Creation of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997); J. Heller, British Policy Towards the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1914 (London: Frank Cass, 1983).
55 Carter, Sea of Pearls, pp.141-150.
56 P. Bourdieu, La Distinction: Critique sociale du jugement (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1979), trans., R. Nice, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984).
57 L. Rosenthal, Mémoires d’un chercheur de perles (Paris: Deux Rives, 1949), trans. H. Briffault, The Pearl Hunter: An Autobiography (New York: Schuman, 1952).
58 Carter, Sea of Pearls, chap. 4 and 5.
59 On the connections between the Gulf pearl, the button and marquetry industries in France and England, see Crouzet, Genèses du Moyen-Orient, pp.384-5.
60 J.G. Lorimer, Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman and Central Arabia, vol. 1 ‘Historical’, Part II, Appendix C ‘The Pearl and Mother-of-Pearl Fisheries of the Persian Gulf’, pp.2220-2293.
61 The Ceylon fisheries were said to have been devastated by natural phenomena: IOR/L/PS/10/457, ‘Report on the Ceylon pearl fisheries by Sir W. Crofton Twynam’, 1902. Fisheries in the Red Sea are also known to have experienced a crisis at the beginning of the twentieth century: ‘Report on the nature of red sea piracies from Jeddah Consul diary’, PRO/FO/78/5484, 1902, Devey to O’Connor.
62 Donkin, Beyond Price.
63 On these Indian merchant communities in the Gulf, involved in pearl fishing and trade, see C. Goswami, Globalization before its time: the Gujarati merchants from Kachchh (Gurgaon: Portfolio-Penguin, 2016), pp.72-115.
64 With a few exceptions, the nakhoda is not to be confused with the owner of the boat.
65 Goswami, Globalization.
66 V.P. Hightower, ‘Pearling and Political Power in the Trucial States, 1850–1930: Debts, Taxes, and Politics’, Journal of Arabian Studies Vol. 3, No. 2 (2013), pp.215-23.
67 IOR/R/15/1/185, ff 4, 2 Dec. 1878, Chief of Amulgavine and Chief of Ajman to British Agent in Sharjah.
68 IOR/R/15/1/185, ff 82, 1878.
69 E.C. Ross was resident in the Gulf from 1877 to 1891.
70 IOR/R/15/1/185, ff. 117-118, 1879. The sheikh of Bahrain was not a signatory.
71 On this global system of debt in the Indian Ocean, see F. Bishara, A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Indian Ocean, 1850–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), p.56.
72 ‘In the event of a runaway seeking refuge in our territories, whether by sea or by land, to consider it our duty to at once, restore him to the chief from whose jurisdiction, he may have absconded’, IOR R/15/1/185, ff. 117-118, 1879.
73 On S. Ettinghausen, see Crouzet, Genèses du Moyen-Orient, pp.389, 482; B.J. Slot, ‘French Relations with the Independent Shaikhdoms of the Lower Gulf’, Liwa, Journal of the National Center for Documentation & Research Vol. 1, No.2 (2009), p. 10-20.
74 On the history of the house of Rosenthal & Frères, see Rosenthal, Mémoires; Crouzet, Genèses du Moyen-Orient, pp.390-93, 495, 592; M.S. Hopper, ‘The African Presence in Eastern Arabia’, in The Gulf in Modern Times: People, Ports, and History (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2014), pp.202-213; M.S. Hopper, Slaves of One Master, pp.92-95, 193-194; Bose, A Hundred Horizons, p.86.
75 IOR/R/15/1/710, ‘Administration report of the Persian Gulf Political Residency for the year 1909, Administration Report for Bahrein’, p.84.
76 IOR/R/15/1/71, ‘Administration Report of the Persian Gulf Political Residency for the Years 1912, Administration Report for Bahrein’, p.102.
77 IOR/R/15/2/14/B/3, ff 9-10, ‘Sponge and Pearl Concessions’, Cox to Political Agent in Bahrain, July 1911.
78 Hopper, Slaves of One Master, p.95; Crouzet, Genèses du Moyen-Orient, p.391.
79 E. Staley, ‘Business and Politics in the Persian Gulf: The Story of the Wönckhaus Firm’, Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 48, No.3 (1993), pp.367-385; Crouzet, Genèses du Moyen-Orient, pp.343, 392-395, 492.
80 Lorimer, Gazetteer, p.2247
81 IOR/L/PS/20/C247, ‘Précis of correspondence on international rivalry and British policy in the Persian Gulf, 1872-1905’, chapter 10 ‘Protection from foreign enterprise the rights of Arab tribes in the pearl fisheries of the Persian Gulf’, pp.304-333.
82 IOR L/PS/20/C247, chapter 10.
83 Lorimer, Gazetteer, p.2249
84 C. Aitchison, The Treaties relating to Aden and the South Western Coast of Arabia, the Arab Principalities in the Persian Gulf, Muscat, Oman, Baluchistan and the North-West Frontier province, vol. XI, p.263.
85 Ibid, p.264.
86 S. Beckert, Empire of Cotton.