Articles From Our Experts

Not only did the Asian subcontinent’s hot and humid climate present a significant threat to the health of British administrators, but it also presented new challenges to their business of recordkeeping.

The interception by an East India Company vessel in June 1853, of a Bahrain trading vessel carrying slaves in the Gulf, reveals a story of politics and diplomacy, disease and death.

The vast trove of material held at the British Library that pertains to Britain’s Colonial exploits owe their present organisation in part to the early acknowledgement by officials in the EIC and India Office of the importance of record-keeping.

The private papers of George Nathaniel Curzon offer a window on the workings of the British Empire.

‘What can I buy from the current post holder?’ was the first consideration of a newly appointed British Agent in the Empire. Frequent moves meant that provisions, furniture and necessities for entertaining were bought and sold rather than transported with Agents from post to post.

What is a kharita, what are its main components, and how was it dispatched?

Much Anglocentric writing on Gulf history credits the British with bringing peace to the region. But how accurate is that narrative? A close inspection of the India Office Records reveals another picture of the British presence in the Gulf.

During the nineteenth century, the Gulf was a hive of economic activity, with merchant ships carrying precious cargoes back and forth to India, making fortunes for traders. But it could also be hazardous for sailors.

The struggle for power in Muscat 1866–68 following the death, in suspicious circumstances, of Sayyid Thuwaynī bin Sa‘īd Āl Bū Sa‘īd, Sultan of Muscat.

Sir Lewis Pelly is a key figure in the history of the Gulf who, in his role as Political Resident, was Britain’s senior official in the region from 1862 to 1873. He holds particular importance for Qatar due to his recognition of its independent sovereignty in 1868.

From its foundation at the end of the eighteenth century, the British Residency in Baghdad occupied a strategically important position, linking together various strands of British imperial engagement in the region.

Former slaves employed in the Indian Navy’s crews in the mid-19th century often exploited the itinerant existence of naval vessels to escape servitude.

When Pelly undertook making a trip to Riyadh in 1864–65, he wished to gain intelligence on the Nejd, but also to prove that an Englishman could travel through the territory unmolested.

How do you reduce communication times between the Gulf and India, from months, to a matter of weeks?

Verbal abuse and physical attacks from those amongst which he lived, and denigration from foreign visitors; all part of the job of being a British Native Agent in Sharjah.

Musandam’s majestic sea cliffs, inlets, and strategic location have always attracted the attention of external powers. British support in enforcing the writ of the Sultan of Muscat on the Peninsula has been vitally important since the mid-nineteenth century.